Canary Technologies Founders: What's Next After Raising $80 Million for Hotel Tech
Funding has been tight for travel tech startups, but Canary Technologies hasn't had much trouble.
Venture capital funding has been a struggle for tech startups this year, but not for Canary Technologies.
The hotel tech company says it wasn't actively fundraising when Brighton Park Capital approached the founders about a deal.
'We hadn't actually burned through almost any of the capital that we had raised on our last round. But the opportunity emerged,' said Canary CEO Harman Singh Narula. 'There was the right kind of investor with the right vision … so it made sense for us to move forward.'
Canary recently closed a series D round of $80 million at a valuation of $600 million. Insight Partners led the company's last two rounds, all with continued investments from F-Prime Capital, Thayer Ventures, Y-Combinator, and Commerce Ventures.
The platform by San Francisco-based Canary includes products for mobile check-in and checkout, upselling, guest messaging, and digital tipping. It's a type of add-on tech often integrated into a hotel's property management system.
And it's an area with many startups and small companies, but few have raised this level of capital.
Canary said its tech supports more than 20,000 hotels for clients including Best Western, Aimbridge Hospitality, Marriott, Wyndham, TUI Hotels & Resorts, and others.
Canary has doubled revenue every year for the past few years, Narula said. There are nearly 300 employees, and the company is hiring across departments.
Skift spoke with Narula and SJ Sawhney, president and co-founder, about what comes next.
Doubling Down on AI
Canary has released a few products powered by generative AI, meant to streamline repetitive tasks and free hotel staff.
The company last year added a generative AI chatbot for guest messaging, which is meant to answer specific property questions and sell add-ons like late check-out, without input from front desk staff.
A new AI voicebot product is meant to triage guest phone calls. And there's a new AI chatbot for hotel websites to drive direct bookings.
The company uses multiple AI models to power its software, layering its own tech and data on top.
'It is answering 80% of guest messages. It is creating content that they don't have to come up with and write. It is, on a daily basis, making a real impact — that they're paying for,' Sawhney said.
Industry leaders have said that they've found the most use for AI in operational tasks, while products in other areas have struggled to take off. Marriott, for example, is developing an AI tool to automate the tedious task for room assignment. And Hilton is exploring how to use AI to flag guests that may want room upgrades.
A New Hotel Tech System
Canary's founders want hoteliers to see the emerging guest management system – 'GMS' in the industry – as a piece of tech that they can't go without, taking a similar trajectory as the reservation management system.
'I think the GMS is certainly a category that — we're hearing a lot from hoteliers — has been this part of the tech stack that has come into focus,' Narula said.
Hotels in North America have led adoption, and now the company wants to continue expanding globally.
'We're also seeing globally, a lot of what we think of as mid-market type brands portfolios really stepping up and having a lot of demand around this as well,' Narula said.
The company has made an effort over the past year to localize its service in different geographic markets. In France, for example, the dashboard is in French and customer service representatives speak French.
'The investment last year was a big catalyst for all of our localization efforts to achieve that goal,' Sawhney said.
Canary has predominantly grown organically, not via M&A, but Narula said that could change.
'There may be some opportunities that emerge that might make sense — where it helps service or provide specific needs to our customers — where we can help fill those gaps,' Narula said.
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