Audit your tech stack: which software subscriptions you're paying twice for
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I've watched revenue managers and distribution directors realize, months after rolling out a new PMSPMSThe property management system is a hotel's core software. It handles reservations, check-in and check-out, room assignment, billing and the status of every stay. It is the operational heart that most other tools plug..., that their legacy channel managerChannel managerA channel manager syncs a hotel's rates and availability across all its sales channels at once. When a room sells, it removes it instantly from the OTAs, the website and the GDS. It prevents overbooking and saves manu... is still charging them even though the new system already does the same job. Or worse: they're keeping a reporting tool around because "we've always used it" when the PMS now includes dashboards covering 80% of that work.
It's not laziness. Nobody stops to map out the full picture. The tech stack grows organically, layers overlap, and every department works with their own tools without knowing what the rest of the hotel is paying for.
Duplicate subscriptions cluster in these areas:
Answer these six questions:
A 200-room hotel discovered they were paying €1,200 per month for a channel manager their PMS already included. Three years without auditing. That's €43,200 gone.
Another kept a separate RMS nobody was using because the revenue manager worked in spreadsheets. It cost €800/month. They cancelled it. It had been running for two years.
These numbers are normal. Not exceptions.
You don't need a consultant. Block two hours with operations, IT, and revenue. Ask everyone to bring their software invoices. Compare functions. You'll usually find at least one clean cut.
When you negotiate your next PMS contract or major tool, lead with: "What else should I cancel because your system already does it?" Good vendors will tell you. Bad ones would rather you keep paying for ghosts.
The margin is there. Not in cutting room rates or squeezing occupancyOccupancyOccupancy is the percentage of rooms sold out of those available over a period. It is one of the three basic metrics alongside ADR and RevPAR. On its own it says little, because filling the hotel by giving rooms away..., but in not burning cash on phantom functionality nobody uses.
The hotel tech and travel tech companies we follow, plus the ones surfacing in today's news.
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The brief hoteliers who buy technology read every morning.