American hotel reservation technology firm Passkey, which has its UK head office in Swindon, has been bought by Lanyon, a US-based leader in technology for the meetings, events and travel industry.
Passkey’s GroupMAX technology is the most widely-used group reservation and optimisation technology in the hospitality industry. It allows guests to book their hotel rooms online in event-specific booking websites, eliminating many of the manual tasks for meeting and event planners. 
Texas-based Lanyon said the acquisition meant it now offered a comprehensive suite of cloud-based software for meetings, events and travel, as well as the only unified group reservation and corporate transient technology platform for hotels.
Lanyon CEO David Bonnette said: “This acquisition propels us several steps forward in providing a unified technology platform for managing all aspects of meetings and events, while enabling hotels to drive more revenue from corporate travel, and now group bookings.”
Hotel revenue linked to group business and room blocks is worth an estimated $100bn a year. Mr Bonnette said much of this business was managed via manual tasks – so there was a clear need for technology that automates these processes.
“As the hospitality industry’s leading group reservation technology provider, Passkey is a natural complement to our solutions that increase revenue for hotels while making meeting and event planners’ lives easier,” he said.
Financial details of the deal have been disclosed.
Passkey, whose head office is near Boston, Massachusetts, also has an office in Singapore. Its Swindon office is at Basepoint, Rivermead.
