ROH, the hospitality industry’s first payments management platform, announced the successful completion of a $9.2 million financing round, led by Highgate Technology Ventures, a leading venture and growth equity firm focused on the hospitality and travel industries, and Acrew Capital. The investment will fuel ROH’s rapid platform expansion and enhance its ability to process the continuous flow of data from contracts, invoices, payments, folios, and beyond. As part of the transaction, Raja Goel and Kurien Jacob of HTV, and John Gardner of Acrew Capital are joining ROH’s Board of Directors.
ROH is purpose-built to help modernize the hotel industry’s payment processes, providing end-to-end visibility into the payment lifecycle while eliminating the manual labor typically required to manage transactions today. Of the $4 trillion in payments processed annually by hotels, over 80 percent requires manual intervention, including revenue associated with meetings and events, online travel agencies (OTAs), corporate and flight crew bookings, and more. With ROH, properties can now automate the flow of payments, eliminating room for error and inefficiencies while increasing employee productivity.
“To have HTV, the leading hospitality technology investor with an established track record, as well as a forward-thinking hotel owner-operator like Highgate, whose portfolio extends across over 400 properties, clearly see the overnight value ROH provides to decrease costs while increasing profits is incredibly motivating,” said Jess Conroy, CEO and Founder, ROH. “The number one priority for hotels today is managing costs while driving revenue. The most effective way to do this is to leverage technology that delivers on both. With ROH, hotels see increased revenue overnight; we can’t wait to expand our reach with HTV alongside us.”
“At HTV, we seek to invest in innovative companies with technologies that have the potential to change long-engrained hospitality industry behaviors, customer traction that signals clarity around a large and hyper-scalable revenue opportunity supported by unique, expertise-led moats, and founders with the determination to win. ROH delivers on all those attributes and Jess impressed us with her expansive vision for the platform and the customer demand to back it up,” said Raja Goel, Partner, Highgate Technology Ventures. “This investment enables ROH to expand its customer footprint, drive innovation, and ensure that ROH will become synonymous with profitability, efficiency, and ease amongst its hospitality partners.”
Select properties within Highgate’s hotel portfolio piloted ROH over the last two years, the results of which drove both this investment and commercial expansion. “We began testing ROH as soon as it hit the market in some of our properties with strong groups and events businesses – think room blocks, corporate accounts, meetings and events, social gatherings, and more. We rapidly realized that ROH unlocks margin across all our contract-based transaction volume,” said Ankur Randev, Principal & Chief Commercial Officer, Highgate. “The value was immediate and obvious from both the automation and profitability perspective. We’re benefiting from greater operational efficiencies, reducing fraud, and freeing up our team members’ time to perform more meaningful work.”
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