We recently sat down to talk to Jess Conroy, CEO and Founder of ROH, to learn more about the biggest growth opportunity in hospitality: payments. The company has caught the eye not just of countless owner / operators, but also of industry-leading investors, with Highgate Technology Ventures and Acrew Capital leading an additional $9.2M financing round for the company. With this additional capital, as well as an expanded strategic partnership with Highgate Hotels, ROH is poised to become the de facto payments platform providing end-to-end visibility into the payment lifecycle while eliminating the manual labor typically required to manage transactions today.
For years, hotel owners and operators have focused on revenue growth as the key to profitability. But with rising costs cutting into margins, industry leaders are shifting their attention to efficiency.
In a recent interview with Hotel Management senior editor Esther Hertzfeld, Jess Conroy, founder and CEO of ROH, highlighted a game-changing approach: optimizing payments. With $4 trillion in hospitality transactions each year, Conroy said payments represent a massive, overlooked opportunity. Many hotels still rely on manual processes—keying in credit card numbers, chasing overdue payments and handling paperwork—that drain resources and reduce profits. ROH’s platform automates these workflows, allowing staff to focus on delivering exceptional guest experiences.
So why has the industry been slow to embrace tech-driven efficiency? Conroy pointed to the complex structure of hotel ownership and operations, where multiple stakeholders make standardization a challenge. However, she said that is beginning to change as forward-thinking brands recognize that modernizing payments can improve both revenue and operations.
To learn more about how ROH is helping hotels improve profitability and why now is the time to rethink payment processes, watch the full interview.
Esther Hertzfeld:
Hello, I'm Esther Hertzfeld, senior editor of Hotel Management. Asset owners and hospitality have long been focused on growing revenue and justifiably. Increasing the top line is proven to trickle down to the bottom line impact. But on the path from revenue to profit today, costs are increasing, taking an ever larger chunk out of each dollar earned. It can feel like constantly pushing a boulder up a hill. For every dollar of progress costs increase. But what if there were another way to meaningfully and quickly improve profitability? Today, owners, brands and operators are focused on efficiencies that can increase their margins, both in the immediate near term and for the long haul. Jess Conroy, founder and CEO of ROH has built the first sales and payments management platform to tackle the $4 trillion in transactions that occur across hospitality each year and deliver margin expansion on every dollar. ROH is waking up the industry to the opportunity and payments. So let's dig in. Welcome, Jess.
Jess Conroy:
Thank you so much for having me, Esther.
Esther Hertzfeld:
Revenue growth has traditionally been the primary focus for asset owners, but recently we're hearing a lot more about efficiency. Why do you think this shift is happening?
Jess Conroy:
There's always been a tremendous focus on top line revenue, and every hotel has strategies in place to both increase the average value of every guest on property, as well as maximize the revenue that they are generating from their space. However, in a post-COVID world, and especially in today’s economic environment, we're starting to see that there is a limit to that strategy of solely focusing on top line revenue. And more and more you're hearing hotel operators and the brands beginning to talk about efficiency, and looking into what they can do to optimize their cost structures, and more effectively drive profitability.
Esther Hertzfeld:
Why do you think the hospitality industry has seemingly lagged behind in adopting technology to drive efficiency?
Jess Conroy:
One of the things that is special about the hospitality industry is the stakeholder structure that you have inside every single individual hotel, where you have an asset owner who owns the physical real estate, you have a hotel operating company responsible for day-to-day operations, and then you have the brand. It's often challenging to deploy technology that provides standardization across ownership holdings given that unique structure. Second, you have the beautiful component of hospitality, which is the people. And so oftentimes there seems to be this perception that the use of technology will come at the cost of that very special human element to hospitality. And I think we're starting to just see both opportunities to create standardization in this industry across that ownership structure, as well as a deeper understanding that the use of technology will actually empower that human element to be more effective at every property.
Esther Hertzfeld:
So how should hospitality businesses be thinking about measuring the long-term ROI of their tech investments?
Jess Conroy:
So that's the key there, Esther, is taking a long-term view. When we're talking to hotel operators, asset owners and the teams on property, there is an overwhelming focus on the immediate ROI that can be gained from deploying technology. And I think that's only normal, because we've all been in those situations where we've been sold the promise of technology and the ROI of that investment, only to see the actual benefits not meet the standard we expected. However, the technology of today is so transformative that it's going to require a bit of re-skilling, which means that some benefits are immediate, but others provide compounding value over time. The long-term value of deploying technologies that allow hotels to meaningfully transform the way they're operating means that every single resource is more profitable. You have to take that long-term view today with technology.
Esther Hertzfeld:
So what does visibility into payments really mean for hotels? How does this contribute to efficiency, as well as to the client experience? What makes payments such a great opportunity for the industry right now?
Jess Conroy:
The thing that's fascinating about payments in hotels, is that everyone and no one owns payments today. And so what I mean by that is when you look at the way funds are flowing through a hotel, they touch almost every department of the business, yet there isn't typically one person on property that owns and manages what the essence of payments are. And so often we think about payments just being the single moment in time where a transaction is processed. We think that if we're just able to charge a card that that's payments. But the reality is that's just a single piece of what payments are and everything around payments from issuing payment confirmations to being able to effectively communicate with the client, to being able to process refunds, to being able to manage the journey of those funds through the property from the moment the client transacts all the way through reconciliation, all of that is payments.
There's so many benefits to focusing on payments: being able to build better compliance, which is something that we see today, minimize late payments and bad debt, etc. But most importantly, it’s that focus on top line revenue growth; operationalizing payments frees up the biggest resource at properties, which is the people, and allows them to focus more on hospitality (whether that is the ability to upsell or that's the ability to service a client better). Operationalizing payments automatically drives top line growth.
Esther Hertzfeld:
So if you had to pinpoint one action that every hotel or asset owner should take right now to seize this opportunity, what would it be?
Jess Conroy:
I think it would be taking a look at your payment operations. Realize that today when we look at hotels, almost 80% of the $4 trillion in payments requires a human touch. And so if you truly look at your operations, take a step back and really investigate how many people are required to accept payments, how many people are manually keying in 16 digit card numbers, manually sending out payment confirmations, manually following up with a client 10, 20, 30 times about a check that's in the mail. It’s in that reality where you realize that there is opportunity to really impact workflows and increase overall top line growth, as well as bottom line profits.
Esther Hertzfeld:
Thank you so much for joining us today, Jess. It's been a pleasure talking with you. Before we go, would you mind telling me a little bit about ROH and what you're doing to change payments in the field?
Jess Conroy:
ROH launched about two years ago. And in the last two years we've had incredible adoption, both with amazing brands from Loews to Hilton, to Marriott to Hyatt, as well as the operators inside those hotels from Crescent to Highgate. And in a couple of short years, we've processed hundreds of millions in booking value for these great established brands and operators in the industry.
What we're learning - and why ROH exists - is because when you look at payments today inside hotels, you realize that there is so much manual labor associated with running payments. We see teams of people ingesting credit card authorizations on PDFs and keying in 16 digit card numbers into card terminals at a desk inside a cubicle in the back office. We see finance teams spending time chasing down past due payments, following up with clients. We see sales teams having weekly credit meetings, where they're trying to understand exactly where a payment is within the bounds of a contract.
We really quickly realized that you then have these teams of people that are trying to manually move money through the hotels. Software can automate it all, which is what ROH is doing, it not only allows the teams from sales to finance to the front desk, the back office to collaborate more efficiently, you see top line revenue growth, because sales team members are no longer following up with clients all the time to try to track down a payment for finance. You see late payments and things that would go to collection, all but wiped away. And overall you see this increase in profitability. But you also see hotels operating more efficiently. And resources being spent where they matter and where they actually drive incremental value as opposed to on tasks where technology exists today to empower that person to do more.
Esther Hertzfeld:
Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Jess. It's been a pleasure talking with you.
Jess Conroy:
Thank you so much for having me, Esther.