How we measure 2026. Why it matters. And the paths to achieving it.
Y Combinator asks every company in their portfolio to define a single number that captures success. Not ten metrics. Not a dashboard. One number that forces clarity and demands focus. In 2026, we adopt this principle.
This is approximately double what we achieved in 2025. It is audacious. But we have built the foundation, signed the clients, and developed the technology to make it possible.
If we reach £6M, that is still 50% growth – a result most companies would celebrate. But £10M is what unlocks so much opportunity, validates our approach, and in truth, we do not want to be like "most companies".
The global group and event hotel booking sector spends £120 billion a year on hotel rooms. That is not a typo. One hundred and twenty billion pounds, every year, flowing through a sector defined by phone calls, emails, spreadsheets, mistakes, stress, and "the way we've always done it."
This sector never had its AirBnB moment. No digital transformation. No platform shift. The "necessary complexity" kept the challengers away, made the inefficiency tolerable, and the incumbent processes unassailable.
I genuinely believe that HotelMap exists today because "everyone" has realised the time has come.
In 2025, we achieved significant market positioning. We signed Informa – the world's largest business event organiser. We deepened our partnership with RAI Amsterdam. We integrated with Helms Briscoe. We built the MAGS robots. We proved that our approach works at scale. Now we build on it.
We are the challenger brand in a market that forgot it could be challenged. Our reputation as the accomplished upstarts is no longer disputed – it is expected. Google, Cisco, Informa, RAI Amsterdam, Helms Briscoe – these are not companies that partner with amateurs. They partner with us because they see what we see: that the old ways are entrenched, not excellent.
And now the world is changing again. AI and robotics are rewriting what is possible. Companies are scrambling to catch up but it's hard when there is also so much uncertainty around what is possible, who you are actually going to be competing against, and how do you make this opportunity your own - competitive advantage feels to many like a mirage as we enter 2026. We have thankfully been building with machine learning for five years. This is very fortunate. The timing is not luck. But it is a rare confluence of ability and opportunity.
"There is at least one point in the history of any company when you have to change dramatically to rise to the next level of performance. Miss that moment, and you start to decline."
— ANDY GROVE, INTEL
This however won't be easy. To make it possible we are also in the middle of upgrading our entire systems and infrastructure to make what's next much easier. It's an additional challenge continually upgrading our past and preparing for the new future. Easier said than done so thank you to everyone who has been making this very challenging task possible.
"Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius."
A chance to work at the cutting edge. Create the future.
Work with the best. Do something difficult. Feel like a winner.
Prove that a small team in London can outthink, outbuild, and outwork an entire global industry.
THAT IS WHAT 2026 IS ABOUT
HotelMap generates net revenue through two distinct models.
Large-scale partnerships where HotelMap technology is embedded within a client's existing hotel booking operations. Revenue is a combination of Transaction Fees plus Retained Commission.
Examples: Google, Atlassian, Cisco, GPJ, Congrex, BW Events, Interplan, Kuoni Tumlare, RAI Amsterdam.
Individual events where HotelMap manages the accommodation booking process. Revenue is generated through commission on each room night booked which is shared with the event owner. This model follows a power law distribution - in 2026 we split Managed Events into VIP Managed and Automated.
An absolute gold mine if we can achieve Capture Rates anywhere near what we get from Enterprise Events.
Both models contribute equally to the £10 million target.
Growth in 2026 comes from two distinct engines working in partnership. Operations optimisation squeezes more value from what we already have. New business sales brings in fresh revenue streams. Both matter. Neither is sufficient alone.
Top 100 Managed Events
Our best performers. Focus here is growing bookings from events that already work well. We want to grow revenue in this sector by 50% in 2026 - more bookings per event.
Existing Enterprise Partners
Getting more revenue from partnerships already in place. Deeper integration, broader rollout. Here we want to grow revenue by 25% in 2026 - more events per partner and increased HotelMap rate consumption.
The Magoo Transformation
1,300 underperforming Managed events in the long tail. Magoo automates client success at scale, turning marginal events into contributors. Here we expect 400%+ improvement.
Channel Partner Focus
Winning new Enterprise events through our growing network of Channel Partners. They have the relationships. We have the technology. Together we enhance their core product/service offering. Together we have a business model that either raises the desirability of their product/service or gives them more "time" to sell.
Quality Over Quantity
The trick is not chasing every opportunity. It is winning the right ones.
Example: Google Cloud Next
A single event generating £250,000 in Net Revenue. Our entire 2026 Net Revenue target is only equivalent to working on 40 events like this one.
Growth is a partnership between Operations and Sales. The wrong types of new events/clients or less than optimal execution eats up our resources and wastes everyones time.
For Managed events, net revenue is not mysterious. It emerges from a chain of multiplication. Each variable matters. Each one is measurable. Each one can be improved.
The number of events does not matter in itself. What matters is the aggregate number of non-local attendees across all events. These are the people travelling who will need accommodation. Local attendees do not book hotels. One event with 10,000 non-locals is more valuable than fifty events with 100 non-locals each. We optimise for total non-local volume, not event count.
What is the aggregate number of non-local attendees across our Managed Events? What proportion actually look at the event's hotel booking pages? How many convert to bookings? What is our retained commission per room night? Improve any variable and the total grows. This is how we engineer growth.
2025 was a year of creating hard won partnerships.
Agreed at the end of 2025, Informa is the world's largest business event organiser. This partnership positions HotelMap at the centre of a new industry standard under the Informa Atelier brand. This changes everything for us.
Read Full Details →Europe's leading congress and exhibition centre. Multi-year licensing agreement covering all major events at the venue.
The world's largest meeting procurement company. Technology integration enabling their 1,400+ associates.
Growing network of event technology companies and event agencies distributing HotelMap technology.
Ten million pounds does not arrive as a single number. It emerges from several distinct revenue streams, each with its own characteristics and growth dynamics.
"There are those who make change happen, those who watch it happen, and those who wonder what just happened."
HotelMap in 2026 operates through two interdependent divisions. The language is deliberate. Design Engineering creates the platform. Commercial exchanges its value with the world. Neither can exist without the other. Engineering builds what Commercial sells. Commercial funds what Engineering builds. Break either link and the whole thing stops.
Peter Thiel claimed that the most valuable companies achieve escape velocity. They build something so distinctively excellent that competition becomes irrelevant. But escape velocity requires two things working in concert: the engineering to build what others cannot, and the commercial reach to find customers before alternatives emerge.
HotelMap's investment in robotic process automation represents a long-term architectural decision. The 'Self-Driving Company' is not metaphor but method: operations that historically we never had enough time for can in 2026 execute autonomously, so we can both focus on work that actually needs us and address a scale of operation that we could never have achieved without this new type of assistant.
Total market event intelligence
Hotel contract and connectivity management
Performance analysis and design manager
The event venue sourcing superstar
The MAGS system is a bet on the future: that the organisations which win are those that automate the automate-able, achieve operational efficiency that enables previously not seen scale and free its people to work on tasks that genuinely need human judgment.
Each division's success depends entirely on the other's excellence. The feedback loops between these divisions become operational necessity.
This interdependence is a strength to be cultivated. It forces communication. It prevents isolation. It ensures that technical excellence is always tethered to commercial reality, and commercial ambition is always grounded in what we can actually build.
£10 million sounds like a single target. But in practice, it emerges from multiple revenue projects. Here are three plausible paths which individually could unlock the additional revenue that we seek in 2026.
Automated client success at scale on low touch Managed Events. Magoo handles proactive communication and design automation. Human intelligence focuses on relationship building and complex problem solving.
View Project →1,400+ meeting procurement associates equipped with HotelMap technology. The maths: £5M ÷ 1,400 associates ÷ £38 commission ÷ 12 months = just 10 bookings per associate per month. That's the entire target.
The new partnerships that we agreed towards the end of 2025 are all significant opportunities in isolation but in aggregate they could easily deliver significant net revenue.
The scenarios are not mutually exclusive. We will be working on all of the above.
Beyond the major contracts and scenarios, there are operational levers we can pull every day. These are the small daily improvements that add up over a year to make the real difference.
Optimising our commission structures, negotiating better terms with hotel partners, and ensuring we capture full value from every booking. Small percentage improvements multiply across thousands of room nights.
Increasing the proportion of events that generate bookings. Better onboarding, clearer communication, more proactive support. The MAGS robots play a central role here.
Ensuring we have the right hotels, at the right rates, with working booking links. The Son of Duplo system automates much of this. Better supply means higher conversion.
£10 million in Net Revenue is not just a goal. It is the foundation upon which everything else we want to achieve depends. Each team will have their own metrics that feed into this number. But when we ask how 2026 is going, the answer will always reference this single figure.
Everything we've built has led here.
We have the team. We have the technology. We have the moment.
"Opportunities multiply as they are seized."
Let's go.
This is the framework. How we execute it is shaped by everyone in the "room". If you see a better path, please say so. I look forward to meeting with each and every one of you over the next couple of weeks.
We look forward to hearing your monthly updates and celebrating your wins along the way.