The hospitality industry is back, creating an opportunity for tech startups to not only make hotels more efficient at running their operations, but also to focus on ways to improve the guest experience.
“Most of today's travelers were born into an era where they are very comfortable with technology,” says Harman Singh Narula, co-founder and CEO of Canary Technologies. “They have expectations of technology. For example, instead of picking up the phone, they want to send a text message to the front desk.”
Hotels also face competition in the market with the availability of other options like Airbnb, which Narula said are “very tech-savvy” and that hotels have to deal with.
Narula co-founded Canary Technologies with his longtime friend SJ Sawhney to provide technology to help hotels use it to deliver better guest experiences. Narula previously worked for Starwood Hotels & Resorts and was a management consultant at Bain & Co. Sawhney, president of Canary Technologies, was head of product and technology at Stayful, a booking platform for independent and boutique hotels founded by a former Hotels.com president.
They were part of Y Combinator's summer 2018 class and at the time were building software to handle the offline booking process and eliminate paper contracts.
Today, hotel guest management technology companies' platforms are digitizing the hotel guest journey from post-booking to checkout, with tools to manage mobile check-in/check-out, registration, upselling, guest messaging, and digital tipping.
It's a concept that's been widely embraced: Canary currently works with more than 20,000 hoteliers around the world across brands such as Marriott International, Four Seasons, Choice Hotels, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Rosewood and InterContinental Hotel Group.
The company has also seen growth over the past few years as hotels adopt additional Canary tools, and Narula said the company sees over 100% growth in revenue going forward into 2022.
Venture capital investors are taking notice: In March, hotel SaaS startup Mews raised $110 million at a $1.2 billion valuation to help hotels improve IT management, while Life House, which provides software for hotel operators and owners, also raised $60 million in 2021.
Now it's the turn of Canary Technologies, which has raised $50 million in Series C funding to support the large-scale deployment of its guest-facing AI technology.
The financing, led by Insight Partners, was front-loaded by internal investors, Narula said. Narula declined to disclose a specific valuation but said the valuation has more than doubled since the company's $30 million Series B round in 2022, which was also led by Insight.
In addition to Insight Partners, existing investors F-Prime Capital, Thayer Ventures, Y Combinator and Commerce Ventures also participated in the Series C round. This new investment brings Canary's total funding to date to nearly $100 million.
“Amid a tough year for growth and execution in the technology ecosystem, watching Canary grow and exceed ambitious goals has motivated us to step up,” Thomas Klein, managing director at Insight Partners, said in a statement. “We continue to be impressed with Harman, SJ and the team's tenacity and ability to deliver best-in-class solutions to hoteliers when they need them most, and we're honored to be part of the company's journey.”