When Revinate launched a decade ago, the guiding principle was that hoteliers should be in the business of managing guests, not rooms. Our founders spent a lot of time talking to hoteliers and discovered that while the hospitality industry is incredibly impacted by guest satisfaction, loyalty and experience, hoteliers were essentially running their businesses using inventory management systems. Though that's great for managing rooms, it's not guest-centric. And it doesn't get to the heart of what makes hotels successful.

Marc Heyneker, Revinate's co-founder and CEO, explains, "We looked towards the future and could envision a core new system to help hotels not only manage their rooms, but also their guests. We dug into that thesis and looked at other industries that have become more customer data-centric, from enterprise sales to online retail, and saw that the same promise also exists for hospitality. There was a huge opportunity for an industry obsessed with its guests."

Guest data exists in every nook and cranny of the travel journey, from the first website visit to the post-stay survey. It's constantly being updated and refreshed but most of it is going untracked and unused. The reason? Bringing guest data together from across disparate systems and merging profiles while eliminating duplicates is extremely hard. And that's a problem. You see, guest data isn't valuable by itself. It becomes valuable in how you use it to delight and excite guests, to get them in the door and keep them coming back.