Trump Administration Orders Shiji to Sell Hotel Tech Firm StayNTouch – Skift

The Trump Administration on Friday demanded that Beijing Shiji Information Technology, whose international arm is known as Shiji Group, unwind its acquisition of StayNTouch, a maker of hotel operational software.

President Donald Trump said the acquisition of the U.S.-based startup might “threaten to impair the national security of the United States.” The order didn’t explain details of the threat.

A spokesperson for StayNTouch and the former co-founder and CEO weren’t available at time of publication for comment.

Shiji Group acquired StayNTouch in 2018. As Skift first reported, Shiji paid $33 million to buy out a remaining 77.4 percent stake in StayNTouch. The company had paid about $2 million for its earlier stake.

Shiji Group made StayNTouch the flagship service in its suite of international offerings for hoteliers. StayNTouch offers a cloud-based property management system, a core operational piece of software for hotels that helps managers track reservations and room inventory.

Shiji, the largest hospitality tech company in China, has been making a global hotel tech push since early 2018 after it announced a $486 million investment from e-commerce powerhouse Alibaba Group.

Shiji now serves more than 74,000 hotels in over 15 cities outside of China, including more than 29,000 hotels in Europe, and nearly 7,000 hotels in the Asia-Pacific region leveraging Shiji’s technology.

Shiji has about two dozen foreign subsidiaries, such as Concept Software Systems, which it bought in 2018 for $5.8 million as a retail tech provider for golf, spa, and other activities, and IcePortal, a digital asset management service for hoteliers it paid $13.5 million to acquire in February 2019. See our recent article: Shiji’s Hotel Tech Acquisition Spree: A Closer Look.

In China, Shiji is responsible for at least 60 percent of the market share for enterprise software services among upscale and international hotels and luxury retailers. About 13,000 Chinese hotels use Shiji-networked systems, including many global brands.

The Trump Administration order comes after a blow last week when Oracle Hospitality, the world’s largest provider of hotel property management systems, decided not to renew a longstanding agreement where Beijing Shiji Information Technology resold Oracle’s software to hoteliers within China.

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