💬 Guest article by Kasia Nowaczyk, Partnerships Manager – Enterprise at Profitroom
As part of our Profitroom Talks series, Kasia reflects on the role partnerships play in driving hotel tech innovation. Drawing on her experience across global tech ecosystems and boutique hospitality brands, she explains why true innovation isn’t about integrations on paper, it’s about shared intent, trust, and collaboration that delivers real value for hoteliers.
When I ventured into the hospitality tech industry after a long stint in the world of large-scale technology, I expected an entirely new rhythm - and I wasn’t wrong. What I didn’t expect was that this change of tempo would also fuel some of the most exciting innovation I’d ever been part of. Coming from bigger tech ecosystems that ran on process-heavy playbooks and wide-reaching partner channels, entering the boutique, service-driven, and often scrappy world of hotel technology felt like shifting from a symphony to a jazz band: improvisational, personal and highly dependent on relationships.
It quickly became clear to me that in our industry - hospitality technology - confident, informed partnerships are the true engine of meaningful innovation. Not flashy features. Not sleek demos at trade shows. But people - smart, passionate people - strategically working together toward shared goals that actually matter to hoteliers.
Something I soon realised is that hotel tech can be incredibly fragmented. There’s a supplier for everything - booking engines, PMSs, revenue management systems, guest messaging tools, channel managers, website platforms, you name it. And most of them are integrated with one another on paper. But integration doesn’t equal collaboration.
When I joined Profitroom, we were technically “integrated” with many major players in the industry. The connections existed - but conversations didn’t. There were no joint goals, no shared roadmaps and minimal day-to-day engagement. And from a hotelier’s perspective, an integration that exists but doesn’t deliver value may as well not exist at all.
That’s the difference between ticking boxes and building partnerships. The kind that matter - the kind that unlock real innovation - go far beyond APIs and checklists. Real partnerships are about aligned intent. They require trust, transparency and a shared obsession with solving problems hoteliers are facing.
What we build at Profitroom is only one piece of the customer journey. We can deliver the best experience within our platform, yes - but if that guest journey then falls apart at the front desk, inside a clunky PMS, or because critical guest data never made it from one system to another, the hotel loses. And if the hotel loses, so do we.
We’ve made a concerted effort to define our partnerships not around the idea of connectivity, but around shared opportunities. We have partners who push us to grow - to improve how we integrate, how we innovate, and how we serve our mutual clients. These are relationships that started with a single conversation and evolved into collaborations where we co-create value propositions, develop integrations that work for actual use cases, and even show up on stage together to talk about the future of hospitality.
Informed partnerships are especially key in regions like Asia, where success depends heavily on local knowledge. Every market - Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka - has its own rhythms, its own way of doing business. You can’t copy and paste your European approach and hope it sticks. That’s where on-the-ground partners are crucial. They know which tech stacks dominate, what local hoteliers care about, how buying decisions are made. Without their insight, even the best technology can miss the mark.
Being informed also means understanding what customers actually need - not just what your roadmap says you’re going to build. We’ve found that many so-called solutions were created before the real problem was even defined. That’s a backwards way to innovate. True innovation starts with listening - to partners, to clients, to the market.
Confidence is the other ingredient. And I don’t mean blind optimism. I mean the kind of confidence that comes from showing up, over and over again, and proving that you understand and can respond. A confident partnership doesn’t get built overnight. It grows over time. It’s forged in conversations that aren’t always easy - when things don’t work as expected. But when you’ve built that trust, everything changes. Suddenly you’re not just putting out fires - you’re anticipating needs. You’re co-designing solutions. You’re able to move faster, with clarity.
That’s the kind of innovation hotel tech needs more of. At Profitroom, we’ve seen this approach succeed. The connections we’ve forged through good partnership practices have helped open new markets and reach clients we couldn’t have accessed on our own. Even more importantly, they’ve helped us serve those clients better once we got there.
The truth is, we can’t predict every shift in this industry. Technology continues to evolve. But the secret to adapting successfully is working with the right partners. Because it’s not about being everywhere, doing everything yourself. It’s about knowing who to turn to. It’s about having partners who meet you with knowledge, challenge you to be better, and walk alongside you toward something bigger. Together, not in isolation.
Hotel tech innovation doesn’t flow from the cloud. It flows from conversation. From confidence. From shared intelligence and mutual respect.
Watch Kasia’s Profitroom Talks episodes — 3 short, impactful videos focused on the power of partnerships, co-creation, and solving real hotelier challenges through collaboration.
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