Article

What’s driving growth across hospitality, retail and travel tech?

20 May 20262 min read
The hospitality, retail and travel technology sectors have emerged from several years of disruption driven by inflationary pressures, labour shortages and rising operational complexity. These conditions have pushed operators to move away from disconnected point solutions and toward more consolidated digital infrastructures to help stabilise operations, create visibility and support better decision making.

In retail, this meant renewed focus on tools that improve margin control, stock accuracy and customer conversion, as well as more consistent approaches to digital merchandising and omnichannel execution.

Hospitality and travel have experienced similar structural pressures, often with even greater operational strain. Hospitality providers, grappling with persistent labour gaps and fragmented tech stacks, have prioritised systems that could streamline workflows across reservations, EPOS, staffing, menus and guest management.

Travel operators, meanwhile, have navigated volatile demand patterns and growing expectations for seamless digital journeys, driving investment in more reliable, real-time inventory, pricing and booking infrastructure.

Across all three sectors, the overarching shift has been toward more stable, connected and efficient technology foundations capable of supporting future growth and innovation.

The outlook for hospitality, retail and travel technology is highly positive, driven by accelerating AI adoption, rising demand for integrated platforms and continued investor interest across all three subsectors.
Charles Cusworth Associate Director

We expect venture and private equity firms to remain active with increased appetite as operators prioritise solutions that automate complexity, strengthen profitability and consolidate fragmented workflows, themes already reflected in the buildup of vertical SaaS platforms across the space.

Expert insight articles featured in the report

Travel’s next transformation: How AI is redrawing the map for experience platforms 

Agentic commerce is going to come in a very, very big way.
Craig Everett Holibob co-founder and CEO

With hands-on involvements in cutting-edge AI development, Craig shares how AI will reshape the next decade of travel as a shift in where value sits across the ecosystem.

Why hospitality can’t automate effectively yet — and why its tech revolution starts with the data layer

Tech fragmentation is causing operators to pay yet another tax: the toggle tax. Switching between systems cost operators hundreds of hours every year, and it’s preventing the implementation of effective Agentic AI and smart automation.
Champa Hariharan Magesh Access Hospitality Managing Director

Champa is clear about something the hospitality industry has struggled to articulate: the sector many assumed AI would transform first is, in fact, the one AI cannot meaningfully shift - not until the foundations beneath it are addressed.

M&A activity

M&A activity across retail, hospitality and travel technology continues to be driven by strategic consolidation, even as buyers apply greater discipline to valuations and execution. A number of notable transactions have taken place in recent years, with M&A activity characterised by the increasing role of software consolidators, alongside continued venture capital investment and strategic trade acquisitions.

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