HITEC

Why HITEC matters for B2B marketing leaders

A 50K booth at the Indiana Convention Center. Four AEs flown in. A new VP of Sales who spent the prior month at a SaaS company convinced she could “work the floor like a software show.” Day three at HITEC she had badge-scanned 280 hotel-tech buyers who never bought software the same way she expected: they bought through PMS partner channels, hotel chain procurement reviews, and management company recommendations. That is the trade with HITEC. The room is huge, technical, and operates on hotel-industry-specific buying paths that are nothing like SaaS.

HITEC is the global hotel-tech show, run by HFTP (Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals). Four days at the Indiana Convention Center in 2025, with a 1,734-row publicly-sourceable list and the densest concentration of hotel CTO, CIO, VP IT, Director of Revenue Management, and PMS-specialist titles on the calendar. If your ICP is a hotel chain technology buyer (Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, IHG, Accor, Choice, Wyndham, Best Western), a senior PMS or RMS product leader at the major platforms (Oracle Opera, Mews, Cloudbeds, Apaleo, Stayntouch), or a VP Hotel Tech at a management company (Aimbridge, HEI, Highgate, Crescent), this is the highest-density show on the calendar.

Vendelux and Bizzabo will tell you it is a 1,700-attendee hotel-tech show. They will not tell you that the PMS pavilion is a buying-conversation magnet, that the Tuesday morning sessions are where the hotel chain CIOs spend their day, or that the Wednesday evening receptions are where the management company VPs make purchase decisions.

Who attends HITEC

The 1,734-row publicly-sourceable list breaks into clusters that map cleanly to a B2B SaaS sourcing program for hotel-tech vendors:

• Hotel chain technology buyers (Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, IHG, Accor, Choice, Wyndham, Best Western, Radisson): roughly 12-16% of the room. The highest-use cluster for PMS, RMS, CRS, and guest-experience vendors.
• Management company VPs of Tech (Aimbridge, HEI, Highgate, Crescent, Pyramid): 6-10%. The buyers for portfolio-wide technology decisions across 50-200 hotel properties.
• PMS and RMS platform senior product (Oracle Opera, Mews, Cloudbeds, Apaleo, Stayntouch, Maestro): 5-8%. Partnership conversations more than direct buyer conversations.
• Independent hotel and small-chain technology buyers: 8-12%. The buyers for out-of-the-box hotel tech that does not require a 200-property procurement review.
• Casino and gaming-resort technology leaders (MGM, Caesars, Hard Rock, Wynn): 4-6%. Higher seniority, longer evaluation cycles.
• Restaurant-and-spa-and-ancillary tech buyers within hotel groups: 3-5%.
• Vendor and consulting attendance: high. HITEC has a large exhibit hall. Filter aggressively at sourcing.

For a Series A or Series B hotel-tech vendor, the working list at HITEC is closer to 250-450 named contacts across 100-180 named accounts. The 405 enriched contacts in the 2025 sample reflect a typical ICP overlay.

The five-stage pipeline applied to HITEC

HITEC rewards a partner-channel awareness alongside the direct sales motion. PMS, RMS, and CRS vendors gate or accelerate hotel chain procurement decisions, and the sourcing program needs to account for that.

Source. Pull the published roster six weeks out. Cross-reference against your hotel-tech TAL: the top 20 hotel chains by property count, the top 30 management companies, the major PMS and RMS platforms, plus the casino-and-gaming resort cluster. The 1,734-row publicly-sourceable list ICP-matched against a typical hotel-tech TAL produces 250-450 working contacts.

Enrich. Score on three axes: seniority (Director and above for hotel chains; VP and above for management companies), procurement signal (recent PMS migrations, public statements about technology roadmap, recent CIO or CTO hires), and partner-channel fit (which PMS, RMS, or CRS the property runs). Apollo email coverage on hotel chain tech contacts runs around 80-88%.

Sequence. Three cadences. Hotel chain CIO and VP IT: a 4-touch sequence anchored to a specific operational problem (guest-data unification, RMS-PMS data sync, CRS reliability). Management company VP Tech: a 3-touch sequence anchored to a portfolio-management problem (deploying technology across 50-200 properties on different PMS stacks). PMS and RMS platform partner contacts: a partnership-anchored sequence rather than a direct sales sequence. Three sequence templates minimum.

Capture. The Indiana Convention Center HITEC exhibit hall is large but the buyer-traffic windows are narrow: Tuesday late morning, Wednesday all day, Thursday morning. Use a mobile capture flow that maps every scan and voice note to your Salesforce or HubSpot Campaign Member the same business day. HITEC produces 250-500 booth scans across four days for a typical 10x10 booth, but only 60-110 of those scans are ICP-matched buyers; filter aggressively at capture.

Attribute. Tag every Campaign Member with the HITEC campaign and a buyer-type custom field (Hotel Chain, Mgmt Co, Independent, PMS Partner, Casino). Run a Salesforce report 48 hours after floor close that segments sourced pipeline by buyer type. Hotel-tech deals close on 6-18 month cycles depending on buyer type; plan the attribution review at 60 days, 180 days, and 365 days.

Booth and meeting strategy for HITEC

For B2B SaaS vendors selling PMS, RMS, CRS, guest experience, or hotel operations tooling:

• Booth size: 10x10 is the floor. A 20x20 with placement near a major PMS platform’s booth is the highest-yield placement for partnership-channel-driven products.
• Location: Pay for placement in the PMS pavilion if your product integrates with one of the major PMS platforms. Pay for placement near the RMS and revenue management track if your product sits in that workflow. Avoid the back third of the hall.
• Staffing: 2 AEs per shift, 1 product or solutions engineer who can answer integration-level questions, 1 senior leader (CRO, VP Sales, or Founder) at the booth during peak hours. Hotel chain buyers expect to talk to people who understand their PMS stack.
• Side meetings: Tuesday and Wednesday evening receptions hosted by major PMS platforms are the unofficial deal venues. Book an 8-10 person dinner Wednesday night with your top hotel chain and management company targets. The Indianapolis steakhouses or one of the Mass Ave restaurants.

Recommended exhibitor tier: a 10x10 booth in the PMS pavilion plus a sponsor dinner typically runs 35-65K all-in for the four-day program, before staffing and travel.

How Luminik runs the HITEC motion

HITEC is a hotel-tech buying show. The five-stage pipeline (source, enrich, sequence, capture, attribute) runs identically to the motion documented in our case studies, with hotel-tech partner-channel calibration above.

We run the same five-stage motion as documented in our Money20/20 case study and our Fintech IDV case study. See the for-event-marketers page for the operator-side workflow and the during-event capture page for the booth and on-floor capture detail.

Run on the Salesforce, Apollo, and HubSpot accounts you already pay for.

FAQ

How many attendees does HITEC actually have?

Our publicly-sourceable list for the 2025 program at the Indiana Convention Center is 1,734 rows. ICP density for B2B SaaS vendors selling hotel-tech runs around 12% of the room (Hospitality industry default), rising when filtered to the hotel chain, management company, and independent property buying class.

When should I start sourcing for HITEC?

Six weeks out. The published attendee directory typically goes live around then. By T-minus three weeks, hotel chain CIO calendars and management company VP Tech calendars are full.

What is the typical exhibitor cost?

A 10x10 booth runs around 18-30K base. A 20x20 in the PMS pavilion plus a sponsor dinner and staffing typically runs 35-65K for the four-day program.

How does HITEC compare to Phocuswright or Digital Travel Summit?

Phocuswright is the broad travel-tech analyst show. Digital Travel Summit is the OTA and hotel chain digital-marketing buying show. HITEC is the hotel infrastructure and operations technology show. For PMS, RMS, CRS, and hotel operations vendors, HITEC produces denser hotel infrastructure buyer conversations per dollar than the broader travel shows.

Should I run partnership-anchored sequences for PMS vendors?

Yes. PMS, RMS, and CRS platforms gate or accelerate hotel chain procurement decisions. A partnership-anchored sequence (integration availability, joint customer reference, certified-marketplace presence) outperforms a direct-sales sequence for PMS-platform contacts.

How do management companies buy differently from hotel chains?

Management companies make portfolio-wide technology decisions across 50-200 properties on different PMS stacks. The buying cycle is longer (12-24 months) but the deal size is larger because the technology has to deploy across the portfolio.

How do I write HITEC attribution back to Salesforce?

Tag every Campaign Member with the HITEC campaign and a buyer-type custom field. Run reports at 48 hours, 60 days, 180 days, and 365 days. Hotel-tech deals close on 6-18 month cycles depending on buyer type; the attribution model needs to track first-touch through close.