Why the AI Revolution in Travel Depends on Payment Infrastructure – ROH CEO

AI is rapidly reshaping the travel industry, but companies that want to fully leverage its potential must prioritize their payment infrastructure, says Jess Conroy, founder and CEO of ROH, a payment management platform for the hospitality sector.

Conroy, who launched ROH two years ago, recently raised $9.2 million in a funding round led by Highgate Technology Ventures and Acrew Capital. Prior to ROH, Conroy launched Carats & Cake, a platform that provided assistance to couples looking to pay the upfront cost of wedding event venues.

During a recent episode of the Skift Travel Podcast, Conroy talked about the critical role payments play as both the starting point and final touch of the guest experience – “payments are the infrastructure play,” she told Skift founder and CEO Rafat Ali.

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | RSS

Conroy said 80% of transactions at hotels currently require an employee to manually process them.

• “If we don’t invest in the infrastructure, especially today in the environment with AI and all the technology, if you don’t have an infrastructure, you can’t exploit any of the innovation that’s coming.”

• “If you don’t have the right foundation, the woman whose desk has a stack of papers on it, they’re gonna be so far behind and trying to take advantage of any innovation.”

Conroy provided an example of a hotel event to illustrate how ROH automates the process of managing payments, which has historically been highly manual — from signing contracts to paying invoices and tracking changes.

• “That contract gets loaded into our system, our software reads that contract, (and) automatically sends you out invoices.”

• “It allows you to one-click pay — however you choose to pay. (It) automatically sends payment confirmations, and then follows up with you throughout the duration of that booking.”

She added that if the value of the booking were to change, the additional information would be stored inside ROH, and the system would adjust automatically.

Conroy, who considers ROH to be “a payments software business,” said that all the innovation she’s seen during her roughly 15 years working in hospitality has focused on top-line revenue growth.

• “Generating more revenue, making every experience more valuable back to the business owner definitely matters.”

• “But what was often overlooked is the fact that for every new revenue stream, the support became very operationally inefficient.”

However, ROH isn’t meant to replace other platforms.

• “We like to think that we’re sort of the underpinnings, if you will, and we’re not trying to be another system.”

• “We’re trying to be a foundational layer that can eventually speak to the other systems that they’re already using.”

Conroy added that if hotels don’t have to worry about payment-related issues, they can “get back to hospitality.”

• “And you can get back to having the people on property focus on revenue-generating activities.”

• “As opposed to what a lot of time is spent on today, which are operational burdens that really shouldn’t exist with the technology we have today.”

September 16-18, 2025 - NEW YORK CITY