A Talent Crisis No One Wants to Own
Travel technology has never been more critical to the hospitality industry. From revenue management and distribution to operations, payments, guest experience, and AI-driven forecasting, traveltech has become the backbone of modern hospitality.
And yet, hiring in travel tech is fundamentally broken.
Founders struggle to fill roles that stay open for months. Hiring managers interview dozens of candidates who “look right” on paper but fail in practice. HR teams default to generic recruitment processes that don’t reflect the realities of hospitality or SaaS. Candidates, meanwhile, are frustrated by opaque processes, mismatched expectations, and roles that don’t resemble what was advertised.
This isn’t a short-term talent shortage. It’s a systemic problem.
Travel tech hiring fails not because there is a lack of talent, but because the way we define, search for, and evaluate travel technology talent is outdated, fragmented, and misaligned with how the industry operates.
The Unique Hiring Challenge of Travel Tech
Travel Tech Lives Between Two Worlds
Hospitality tech is neither “pure SaaS” nor traditional hospitality.
It sits in an uncomfortable middle ground:
- Fast-scaling software businesses
- Deeply operational, people-driven end users
- Long sales cycles and conservative buyers
- Complex integrations with legacy systems
Yet most hospitality recruitment strategies treat travel tech roles as interchangeable with:
- Generic SaaS roles
- Or classic hotel corporate positions
They are neither.
Hiring a product manager who understands travel operations is very different from hiring one who only knows B2B SaaS. The same applies to sales, customer success, revenue, data, and even marketing roles.
Ignoring this hybrid reality is the first reason travel tech hiring breaks down.
Problem #1: Job Descriptions That Describe Unicorns, Not Humans
Most travel tech job descriptions are aspirational fiction.
They combine:
- Hospitality expertise
- Deep technical knowledge
- SaaS scaling experience
- Startup mindset
- Perfect communication skills
- Leadership, autonomy, and resilience
All in one role.
This leads to two outcomes:
- Qualified candidates self-exclude, assuming they’re “not enough”
- Hiring managers receive hundreds of irrelevant applications anyway
Instead of clarifying what truly matters, job descriptions become risk-avoidance documents , designed to ask for everything so no one can be blamed later.
In travel tech hiring, clarity beats ambition every time.
Problem #2: SaaS Hiring Playbooks Don’t Work in Hospitality
Many travel tech companies copy hiring frameworks from high-growth SaaS startups in fintech, martech, or HR tech.
The problem? Hospitality behaves differently.
Key differences recruiters often ignore:
- Hotels operate 24/7, but software teams don’t
- Decision-making is slower and more political
- Users are operational, not technical
- Change management matters more than features
- Trust often beats innovation in buying decisions
Hiring someone who has “scaled SaaS fast” but has never set foot in a travel environment often results in:
- Poor stakeholder alignment
- Frustrated customers
- High churn , both clients and employees
Travel tech hiring requires contextual intelligence, not just growth metrics.
Problem #3: Hospitality Experience Is Undervalued (Until It’s Too Late)
Ironically, many travel tech companies actively deprioritise candidates with operational hospitality backgrounds, especially for non-operations roles.
Yet, once hired, teams struggle because:
- Product teams don’t understand real workflows
- Sales teams oversell features that hotels won’t adopt
- Customer success teams lack credibility with clients
Hospitality experience is treated as “nice to have” during hiring , and “critical” once things go wrong.
This disconnect creates avoidable friction across the entire organisation.
Problem #4: Recruitment Is Reactive, Not Strategic
Most travel tech companies only hire when:
- A role becomes painfully vacant
- A funding round forces headcount growth
- Someone resigns unexpectedly
This leads to rushed processes, poor alignment, and expensive mis-hires.
Strategic travel tech hiring should answer questions like:
- Which roles unlock the next stage of growth?
- What skills will be obsolete in 12–18 months?
- Where do we need industry depth vs. technical depth?
- Which hires reduce founder dependency?
Without a long-term hiring roadmap, recruitment becomes firefighting.
Problem #5: Candidates Experience a Black Box
From the talent side, hospitality recruitment often feels opaque and discouraging.
Common complaints include:
- No feedback after interviews
- Long, unclear hiring timelines
- Misalignment between the role description and reality
- Lack of transparency on salary, expectations, or growth
In a niche market like travel tech, reputation travels fast.
Companies that treat candidates as transactional inputs rather than long-term ecosystem participants quickly lose access to the best talent.
Why This Is a Bigger Risk Than It Looks
Broken hiring doesn’t just slow growth. It compounds risk.
Poor travel tech hiring leads to:
- Slower product adoption
- Misaligned roadmaps
- Higher customer churn
- Burned-out teams
- Founder bottlenecks
- Cultural fragmentation
In an industry already under pressure from consolidation, AI disruption, and margin compression, talent misalignment becomes an existential threat.
What Actually Works in Travel Tech Hiring
Fixing travel tech hiring doesn’t require reinventing recruitment , but it does require specialisation.
1. Hire for Context, Not Just Capability
Technical skills matter. Hospitality context matters just as much.
2. Design Roles Around Outcomes
Define what success looks like in 6–12 months, not a list of buzzwords.
3. Build Talent Pipelines Before You Need Them
Communities outperform job ads in niche markets.
4. Treat Candidates as Industry Peers
Today’s candidate may be tomorrow’s client, partner, or referral.
5. Use Hiring as a Strategic Lever
Recruitment is not an HR task , it’s a growth function.
The Future of Travel Tech Hiring
The most successful travel tech companies will be those that stop competing for generic talent and start cultivating industry-specific ecosystems.
That means:
- Curated talent pools
- Transparent hiring processes
- Deep industry alignment
- Smarter role definition
- Long-term thinking over short-term fixes
Hiring in travel tech doesn’t need more volume.
It needs more relevance.
Build Better Teams, Not Bigger Pipelines
If travel tech hiring feels broken, it’s because most hiring systems weren’t built for this industry.
Stryyde exists to change that.
We connect hospitality tech companies with talent that understands both software and hospitality, without the noise, misalignment, or wasted time.