Italy’s Smartness Raises €47M to Scale TravelTech Platform

Key Takeaways

1. Italian TravelTech startup Smartness has closed a €47 million Series B round to fuel European expansion, announced on 4 May 2026
2. The company, formerly known as Smartpricing, now serves 4,000+ hospitality clients across 41 markets, with a team of 140+ employees
3. Clients using Smartness achieve an average +30% annual revenue increase while cutting OTA commission costs by up to 20%
4. For 2026, Smartness has set an explicit goal: tripling revenue through a mix of organic growth and strategic acquisitions across Europe

Quick Recap

Italian B2B SaaS hospitality startup Smartness has officially closed a €47 million Series B funding round earmarked for accelerating its European expansion strategy, according to an announcement shared by EU Startups on 4 May 2026. The Trento-based company, which rebranded from Smartpricing to Smartness in 2025, was founded by Luca Rodella, Tommaso Centonze, and Eugenio Bancaro after the trio launched a property management business in 2018 and built their first dynamic pricing prototype. This raise marks one of the most significant funding milestones for Italian TravelTech in recent memory.

Trento to Europe-Wide Platform

Smartness is not a freshly minted startup chasing its first cheque. The company has systematically scaled through three prior funding rounds before this Series B, having raised over €15 million since inception. That journey included a €2 million Seed in 2022, led by The Techshop, followed by a €13 million Series A in December 2023, which was led by Paris-based Partech Venture in its first-ever Italian investment, with participation from Azimut Digitech Fund, The Techshop, and the founders of Bending Spoons.

Partech’s €360 million Partech Venture fund, itself backed by CDP Venture through the International Fund of Funds program, gave Smartpricing the institutional credibility it needed to expand beyond Italy’s borders. The platform has since evolved from a single dynamic pricing engine into a fully integrated AI-powered hospitality operating stack. Products now span Smartpricing (AI-driven dynamic room rate optimization), Smartconnect (OTA channel and payments management), and Smartfree (a direct booking revenue tool).

The company reports that the average property using Smartness sees a +30% uplift in annual revenue and a -20% reduction in OTA commission costs, two metrics that speak directly to the core pain points of independent hotel and vacation rental operators. With 4,000+ clients across 41 markets and 140+ employees, or “Smarties” as they are internally called, the business enters this Series B with proven product-market fit. The company has explicitly stated that the 2026 roadmap includes tripling revenue via organic growth and M&A plays across Europe.

A Market Ready for Consolidation

Timing matters here. The broader hospitality tech sector just crossed the $1 billion in annual funding threshold, with 40 startups raising capital between April 2025 and March 2026, led by property management systems and AI platforms. Travel VC globally reached $3.4 billion in 2025, up 11% from 2024, signaling that investor confidence in the sector is recovering after years of post-pandemic normalization.

Against that backdrop, Smartness is entering a consolidation phase where well-funded regional players will either acquire competitors or absorb adjacent software categories. Europe’s hotel industry remains highly fragmented, with roughly 70% of bookings still intermediated by OTAs, including approximately 42% by Booking.com alone, leaving enormous structural margin to be recaptured by tech-first operators. Smartness is betting that independent hoteliers, increasingly squeezed by OTA fees, will accelerate adoption of direct-revenue tooling at exactly this moment.

Competitive Landscape: Who Smartness Is Racing Against?

Smartness competes in the fast-moving European hotel revenue management SaaS space. Its closest mid-market rivals are RoomPriceGenie (Switzerland) and happyhotel (Germany), both targeting the same independent hotel segment.

Strategic Read

Smartness leads in the combined pricing-plus-marketing automation stack and has the most aggressive M&A posture for 2026, making it the consolidator to watch in European hoteltech. RoomPriceGenie, while more richly funded on a standalone basis, operates primarily as a pricing tool with a broader but shallower geographic presence, while happyhotel remains an early-stage contender better positioned as a niche operator in DACH markets.

TechnoTrenz’s Takeaway

I will be direct: this is one of the more convincing Series B stories I have seen out of Italy’s startup ecosystem this year. In my experience covering hospitality tech, the companies that win are rarely the ones with the flashiest pitch decks but the ones that solve a daily financial pain point with high automation and measurable ROI. Smartness has the numbers to back that up. A +30% revenue uplift and -20% OTA commission reduction are not abstract promises, they are the kind of hard metrics that get procurement signed off at mid-size hotel chains without a lengthy sales cycle.

I think this is a big deal because of what the round implies strategically: Smartness is not just expanding, it is actively hunting for acquisition targets. A company that built organically from a €350K raise in 2021 to a €47M Series B by 2026 and now has a stated M&A mandate is operating with real competitive intent. That is bullish both for Smartness shareholders and for the broader Italian TravelTech ecosystem, which has historically been underrepresented at growth-stage rounds. I generally prefer backing companies that sit at the intersection of automation and direct financial savings, and Smartness checks both boxes.