Technology

We focus on using technology to create seamless and personalised guest experiences while also improving performance. One example is how guests can easily add extras such as late checkout or breakfast directly from their phone at check-in.

One simple example that recently impressed me was receiving a WhatsApp message allowing me to check in online. It was seamless and aligned with what many guests now expect. In fact, we know that around 63 percent of millennials prefer the option to check in online.

At Staypineapple, we use Mews across all of our properties and have started incorporating AI to help us better understand our guests before they arrive. We combine this with other data—like reviews and past preferences—to build a more complete picture of who is staying with us.

In my opinion AI and robotics will disrupt the industry's jobs on a few different levels. The guest transactional experience will be the first to be affected and the first jobs to go will be in customer service, especially call centers, reservations, operators, etc.

A couple of key considerations impact the outcome and this will come down to a per business environment. These are - What is your philosophy toward the delivery of hospitality, which is a human to human condition? What 'level' of product are you offering to the market - do you currently deliver hospitality (service and care) with your existing product?

Technologies like AI, robotics, automation, mobility and IoT are called upon to solve a number of issues in hospitality: Solve dull, repetitive, dirty or dangerous jobs. Solve high turnover of trained employees (20%-30%) Solve problems like poor discipline, lack of motivation, etc.

... Back office. In all its flavours, from finance reconciliation (via Predictive AI/ML based RPA tools), guest feedback analysis (via Gen AI tools), Revenue Management (via Predictive AI, which has been in place for over a decade already), and marketing SEO/PR copywriting (via Gen AI text and graphic tools), HR (eg tools to auto read/select/deselect CVs based on Gen AI tools), and some staff productivity (eg via Copilot for email filtering).

I believe that the single biggest impact AI will have on hospitality is in REVENUE MANAGEMENT. Today's hospitality revenue managers navigate an increasingly complex environment shaped by shifting consumer preferences and remaining competitive.

Transitioning hospitality from Mobile-first to AI-first will be the greatest transformation of our industry since the advent of the Internet. Within this AI transformation, I believe agentic AI will have the single biggest impact on our industry.

The first observation is that things are developing very quickly. As compared to Moore's law, the pace of next generation AI capablities are developing at a speed that is hard to fathom based upon our species past technical endeavours.

AI Agents are a fundamentally different way to interact with data and knowledge. We are now in the phase of replicating the current status with agents (for example, to build a travel itinerary), like the first TV programs were radio shows with a camera, but pretty quickly we'll evolve to find new ways of doing the same things.

No, most hoteliers are not ready for the new era of personal AI agents. Hotels have historically been cautious about new technology, and for good reason. But AI-driven hotel discovery isn't necessarily about tech adoption. It's about storytelling.AI relies on natural language processing, so hotels should publish blog posts and substantive content that answer traveler queries on their websites.

By 2025, over 85 million existing jobs will be lost due to the seismic shift toward AI, robotization and automation, according to WEF, McKinsey and OECD. Last year labor costs exceeded 1/3 of hotel revenue and AI, robotization and automation are becoming increasingly appealing to hotel owners and operators.

Could we see digital workers comprising half of the hospitality workforce, as they already do at Amazon in this decade? Yes. This model aligns perfectly with the limited and select service layer of the industry. Under such a model I would call it the 'no service' or dormitory management layer.

To thrive in an increasingly digital world, hotels must embrace AI to deliver the highly personalized experiences modern guests demand. However, as with any transformation, it's critical not to put the cart before the horse. Before investing in advanced AI-driven solutions, hotels should first establish a strong, sustainable data foundation—a Central Guest Profile (CGP) that aggregates guest information across all touchpoints of the customer journey.

The big OTAs like Expedia/Bing and Booking are already using gen AI tools to expand searches to trip itineraries, eg Bing's Copilot. It's still early days as the Bing tool clearly just does keyword searches and then uses OpenAI to write a (good) narrative based on the results.

While a ton can be said about the various ways that AI will affect travel, one specific behavioral adjustment we will see is the resurgence of voice-based interactions. After all, what's easier to do: talk or type? For most, we can speak a lot faster than we can plug information into a computer or phone.

I generally agree with this forecast, Simone. My long held view is that the more technology becomes 'conversational', to use the current en vogue term, or voice enabled, which has long been my bent, the more friendly and accessible technology becomes.

Robotic cleaning of lobby and corridor areas make sense, plus robotic grass cutting. Less relevant for room cleaning given the corners and obstacles, although Neom is exploring this. Car parking via flat bots that rise up and lift the car off its wheels also work well and can optimise space in limited car parks.

This year labor costs in hospitality consume 1/3 of hotel revenue (STR) and robotization and automation are becoming increasingly appealing to hotel owners and operators. Ex. Robots like Rosie by Tailos, thousands of which have already been deployed at various hotels, clean guest rooms 20 percent faster and public areas up to 80 percent faster than human housekeepers.

Of course! We've seen robots in progressive hotels and resorts for years. You're right that cleaning and innovative food delivery are the easier pickings. But we should discuss that bright red line that starts and ends with the front desk.

My take remains the same: there is no such thing as "total" revenue management. Revenue is revenue, period. When you buy a pair of Nikes at a sneaker shop, they come with shoelaces; shoelaces are not considered "ancillary" revenue.

The evolution of the Revenue Management discipline in our industry, since its inception 40 years ago, has been driven by large franchised organizations and management companies that care about RevPAR because that's how their business models are structured and that is how they are incentivized.

One of the big megatrends for hospitality is the increasing value of mixed-use branded properties where every revenue stream (rooms, ancillaries and stay-independent) acts to synergize each other. All the greatest hoteliers have tacitly appreciated this quality, especially in luxury, but they haven’t been able quantify the relationships between spending habits within different verticals because of the disconnected nature of software databases.

The question needs to be reworded to ask how Generative AI (Gen-AI) will transform the industry, as Predictive AI (P-AI) has been core to revenue management / pricing systems for decades. P-AI has also been fundamental to RPA - Robotic Process Automation - which links disparate systems that may not have APIs.

We will in a world of abundance: destinations, flight routes, accomodations, restaurants. This has created a paradox of choice wherein the discovery process of deciding where to go (for leisure), what hotel to book and where to dine is almost a chore in that it can take up a ton of time.

Let’s start with the second question. First, you need an AI strategy, and an AI strategy holds or falls apart with your data strategy. To use AI, you need to work with good, clean data. For example, suppose your systems are littered with duplicate profiles.

I believe there will be a large shift over a long period of time. However there's a visual aspect of information that doesn't exist in a query type conversational level. Visual and sound create the emotional reaction. So generative on an "answer my question" level I think yes, but not on an inpirational level.

I agree that we're witnessing the rise of a new, AI-driven interface to the internet, which will expand but not entirely replace today's web interface. GAI chatbots are the first step, worrying Google about the future of its profitable search engine.

In a word, no. Conversational interfaces have their place, but they would add friction to airline, hotel, and restaurant searches. Amazon some years back tried to promote and monetise voice search via its Alexa devices, but no one was interested.

Any hotel group which values the direct channel (brand.com) already knows that data science has been at the core of digital marketing in hospitality for many years. It's fundamental to customer segmentation, targeting and results measurement.

The data fragmentation in hospitality is a huge challenge the industry faces today. Guest and operational data lives in multiple "data islands" that do not talk to each other: PMS, CRS, WBE, CRM, ORM, CMS, DMS, Social Media and BI.

Data science is an area of expertise that needs specialists, similar to other areas like design and creativity. Typically, most companies have outsourced these non-core functions; in the case of creativity, to ad agencies, for example.

Behaviors of guests & sorting of all offerings (room, packages, meals, drinks, activities) based on previous behaviors. Much of this if done on a per person can be done using general purpose AI along with a just in time promp injection model.

The best data that a PMS stores is its guest history - travel purchase, rooms stayed in, ancillary purchases, number of occupants, special requests and so on. While we can discover some patterns to help grow the business, a machine can sift through this multitude far more efficiently to find patterns and do so in an unbiased manner.

PMS data is only one source of first-party data, and it's actually quite limited because it focuses only on past guests. A richer set of data is built when combining PMS with CRM data and direct website behavior data. Once powered by that dataset, some key practical applications are: Benchmarking: create automated competitive sets for each hotel and find opportunities for improvement.

The words 'permanent reality' are hardhitting and oftentimes hard for hotel decision makers to absorb. While there are a host of technologies that can be added to the stack to help chip away at the labor problem, what I pose instead is to go one level deeper and look at the human stack.

According to a Perkbox survey, Hospitality is the fifth most stressful industry to work in, with 64% of employees suffering from workplace anxiety. Therefore, it is not surprising that a significant number of hospitality workers are reconsidering their employment situation and evaluating different career options.

Today's HIGH-TOUCH LOW-TECH business model in hospitality results in increasingly inadequate service and customer dissatisfaction. Currently, the poorly paid and trained employees, overwhelmed by labor shortages and mundane, repetitive tasks simply cannot provide better service.

When thinking about decentralization in travel, I think it's very important to realize that these are not changes happening on top of the existing infrastructure and applications stack, but they are happening below. The precise region is the layer between the Internet and the applications.If we want to use a metaphor, we are not waiting for the meteorite to fall on earth.

When discussing the integration of Web3 in travel and across various industries, the primary question is not 'if' but 'when.' Consequently, the debate about balancing technological innovation with preserving genuine travel experiences and cultural interactions may be somewhat overstated.

The travel industry stands on the cusp of a technological revolution. Integrating blockchain, NFT, and decentralized systems promises to redefine travel's essence. Decentralization has immense potential, reshaping loyalty programs and introducing room tokenization, revolutionizing the way we perceive ownership and access within the industry.

In the shift from Web2 to Web3, marketing like everything else has the promise of being 'disrupted'. By which exist mechanism no one truly knows, but besides the buzzy disruption there are two other D-words that you can use to guide your prediction and how your company can get ahead of the curve: Disintermediation and Democratization.

Web3 Marketing signifies a paradigm shift within the digital marketing realm, introducing a new era of opportunities. The essence of Web3 lies in decentralization and this fosters data ownership and user privacy. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have been seamlessly integrated into the art and entertainment world, enabling brands to create distinctive, tradable digital assets, as exemplified by campaigns from prestigious brands like Bulgari and D&G.

Web3 marketing represents a revolutionary paradigm, leveraging decentralized technologies to create a marketing environment free from intermediaries, empowering users with control over their data and facilitating community engagement through direct interaction.

Generative AI advancements are reshaping the landscape of personalized trip planning, virtual travel guides, interactive storytelling, and multilingual communication in the travel industry. This innovation represents a significant shift, heralding a "new normal" where artificial intelligence meets travel.

We are talking here about our latest technology tred the generative AI. It shouldn't be considered as a race to implement latest technology trends and the focus should be on customer needs and improving guest experience. Generative AI's generative and conversational ability could add a layer of seamlessness to online experiences of customers, and make the interactions more efficient.

As a tech enthusiast and someone deeply involved in the travel industry, I can't help but get excited about the integration of generative AI. The fact that major players like Booking, Expedia, and Kayak are already successfully utilizing it is a testament to its potential.