3 Hospitality Trends Travel Saas Marketers Must Master in 2026

For founders and marketers in the Travel and Hospitality SaaS sphere, success requires constantly adapting your messaging and product roadmap to meet the industry’s most urgent needs. While the sector is rapidly digitizing, the nature of its core challenges – labor intensity, evolving consumer demands, and technological fragmentation – means that new digital solutions are constantly gaining significance.

Table of Contents

• The AI and Labor Crisis: Selling the “Work”, Not Just the Workflow
• Elevated Customer Experience: The Drive for Hyper-Personalization
• New Revenue Streams: Capturing Demand in Specialized Segments
• Turning Hospitality Trends into Buyer-Ready Campaigns
• FAQs

To capture market share your digital marketing strategy must articulate how your software solves the specific operational and revenue hurdles presented by the latest industry shifts.

Here are three trends shaping the hospitality industry that SaaS marketers should integrate into their strategy. (anchor link)

Trend 1: The AI and Labor Crisis: Selling the “Work”, Not Just the Workflow

The hospitality sector is fundamentally labor intensive, which means high labor costs and staffing performance are consistently the biggest pain points for this industry. This challenging cost structure makes hoteliers particularly receptive to technology that mitigates operational burden.

• Front Desk Reduction: There is a significant expectation that technology will soon provide human-level customer service. In fact, 54% of hoteliers surveyed said they were implementing technology that would improve the front desk experience – or eliminate it completely – by 2025, precisely because of anticipated technology adoption.
• The Second Act of SaaS: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is recognized as the catalyst for the next wave of vertical software success. 49% of hoteliers want PMS vendors to prioritize AI-powered automation and personalization next, signaling a shift toward intelligent, adaptive systems.

Pivot messaging away from abstract technical benefits toward tangible, labor-saving outcomes. Marketing messages should not just promise a smoother process (workflow), but the complete elimination of a tedious, costly task (the work).

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Trend 2: Elevated Customer Experience: The Drive for Hyper-Personalization

Driven by digitally native travelers, specifically Millennials and Gen Z, customer expectations for technology in travel have significantly matured. They expect processes similar to Uber or Amazon, where interactions are seamless, fast, and often require no credit card presentation.

A. Differentiating Against Low-Touch Competitors

The rise of platforms like Airbnb has driven property owners to adopt technology to meet increasingly sophisticated customer expectations and differentiate themselves. Hotels are looking to replicate the low-touch, private home rental experience, which includes low or no-contact check-in and access.

B. Moving Beyond Generic Services and Enhancing the Experience

Marketers must highlight how their software facilitates hyper-personalization that goes beyond generic segments. This is achieved using CRM technology, middleware to integrate disparate data sources, or AI-based services.

• Localized Recommendations: The traditional hotel brochure rack is obsolete. Modern guests demand localized recommendations for restaurants and activities, moving beyond generic information. Software that integrates curated local activities, attractions, tours, and destination guides with property listings is highly valued because it adds value to the property itself.
• VR or Augmented Reality (AR) for room or property tours.
• Omnichannel Communication with guests, including chatbots, WhatsApp, texting, or other messengers.
• Smart Reserved Parking using sensors and apps to assign parking upon arrival.
• Smart Self-Serve Meeting Rooms with easy-to-use media and conferencing.

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Trend 3. New Revenue Streams: Capturing Demand in Specialized Segments

The overall travel market is exploding in complexity due to economic and lifestyle factors. This segmentation creates specific niches where SaaS solutions can deliver unique value.

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Turning Hospitality Trends into Buyer-Ready Campaigns

The hospitality industry is continuing to transform from a series of physical transactions into an interconnected, data-driven experience delivery system. For SaaS marketers, this means your strategy should function less like a broad advertisement and more like a precise GPS navigator: guiding hospitality and travel providers directly to the quantifiable, labor-saving, and revenue-boosting destination your software provides, eliminating the need for them to manually navigate the complex roads of daily operation.

If you want content and campaigns that present those messages clearly to committees across property management, operations, and marketing, talk with Bay Leaf Digital. We help travel and hospitality SaaS teams create the proof points and distribution plan that match what the industry is buying.

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FAQs

What does “selling the work” mean for hospitality and travel SaaS?
Selling the work means your product does the job operators currently pay staff to do. Instead of only organizing tasks or routing tickets, the software actually completes part of the service such as guest messaging, intake, menu updates, or check in. This is powerful in hospitality because labor is still the biggest cost driver and buyers react faster to offers that remove manual effort.

How should I position AI features to hotel and restaurant operators who are facing staffing shortages?
Lead with labor relief, not with AI as a technology. Show which specific roles or shifts can run with fewer people once your product is in place. Tie AI to predictable service levels, to faster response times, and to better guest satisfaction. Hospitality buyers want to know that even on understaffed days the experience will stay consistent.

What kind of personalization do digitally native guests actually want?
They want fast, local, and relevant. That includes low or no contact check in, mobile messaging, and recommendations that match the reason for the trip. Your messaging should explain how your platform connects to CRM, PMS, and middleware so the property can offer local activities, venue access, and services without making staff curate everything from scratch.

Where are the most attractive new revenue segments right now?
Staycations, bleisure, ecotravel, and sunbelt travel keep showing up because they match how people are working and traveling. On the operations side, there is also strong interest in restaurant and food and beverage tools, in property and procurement management for multi property groups, and in leisure tech for venues. A SaaS product that prices and packages for these segments will stand out faster.

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Sources

1. Bowery Capital. “Opportunities in Vertical Software Version 6.0“. January 2025.
2. Collins, Gord. “SaaS Travel Marketing: Software for Travel Agencies & Tour Operators.”
3. Fanawala, Mehul. “From 14 Years in Hotel Tech to Scaling SaaS Startups—Lessons You Can’t Ignore.” Published on Feb 9, 2025.
4. Gartner. “Travel and Hospitality Marketing: 2024 Benchmarks for CMOs.”
5. Ross, Ellen (Nezasa). “The Transformative Power of SaaS in the Travel Industry.”
6. Tymoshchenko, Dmytro (Acropolium). “How Businesses Benefit from Custom SaaS Hospitality Solutions.” Published on October 16, 2025.
7. Vista Point Advisors. “9 Metrics for Running & Selling a Travel & Hospitality Tech Business.” Modified on Mar 04, 2025.
8. Vista Point Advisors. “Travel & Hospitality SaaS M&A Priorities Shift.” Modified on Mar 20, 2024.
9. Vista Point Advisors. “The Future of Customer Experience in Travel & Hospitality Tech.” Modified on Sep 26, 2023.