Hospitality tech attracts $1B in funding, led by property management systems and AI: report

Dive Brief:

Forty global hospitality technology startups raised more than $1 billion in the past year, with property management systems and artificial intelligence-led platforms attracting the most investment, according to U.K.-based Abode Worldwide’s Hospitality Tech Investment Index 2026.
The three companies that had the largest raises over the period from April 2025 to March 2026 included property management software Mews at $300 million; apartment operator Limehouse at €75 million ($88.59 million); and home-swapping platform Kindred at $125 million across two funding rounds, per the report. The activity illustrates “growing conviction among investors” regarding hospitality tech as a whole, “not just a handful of isolated subsegments,” per the report.
The findings also demonstrate that investor confidence remains high on “core systems hospitality operators use to run their businesses, especially platforms that centralise operations, improve automation and generate the data foundations needed for AI,” according to the report.

Dive Insight:

The hospitality startups attracting capital “sit close to essential operator workflows” and become more valuable over time, Abode Worldwide founder and CEO Jessica Gillingham said in a statement. “Investors are concentrating capital in the platforms that hospitality businesses increasingly depend on every day, especially PMS and AI-led systems that unify operations, improve automation and strengthen the data layer underneath the business,” she said.

Gillingham added in the executive summary of the report that the $1 billion milestone indicates “hospitality technology is no longer a niche investment category.”

According to the report, seven property management systems, including Barcelona-based Amenitiz, Berlin-based Arbio and Miami-based Boom, raised more than any other category for a total of $408.1 million.

“That matters because PMS is increasingly becoming the control layer of the hospitality tech stack. As hotel and lodging operators push to simplify fragmented systems, the PMS is taking on more responsibility — connecting teams, revenue, guest journeys and data in one place,” the report states.

Furthermore, PMS businesses are also building broader platforms through development and acquisition, the report noted, citing Mews’ acquisitions of Flexkeeping and DataChat in late 2025 as examples of this strategy.

AI-led guest experience platforms were also a “standout” investment, with Duve, Chatlyn, Conduit and Canary Technologies raising a combined $152.6 million, per the report. Canary notably acquired OpenKey in February to expand its access to door lock providers.

All four of these companies worked to solve the challenge of providing “personalized, responsive service” to an industry facing labor shortages.

The findings come as a growing number of hospitality professionals say AI will have a significant impact on the hotel industry this year, according to a March report from Canary Technologies. Nearly all hotelier respondents said they plan to increase their IT budgets with a priority on AI.

Even after crossing the $1 billion investment threshold, the hospitality tech market is still “being built,” per Abode. Nearly half of the 40 companies tracked were raised at pre-seed, seed or Series A, and more than half were founded after 2020.