By Pablo Revale
April 8, 2026 · 5 Minutes
Adapted from Originally published in Unstoppable Hospitality on LinkedIn.
51% of hotels plan to replace or upgrade their technology stack in the next 12 to 24 months. Half the industry, shopping for new vendors, at the same time. Most of them will pick wrong. Although we prefer to call ourselves partners, we are, fundamentally, vendors. So no one will argue I’m against vendors. The problem lies in the criteria. Hotels evaluate technology the way they evaluate linen suppliers. Price, features, delivery timeline. Check, check, check. That’s how you end up three years into a contract with a system that technically works and practically fails. I’ve been on both sides of this. As a buyer, early in my career. And now as the vendor, running Zerf.
Every relationship starts here. Not with a demo. Not with a feature comparison spreadsheet. Trust. Can you call them when something breaks at 11pm on a Saturday? Will they tell you the truth when their product isn’t the right fit? Do they communicate like partners or like salespeople reading a script? Hotels spend less than 3% of revenue on technology budgets. That number is actually down from 2019, when it sat between 3% and 4%. When you’re spending that little, every dollar needs to land in the hands of people who will treat your business like it matters. Trust isn’t a soft metric. It’s the first filter.
A NextJS developer can build you a booking widget. A hospitality technologist can build you a booking widget that accounts for rate parity, PMS availability sync, loyalty tier recognition, and the fact that your guests in the Caribbean expect a fundamentally different experience than your guests in Manhattan. Domain knowledge is the difference between building software and solving problems. 38% of hoteliers cite integration as their top technology pain point. That number exists because vendors without domain knowledge don’t understand what they’re integrating with. They’ve never mapped a PMS data model. They’ve never dealt with the reality that half the industry still runs on systems designed in the early 2000s. When your vendor doesn’t know your business, you become the translator.
This isn’t about whether they have an AI feature in their product. This is about how they build. 49% of hoteliers want their PMS vendors to prioritize AI-powered automation and personalization. That demand is real. But here’s the thing most people miss: the vendors who build with AI are fundamentally faster, cheaper, and more adaptive than those who don’t. An AI-first engineering team ships in weeks what a traditional team ships in months. They catch bugs before humans do. They write documentation that stays current. They test edge cases at scale. If your vendor isn’t using AI in their own processes, they’re charging you for inefficiency. And that inefficiency shows up in your timeline, your budget, and the quality of what gets delivered.
63% of hotel technology budgets go to maintaining existing systems. Only 23% goes to new software rollouts and 7% to research and development. Your vendors should be the opposite of that ratio. Ask them what they’re building that doesn’t have a customer yet. Ask them what they think the industry looks like in three years. Ask them where they’re spending R&D dollars. If every feature on their roadmap is a response to a customer request, they’re a reactive vendor. They’ll keep you current. They won’t help you lead. You need vendors who are building for the world that’s coming, not the world you’re in.
The vendor relationships that work in hospitality share one trait. They feel like partnerships, not transactions. Your technology vendor should argue with you. Should invest time understanding your business before anyone writes a single line of code. If they just say yes to everything, they’re not a partner. They’re an order taker. And order takers don’t build technology that survives contact with real guests.
