Kempinski Hotels Partners with Revinate on Guest Engagement

Kempinski Hotels, the venerable European luxury group founded in Berlin in 1897, has announced a partnership with Revinate, the San Francisco-based hospitality software company. The deal positions Revinate's review-aggregation and guest-engagement platform across Kempinski's global property footprint and represents one of the more substantial European luxury wins for the still-young hospitality-CRM category.

Revinate, founded in 2009 by former TripAdvisor and OpenTable operators, has built its platform around a specific operational problem: hotels collect guest information across multiple systems — the property management system, the reservation system, the loyalty program, the email program, third-party review platforms — and most operators struggle to bring those data sources together in a way that produces actionable insight or coordinated guest communication. Revinate's software is the integration layer.

The Kempinski partnership is consequential for two reasons. First, the European luxury segment has historically been more conservative about software adoption than the US chain segment. Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, and the other US-based groups have moved earlier and more aggressively on guest-data infrastructure. Kempinski's choice to partner with a US specialist is an early indicator that the European luxury segment is now taking guest-data discipline seriously enough to license specialized tools rather than build in-house or get by with property-level systems.

Second, the partnership validates Revinate's positioning. The company has been building a customer list across mid-sized hotel groups and independent luxury properties since its founding. The Kempinski deal — a 76-property European luxury group — is a substantial reference customer that will help Revinate's sales motion across the broader European market and across the global luxury segment more broadly.

From a public relations standpoint, both companies have handled the announcement well. Kempinski has framed the partnership as part of a broader commitment to guest experience and operational excellence, consistent with the brand positioning. Revinate has framed the deal as recognition of the platform's depth and as a marker for the broader hospitality-CRM category's maturation. Both narratives are credible and reinforce the strategic value of the partnership for the respective brands.

The hospitality-CRM category is one of the more interesting verticals in B2B software at the moment. The integration problem — fragmented guest data across multiple systems — is genuinely hard, and the operators that solve it earn meaningful pricing power. Revinate is one of a small set of specialists building credible positions; Cendyn, dailypoint, and a handful of others are operating in adjacent space. The Kempinski announcement is one signal that the category is moving from emerging to established.

For luxury operators evaluating their guest-data infrastructure, the conversation has shifted. Five years ago the question was whether specialized hospitality CRM was a real category. Today the question is which platform fits the operator's footprint and which integration partner has the staying power to support a multi-year deployment. Kempinski's choice of Revinate is a directional vote on both questions.

An enterprise software deal announced in February 2012 covering Revinate's guest-engagement platform across Kempinski Hotels' global property footprint.

Who is Kempinski?

A European luxury hotel group founded in Berlin in 1897. The group operates around 76 properties across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas, positioned at the top end of the luxury segment.

Who is Revinate?

A San Francisco-based hospitality software company founded in 2009 by former TripAdvisor and OpenTable operators. Revinate's platform aggregates third-party reviews, integrates property data sources, and operates the guest-communication layer for hotel customers.