How to audit your hotel tech stack and stop paying for unused tools

Hook: Stop bleeding SaaS dollars — audit your hotel tech stack now

Too many vendors, too little booking lift.finance team sees recurring charges with no owner, or if OTA commissions keep rising while your direct channel flatlines, your hotel tech stack is costing you more than it’s earning. In 2026 hotel operators face sharper pressure on margins: higher labor costs, renewed OTA commissions post-2025 industry shifts, and a wave of new niche SaaS tools promising marginal gains. The simplest opportunity to recover margin is a focused, structured tool audit to find underused platforms, quantify cost leakage, and build a rationalization plan.

Why a tech stack audit matters in 2026

Recent industry trends have accelerated both the growth and the complexity of hotel software. Two developments matter most:

• Consolidation and composable platforms: Many PMS and central reservation systems moved to API-first models in 2024–2025, enabling composable stacks — but also enabling plug-on sprawl. Without a governance layer, composable equals chaotic.
• AI point solutions proliferation: Late-2025 saw a surge in AI point solutions (chat, upsell, review analytics). They promise efficiency but frequently duplicate capabilities already present in your PMS or guest experience platform.

That combination makes 2026 the right time for an audit: you can consolidate into modern, integrated platforms that lower operational friction, reduce SaaS spend, and protect guest data.

Quick outcomes this audit delivers

• Identify unused tools and calculate monthly/yearly SaaS spend leakage
• Reveal redundancy and integration debt that increases support hours
• Prioritize vendor rationalization and consolidation by ROI and risk
• Create a practical sunsetting and migration roadmap to cut costs fast

Audit overview: timeline and team

Target 4–8 weeks for a full audit for a small chain or mid-size independent hotel. Faster audits (1–2 weeks) can flag the largest leaks.

Core team

• Tech Lead / IT Manager – inventory, integrations, contracts
• Operations Lead – daily usage, workflows, single source of truth
• Revenue Manager / GM – business impact, occupancy and RevPAR correlation
• Finance – subscription spend, contracts, termination clauses
• Vendor Account Owner – negotiate and manage transitions

Step-by-step audit template

Below is a practical template you can run in a spreadsheet. I include column names, scoring formulas, and decision rules you can apply immediately.

Step 1 — Create a master inventory

Make a single-sheet inventory with one row per tool. Include these columns:

1. Tool Name
2. Category (PMS, CRS, channel manager, payments, GDS, CRM, guest app, analytics, chat/AI, housekeeping ops, etc.)
3. Monthly Cost (including addons and per-room fees)
4. Annual Cost
5. Owner (person/team responsible)
6. Contract End / Notice Period
7. Active Users (licensed seats vs active unique logins last 90 days)
8. Usage Rate (%) — see measurement below
9. Primary Integrations (PMS, payment gateway, CRM)
10. Duplicate Functionality (Yes/No - list overlapping tools)
11. Security / Compliance Notes (SOC2, ISO, GDPR status)
12. Notes (value delivered, manual workarounds)

How to measure Usage Rate

Usage Rate = (Unique active users in 90 days / Licensed seats) OR (Feature calls / expected calls) depending on tool type. Use the stronger of the two where possible. Example formulas:

• User-based tools: Usage Rate (%) = (Active unique logins last 90 days / Licensed seats) * 100
• Guest-facing tools: Usage Rate (%) = (Unique guest interactions last 90 days / Expected interactions) * 100

Step 2 — Calculate direct cost leakage

For each tool calculate estimated wasted spend. Use simple formulas to begin:

Monthly Wasted Spend = Monthly Cost * (1 - Usage Rate)

For seat-based tools, use seat utilization. For guest tools, use interaction coverage vs expected demand. Also add an internal labor component:

Labor Leakage = (Avg weekly staff hours used on tool * hourly cost) * 4.33

Example: A secondary upsell tool costs $300/month. Only 20% of seats are used. Monthly wasted spend = $300 * (1 - 0.2) = $240. If staff spends 2 hours/week at $25/hr supporting it: Labor leakage = 2 * $25 * 4.33 = $216. True monthly leakage = $456.

Step 3 — Map redundancy and integration debt

Create a simple integration adjacency list: which tool connects to which (PMS, CRM, payment gateway). Count:

• Number of integrations per tool
• Integration failures in last 12 months
• Data duplication points (guest profiles, rates, inventory)

High integration count increases ops cost and risk; data duplication reduces trust in reporting.

Step 4 — Score each tool for prioritization

Use a simple numeric score (1–5) for each axis and combine them. Example axes:

• Business Impact (revenue or operational criticality)
• Usage (high to low)
• Cost (high to low)
• Integration Complexity (how entangled it is)
• Sunset Risk (data migration difficulty, contract penalties)

Sample weighted score: Final Score = (Impact*0.35) + (Usage*0.25) + (Cost*0.2) + (Integration*0.15) + (SunsetRisk*0.05). Lower scores indicate better candidates for sunsetting.

Step 5 — Decision rules (quick wins vs strategic moves)

Apply straightforward rules to classify actions:

• Immediate Cancel: Tools with >$200/mo, Usage Rate < 20%, and low Sunset Risk
• Negotiate / Downgrade: Tools with moderate use (20–50%) and high cost
• Consolidate: Duplicate functions where your PMS or CRM already covers core capability
• Sunset with Migration: Strategic tools with data lock-in or higher risk — plan 3–6 month migration

Example: A 120-room hotel audit — a short case

To make this concrete: An independent 120-room urban hotel audited its stack in Q4 2025. Key findings:

• 18 active SaaS subscriptions totaling $7,200/month
• Five guest communication tools with overlapping chat and messaging functions
• Three revenue tools feeding separate rate engines into the PMS, causing rate contention
• Estimated monthly leakage of $2,100 (30% of SaaS spend) plus ~60 staff hours/month managing integrations

Actions taken:

1. Cancelled two minor AI review tools (saved $450/mo)
2. Migrated messaging into the PMS’s native module after a 60-day pilot (saved $700/mo and cut staff hours by 35%)
3. Consolidated revenue tools into a single RevOps partner with a predictable fee and better reporting (one-time migration cost)

Result: Within six months they cut SaaS spend by 28% and reduced weekly ops touchpoints by 40%, enabling reallocation of two staff FTEs into revenue-driving tasks.

Advanced strategies for 2026 — beyond basic cleanup

Once you clear the low-hanging fruit, apply higher-level strategies that reflect 2026 realities:

1. Move to platform-first consolidation

Where possible, prefer platforms offering deep, native capabilities over a patchwork of point solutions. Modern PMS vendors increasingly include native CRM, messaging, and basic revenue tools — evaluate total cost of ownership (TCO) not just license fees.

2. Adopt an integration governance model

Create an API catalog and a single integration owner. Governance reduces duplicate integrations and accidental data syncs that create reconciliation work.

3. Use cost-per-available-room (SaaS PAR) and cost-per-occupied-room metrics

New KPI: SaaS PAR (Software cost per available room) = Total monthly SaaS spend / Available rooms. Benchmarks will vary, but many modern independents target <$15 SaaS PAR. Track SaaS per occupied room too to understand utilization in low-occupancy periods.

4. Negotiate enterprise-style SLAs even for small vendors

Ask for uptime guarantees, contractual data return and export, and reasonable termination clauses. Vendors with weak export options create hidden migration costs.

5. Factor in security and compliance

Tools that don't meet SOC2 or equivalent certifications may cost less upfront but increase risk. Post-2024 regulatory scrutiny in key markets increased vendor responsibility; include security score in your tool scoring matrix.

Common audit roadblocks and how to overcome them

• Resistance from teams: Involve power users early, run pilots, and capture time-savings KPIs to win buy-in.
• Contract lock-ins: Map contract end dates then plan cancellations to avoid penalties; sometimes pausing auto-renew is enough.
• Data migration fear: Require vendors to supply a sandbox export during negotiations; budget migration hours.
• Hidden costs: Account for per-room fees, messaging costs, and integration charges — not just headline subscription fees.

Vendor rationalization checklist

1. Collect contracts and confirm auto-renew and notice periods
2. Get usage reports for last 90–180 days
3. Map features vs. core platforms (PMS, CRS, CRM)
4. Score each tool using the template above
5. Create a prioritized list: immediate, 30–90 day, 90–180 day actions
6. Assign owners, timelines, and migration budgets
7. Measure impact: SaaS spend reduction, labor hour change, and guest experience metrics

Negotiation and migration playbook

When you’ve chosen tools to cut or consolidate:

• Open negotiations with usage data — vendors often offer discounts or concessions rather than lose a customer
• Request export of all guest and historical data in open formats (CSV, JSON)
• Plan migrations off-season where possible and run parallel testing for 2–4 weeks
• Retire integrations in steps, not all at once; monitor rate and profile consistency

KPIs to track post-audit (60–180 day window)

• SaaS spend (monthly and annualized)
• SaaS PAR and SaaS per occupied room
• Staff hours spent on software support and reconciliation
• Number of active vendors and integrations
• Guest experience metrics (response times, NPS, net revenue per guest)

Quick wins you can implement this week

• Pull a list of active subscriptions and sort by monthly cost — cancel anything underused with short notice periods
• Ask vendors for recent usage reports and a CSV export of customer data
• Disable inactive user accounts and reclaim seats
• Hold a 60-minute cross-functional workshop to map overlaps and name owners

Rule of thumb: If a tool is not used by at least one operational owner weekly, it should be on the cancellation shortlist.

Final considerations: balancing cost with strategic capability

Not all underused tools are bad. Some are seasonal, experimental, or reserved for crisis response. The audit isn’t purely about chopping costs — it’s about aligning spend with strategy. Preserve tools that provide unique revenue uplift or regulatory compliance, even if usage is low.

That said, many hotels have 20–40% of SaaS spend tied up in duplicative or unused tools. With careful auditing and a clear rationalization plan, you can reclaim margin, reduce ops complexity, and improve agility.

Call to action

Begin your audit this week: download our free audit spreadsheet template and vendor scorecard (prepared for hotels in 2026). If you want an expert second opinion, schedule a 30-minute stack review with our hotel technology advisors — we’ll help you identify three immediate savings opportunities and a 90-day consolidation roadmap.

Stop paying for unused tools — turn your tech stack into a profit center.

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