ITB Berlin is a pivotal hospitality event that shapes the industry's strategic direction. It serves as a barometer for the sector’s future, spotlighting innovations and trends that will drive adaptation and growth in the coming years. As the leading travel trade show, ITB Berlin 2025 was attended by over 100,000 trade visitors from around the world and featured over 5,800 exhibitors from over 170 countries.

Edgar, Dunn & Company attended the event this year and presented our latest whitepaper, "Five Best Practices to Unlock the Hidden Potential of Payments for Hotel Chains," as well as engaged in a wide range of conversations with industry leaders within hotel operators, travel management companies, OTAs and travel technology companies.

Some key trends highlighted at ITB Berlin 2025 included:

• Growing travel demand: Global travel activity showed a significant increase, signalling a robust recovery for the tourism sector. According to the latest World Travel Monitor findings presented at ITB Berlin 2025, outbound travel in 2024 increased by 13% compared to the previous year, regaining the pre-pandemic levels.

• More adaptability: Geopolitical shifts and ongoing climate change introduce new risks, challenging the reliability of traditional business models. To thrive, the hospitality industry must embrace change management and swiftly adapt to evolving conditions in destinations and customer markets.

• AI as a disruptive force: The transformative impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on operations and customer experiences was a hot topic of discussion at ITB Berlin 2025. AI and predictive analytics are revolutionizing how hotels understand and serve their guests, enabling real-time engagement, smart marketing, and data-driven decision-making. Business and leisure customers are also expected to use AI as they search and prepare their travel plans.  

• Evolution in customer engagement: Autonomous agents like chatbots and voice-activated assistants are transforming customer interactions, with OTAs like Expedia already piloting conversational commerce. These technologies enable seamless trip planning, real-time recommendations, tailored itineraries, and dynamic pricing.

• Rise of staff-less hotels: The hospitality industry is increasingly adopting automation to address staffing shortages and enhance operational efficiency. Technologies such as self-service kiosks, mobile check-ins, key-less room doors, and robotic assistants are reducing the reliance on human staff.

The Payments Conversation: Key takeaways

Beyond these macro trends, ITB Berlin 2025 provided a forum for in-depth discussions on one of the most critical yet often overlooked aspects of hospitality - payments. EDC engaged with three key stakeholder groups - hotel chains, payment providers, and technology providers - to explore how payments are evolving within the hospitality industry.

Hotel Chains: Payments as a strategic advantage

Our engagements with hotel chains validated and reinforced critical findings from our whitepaper, confirming that the challenges and opportunities we identified are top priorities across the industry. Key pain points highlighted in these discussions included:

• Decentralized payment systems resulting from diverse ownership structures

• Complications from multi-layered distribution landscape

• High acceptance costs from continued card payment dominance, despite APM growing in many markets

• Property-centric currency handling creating friction for international guests

• Internal payment organizational structures are still maturing

• Persistent issues with fraud, chargebacks, and reconciliation

While payments were seen as a service and must have capability in the past, the mindset has shifted. Hotel chains increasingly view payments as a strategic lever and C-level executives are particularly interested in leveraging payment strategies to drive optimisation of revenues, reduce costs, and enhance guest experiences. Many chains expressed interest in adopting the five best practices outlined in our whitepaper recognizing their potential to future-proof payments and align with evolving consumer and market demands.

Payment Providers: The next wave of innovation

Our discussions with payment providers were on two key focus areas: guest payments and B2B payments.

• Guest payments: Providers are innovating to enhance customer experience through contactless payments, mobile wallets, biometric authentication, and leveraging generative AI for fraud prevention and risk management. Our discussions highlighted the growing importance of identity verification, with providers exploring the potential and developing solutions to integrate the European Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet. This eIDAS 2.0 initiative is seen as a game-changer for hotels, enabling secure and frictionless check-ins, automating identity verification, and simplifying GDPR compliance.

• Payment Orchestration:  Payment orchestration continues to grow as a hot topic, with both legacy acquirers/gateways offering routing engines and the rise of agnostic orchestration platforms specializing in hospitality. This payment middleware allows that payment orchestration is designed to improve the visibility and control at the brand level while enabling individual properties to maintain their existing payment partner relationships.

• B2B payments: Providers are focusing on improving transactions between travel agencies and hotels. Key innovations include single-use virtual credit cards, hybrid models leveraging both card and account-to-account transfers, and blockchain based payments. These solutions aim to streamline payment processes, improve reconciliation, and enhance security in B2B transactions.

Technology Providers: AI and embedded payments for growth

Amid the rapid advancement of AI, technology providers are striving to maintain relevance by offering cutting-edge solutions. AI will be able to analyse guest preferences, past stays, and real-time data to provide personalised recommendations for dining, activities, and amenities. We are already seeing in the market AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants that can provide personalised responses to guest inquiries and requests.

Staff-less or highly automated hotels, featuring self-service check-in and keyless rooms, represent a growing trend in the hospitality industry. It's likely that we will see a mix of self-service and traditional hotel models, with hotels offering varying levels of automation to cater to different guest preferences. Millennials and Gen Z, who are comfortable with digital technologies prefer self-service options. Business travellers who value efficiency and speed are also expected to adopt to these staff-less hotel experiences. Self-service hotels can often offer lower rates due to reduced staffing costs, making them appeal to budget-minded travellers. All the different self-service options will have implications for the acceptance, authentication and processing of payments. The key will be integration and the embedding of payments into these new customer experiences. Hotelbird, for example, is a company that provides technology solutions that enable hotels to offer self-service options, including digital check-in/check-out, room key issuance via an app, and digital payment. Duetto, Zaplox, Criton and SmartHOTEL are other example companies offering self-service solutions for hotels.

A significant strategic focus at the executive level for technology platforms (e.g., CRS, PMS, booking engines) is on identifying revenue growth avenues and reducing customer churn. EDC discussed how embedding payments is viewed to achieve these objectives by introducing new revenue streams, such as transaction fee sharing, and enhancing product stickiness through an all-in-one solution. Some PMS providers, like Mews and Apaleo, have already embedded payments into their core offerings, enhancing value propositions. Embedded payment providers typically handle PCI DSS compliance, relieving hotels of the burden of managing complex security requirements. These solutions employ advanced security measures, such as tokenization and encryption, to protect sensitive guest payment data. Additionally, the emergence of Payment as a Service (PaaS) providers enables hotel technology companies to integrate embedded payment solutions via APIs. These integrations can extend beyond payments to offer services like working capital loans to hotel properties, leveraging historic transaction data. EDC believes this will be essential for hotels and property management solutions to thrive in the increasingly digital and guest-centric hospitality industry in the future.

The road ahead

ITB Berlin 2025 showcased an industry at the crossroads of technology, guest experience, and payment innovation. Over the years ITB has not only grown in terms of exhibitor numbers and attendance, but it has also become a comprehensive industry marketplace, showcasing travel products, technology innovation and services from around the world and growth-intensive niche markets. The collaboration between hotel chains, payment providers, and technology companies is creating a more interconnected ecosystem - one where payments are no longer just a necessity but a competitive differentiator.

The hospitality businesses that will lead in this new era are those that recognize payments as more than just a transactional function. The future of hospitality belongs to businesses that elevate payments beyond mere transactions, crafting each interaction into a memorable experience that fosters guest loyalty. EDC believe that the leading hospitality businesses will strategically utilise payments, turning routine transactions into relationship-building moments and checkouts into invitations for future stays.

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The content of this article does not reflect the official opinion of Edgar, Dunn & Company. The information and views expressed in this publication belong solely to the author(s).