Skift Take

Industry pressure in the hotel technology sector is leading to more technology roll-ups. Expect this to be one of many announcements in the next 18 months.

Enterprise software companies Intelity and Keypr on Monday announced a merger in an effort to combine resources to serve hotels and other businesses.

The companies will combine by September and be called Intelity. Its main focus will remain the hotel industry, with its electronic door locks, mobile apps for guests and employees, and other services. But it will also offer software support services to cruise ships, hospitals, condominiums, and other property owners.

Monday’s merger won’t be the last among companies supporting backend technology for the hospitality sector as competition heats up.

Keypr, founded four years ago, had raised $19 million in venture capital funding. Intelity, founded a decade ago, had raised $7 million.

Keypr’s Robert Stevenson will become CEO, while Intelity’s boss, David Adelson, will serve as president and chief operating officer. After the merger, the combined business will have between 80 and 100 full-time employees, the executives said.

Together the companies serve only 800 property-owning companies, while the addressable market is in the hundreds of thousands. The companies have had several years to gain traction, and the pace seems, at least to some outside critics, to have been slow so far.

Stevenson and Adelson said they expect a dramatic upswing in sales post-merger now as they merge a complementary set of features.

Each company offers many services but some highlights include guest room locks that can be activated by guests using a mobile app white-labeled for a property. The apps collect information that aims to help properties learn who their customers are and how they can better market to them.

Stevenson and Adelson said their product stands out for rivals by insisting on a higher level of security screening. Only certified, direct integrations to property management and other systems are allowed. In recent years across the industry, so-called middleware from third-parties has opened up vulnerabilities that have been exploited by hackers, particularly through point-of-sale systems.

Intelity will also stand out by offering their products in modules rather than insisting property owners buy a full suite and by flexible commercial models that enable hotels to split out the costs on either their capital expenditure or operations budgets, depending on what a business needs.

Intelity appears to be following the Salesforce model to selling enterprise software by trying to be all things to all people. Other software makers are opting to specialize in the niche of solving the specific needs of hoteliers. The word is still out on which model will prove more effective.

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Tags: guest experience, hotel tech, hotel technology

Photo credit: An Intelity-powered mobile app for guests is shown here. Intelity is merging with Keypr to scale up their enterprise software platforms to serve hotels and other businesses. Intelity

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