Insider Brief
- ROH has raised $9.2M in funding led by Highgate Technology Ventures and Acrew Capital to scale its AI-powered payments management platform for the hospitality industry, improving visibility, automation, and efficiency.
- The platform replaces manual payment workflows — including invoices, contracts, and refunds — boosting sales conversions, reducing administrative burdens, and increasing operational profitability across hotel properties.
- Used by major groups like Marriott and Loews, ROH has managed nearly $250M in invoices and seen a 523% increase in AI-generated bookings in 2024, positioning itself as a core infrastructure provider for modern hospitality operations.
PRESS RELEASE — ROH, the hospitality industry’s first payments management platform, has announced the successful completion of a $9.2 million financing round, led by Highgate Technology Ventures (“HTV”), 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.
- ROH Increases Sales Conversion with a Best-in-Class Customer Experience: Streamlines payment processes, reducing friction and boosting conversion rates. Offers more flexible payment options, increasing customer satisfaction and repeat business.
- ROH Boosts Operational Efficiency for Sales and Finance Teams: Automates manual workflows for payment processing, receipt sending, and refund management, eliminating administrative burden to increase focus on bigger-picture goals. Lowers the risk of human errors that can lead to lost revenue.
- ROH Ensures Compliance and Mitigates Risk: Provides tools to stay in compliance with card network rules and safe harbor protections, avoiding costly violations and fines. Simplifies the management of chargebacks and disputes, ensuring a more streamlined process and reducing exposure to financial risk.
- ROH Improves Receivables Management: Enhances efficiency by consolidating payment processes, leading to shorter transaction cycles. Improves cash flow with faster, more reliable payment processing and receivables collection. Reduces past-due balances and aging accounts receivable by automating follow-ups and payment reminders. Increases the effectiveness of collections with automated tracking and reporting minimizing the need to use outside services to collect outstanding payments.
“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.”
This funding round marks a significant milestone for ROH as the company continues to set new high-water marks across growth metrics. In 2024, the total amount of invoices managed via the platform reached nearly a quarter billion dollars. Additionally, ROH’s proprietary AI application, launched in 2024, which automatically ingests files from property management and other existing systems, saw an increase of 523 percent in automatically generated bookings based on executed contracts.
For more information about ROH, please visit: https://roh.co/
About ROH
ROH is the hospitality industry’s first payments management platform that unlocks profitability. ROH drives conversions, increases revenue and provides real-time data and insights for large hospitality groups, asset owners and their brands that collectively manage over $4 trillion in Gross Payment Volume.
ROH is quickly becoming an indispensable partner to forward-thinking hospitality groups including Loews Hotels & Co, Crescent Hotels & Resorts, Marriott International, Auberge Resorts Collection, Noble House Hotels & Resorts and Evolution Hospitality. The company is proudly backed by investors including Highgate Technology Ventures, Acrew Capital, 1Sharpe Ventures, Founders Fund, Moore Specialty Credit, Correlation Ventures, SilverCircle, Cleo Capital and GMO VenturePartners. Follow us on LinkedIn.
About Highgate Technology Ventures
Highgate Technology Ventures (“HTV”) is a value-added investment firm that makes venture and growth equity investments in the hospitality and travel industries across North America and Europe. With offices in New York, London, and Dallas, HTV’s investment portfolio benefits from its global network and proven playbook that leverages HTV’s strategic support, operational expertise, and financial capital. HTV’s operator-first mentality and alignment with entrepreneurs has facilitated investments in leading companies within the hospitality and travel technology sectors since HTV’s inception in 2016. To date, HTV has completed more than 15 platform investments and 25 bolt-on acquisitions on behalf of its portfolio companies. Representative hospitality technology investments include Lighthouse, SevenRooms, Cendyn, Otelier, and Hotel Trader.
About Acrew Capital
Acrew is a thesis and values-driven venture fund, founded in 2019 by Lauren Kolodny, Theresia Gouw, Asad Khaliq, Mark Kraynak and Vishal Lugani. The fund invests in companies from early to inflection growth stages across Fintech, Data & Security and Health. Acrew’s security portfolio includes Aembit, At-Bay, Aqua Security, Cato Networks, Exabeam, Ketch, Nokod Security, Protect AI, Radiant Security, Silverfort, and Vanta. For more information visit us on the web, and follow us on LinkedIn.
Contacts
Media:
Kate Gundry
roh@pluckpr.com
617–797–5174
