James Lemon | Global Head of Hospitality, Travel & High Growth
Stripe

James Lemon is Global Lead for Hospitality, Travel & High Growth Industries at Stripe, a financial infrastructure platform powering payments for millions of companies worldwide. Stripe’s customers range include Airbnb, Accor, Booking.com and hundreds of leading global companies, including 75% of the Forbes Cloud 100. Processing around $1.4 trillion in payment volume annually - roughly 1.3% of global GDP - across more than 3 million customers, Stripe is a Silicon Valley success story and one of the world’s most valuable private technology companies. In his role, James helps travel and hospitality brands treat payments as a strategic lever - not just a cost line - unlocking modern payment infrastructure to create better guest experiences, drive higher conversion and authorisation rates, and build more productive, data‑driven operations. He also leads Stripe’s thought leadership around Agentic Commerce in hospitality and travel: how AI agents, programmable money and real‑time payments will reshape distribution, loyalty and the end‑to‑end traveller journey. Prior to Stripe, James spent 15 years in travel, including founding and exiting mentoring and peer‑to‑peer start‑up Otolo, and working across hotels, property management, technology, and advising start‑ups and investors. A regular speaker, he has appeared at Web Summit, ITB, Phocuswright and many other conferences, webinars and podcasts. His previous roles include COO of Hostmaker, the property manager that launched Marriott Homes & Villas, and leading commercial and strategy teams at IHG and Travelport. James lives in Wimbledon, UK, with his wife and two children.