Scaling software sounds straightforward when the product lives entirely in a browser. Hospitality technology is different.
Every new hotel can bring a different television manufacturer, network infrastructure, property management system, local operator, guest profile and regulatory environment. Move into another country and the variables multiply again.
That is the problem Spanish hotel technology company ZAFIRO by Entertainment Solutions has spent nearly two decades working on. Founded in 2006, the company develops a cloud-based hospitality technology platform which, according to the company, now runs in more than 150,000 hotel rooms across over 80 countries.
Hotel technology does not scale like ordinary SaaS
A software company selling accounting tools can largely control the environment its product runs in. A hotel technology company rarely has that luxury.
One property might use Samsung hospitality televisions and another LG. A hotel in Bangkok may have completely different network infrastructure from a resort in the Caribbean or a townhouse hotel in London. Older properties may rely on coaxial distribution, while new developments are built around Ethernet, Wi-Fi or GPON.
Then there are property management system (PMS) integrations, entertainment platforms, mobile devices, casting standards and regional infrastructure requirements.
For Entertainment Solutions, international growth therefore could not mean creating one fixed configuration and reproducing it thousands of times. The product had to become adaptable without becoming fragmented.
That principle gradually shaped ZAFIRO into a modular system covering interactive television, in-room entertainment, mobile services, Wi-Fi management and digital signage, all managed through one platform.
The infrastructure had to disappear into the background
For guests, hotel technology works best when they barely notice it. When people travel, they simply want to switch on the television, connect their phone, stream Netflix, find hotel information or get online.
Behind those simple actions, however, several systems may be communicating at once.
For a hospitality software provider expanding internationally, that creates a difficult equation: how do you support increasingly complex environments without turning every new hotel into a bespoke software project?
Entertainment Solutions’ answer was to move management into the cloud. ZAFIRO began offering cloud-based services on demand in 2010, and later rebuilt the platform around a fully cloud-based architecture on Amazon Web Services during 2020 and 2021.
Hardware compatibility becomes a growth problem
International expansion also creates a less glamorous challenge: hardware.
Hotels do not replace every television, network switch or piece of infrastructure simply because they introduce new software. A platform that only works with one tightly controlled combination of devices may be easier to develop, but it is difficult to roll out globally.
Hospitality software has to work alongside the investments hotels have already made. That has required ZAFIRO to support different professional television ecosystems and multiple network set-ups, while continuing to add newer platforms such as Google TV and Google Cast.
Global customers still expect local behaviour
Technology is only half of the problem. Hotels are inherently local businesses.
A luxury property in Singapore, a city hotel in London and a beach resort in Mexico can belong to the same international group while operating in very different conditions. Language requirements change. Privacy expectations change, with UK and European hotels, for example, working under GDPR. Hotel systems differ, connectivity varies, and even the way guests use the television can be different.
ZAFIRO’s multi-property architecture is designed around that tension. Hotel groups can manage content, configurations and brand standards centrally, while individual properties keep their own operational set-up and customisation.
The next stage is not simply adding more rooms
It is tempting to measure a technology company’s growth purely by the number of customers it signs. For platforms like ZAFIRO, however, the next challenge is increasingly about connecting more of the hotel rather than simply adding another property.
Entertainment Solutions has grown beyond its origins in interactive television into a broader hospitality software platform covering connectivity, entertainment, mobile guest services and centralised management. ZAFIRO today brings TV, room entertainment, mobile, Wi-Fi and signage into the same environment, with a central management layer for both individual hotels and multi-property groups.
What it shows about scaling hotel technology
ZAFIRO’s journey is a useful example of what scaling specialist software actually looks like. Growth in hospitality technology depends less on copying one product thousands of times and more on building something flexible enough to fit very different buildings, devices and markets.
For hotel operators, including those in London’s competitive market, that flexibility matters. It means new guest services can be added without ripping out existing equipment, and hotel groups can keep a consistent experience across properties while still respecting local needs.
