Digital transformation in hotels isn’t stuck because hoteliers are scared of spending. In fact, hotels spend millions every decade on renovations, replacing FF&E (furniture, fixtures, equipment), and upgrading HVAC systems without blinking. So it’s not about cost aversion.
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It’s about the perceived return on tech—and more crucially, the pain of getting there.
Unlike a room refresh, which shows immediate impact on guest satisfaction and average daily rate, tech upgrades are an invisible improvement. And they come with short-term disruption which is extremely real: retraining staff, adjusting workflows, and dealing with the inevitable problems when new systems go live. The gains are long-term and hard to quantify; the pain is immediate and very measurable.
I’ve been a hotel managers going through PMS change, and the disruption is real (even if the system was better). Every team—front desk, housekeeping, reservations, night audit—needs training. Productivity takes a hit. Tempers flare. Guests feel it. And the manager has to hold it all together with a “smile”.
Also, B2B software rarely “just works.” And unlike consumer tech, hospitality systems need niche functionality to handle the unique complexity that every hotel seems to have. The tools are built to be feature rich, not user friendly (yes, there are exceptions).
In my opinion change management is the real blocker to hotel tech adoption.
We don’t need better sales decks or flashier features. We need tech that’s easier to implement, intuitive to use, and respectful of the chaos that is daily life in a hotel. We need training tools that don’t assume everyone works 9-to-5 from a desk.
It’s rational for hotels to favor the furniture upgrade over the software one. One brings direct revenue. The other brings disruption with a promise of future optimizations, it is the emotional perspective, the rational one is that tech is directing the majority of our lives today.
If only we could build systems that were so easy to use that there was not training needed.
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About me: I’m a fractional CMO for large travel technology companies helping turn them into industry leaders. I’m also the co-founder of 10minutes.news a hotel news media that is unsensational, factual and keeps hoteliers updated on the industry.
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