AI in Hospitality

We Were Never Eight, We Were One

An operator-turned-founder argues that hotel groups have optimized individual functions at the expense of cross-functional rhythm, and introduces PHAL OS, an AI leadership layer targeting top-10 hotel groups.

By Saurabh Prakash, CEO and Founder, PHAL

Revinate thinks the AI trusts your guests more than your brand

We didn't go to HITEC 2026 for the demos. We went for the conversations. We sat down with exhibitors right there on the show floor. No script, no prepared questions, just one starting point: tell us what you do, in plain language. This is where it went with Frank Trampert, Chief Revenue Officer at Revinate.

As AI Reshapes Hospitality, Authentic Human Connection Remains the Ultimate Differentiator

The author argues that AI should handle back-office tasks to free hotel staff for authentic guest interactions, positioning human connection as the hardest-to-replicate competitive differentiator.

By Brendan Cronin, Visiting Professor, Les Roches

Hong Kong (SAR)

One Less Clock Change, One New Set of Problems

The Sunshine Protection Act, passed by the House in July 2026, would make DST permanent, shifting winter sunrises an hour later and disrupting morning operations, early staffing, and cross-state scheduling for multi-property groups.

By Terence Ronson, Founder & Managing Director, Pertlink Limited

HSMAI Europe launches new whitepaper on the agentic future of hospitality technology

HSMAI Europe's AI Advisory Board whitepaper examines how autonomous AI agents will reshape hotel discovery, booking, and communication, and what hotels must do to become "AI-bookable."

HSMAI Europe

Afterword: Loving the Alien. Hospitality at the Edge of the Human Era

There is a tendency, whenever a new technology emerges, to describe it using the language of those that came before it. The automobile was initially called a horseless carriage, early cinema was dismissed as photographed theatre, and the internet was variously described as a global library, a digital encyclopedia, an electronic newspaper, or, in one now-famous 1995 Bill Gates television appearance, something that even David Letterman struggled to distinguish from a particularly sophisticated radio.

By Simone Puorto, Head of Emerging Trends and Strategic Innovation, Hospitality Net

The Hotel Identity You Chose to Protect May Be the One AI Cannot See

AI travel assistants interpret hotel identity rather than match keywords, putting soft-brand affiliates at risk of being deprioritized when their boutique and chain signals conflict.

By Are Morch, Digital Transformation Coach for Hotels, Are Morch, Digital Transformation Coach

The Remains of the Stay: Memory, Identity, and the Afterlife of the Guest

Edmondo Grassi approaches the post-stay phase as a sociologist rather than a technologist, and the perspective is unsettling. When a guest checks out, he argues, their stay does not end — it migrates into a data infrastructure that remembers with absolute precision what the guest themselves only vaguely recalls, raising a question the industry rarely asks: who has the right to hold that memory, and on whose behalf?

By Edmondo Grassi, Assistant professor (RTT) in Sociology, San Raffaele University of Rome

Canary Technologies built its software around the guest, not the property

The Ethics of the Traveler: Responsibility in an Intelligent Ecosystem

Jonathan MacDonald reframes the post-stay phase (typically dismissed as administrative afterthought) as the moment where the ethical stakes of AI-mediated travel become most visible. Once a guest checks out, their experience dissolves into data, and the central question becomes not what they remember, but who owns the narrative, and on what terms.

By Jonathan MacDonald, Founder, SELF

Now Live: The First Industry-Wide Crowdsourcing Initiative

The AI Hospitality Alliance and HEDNA launch an open, crowdsourced catalogue of real-world hospitality AI use cases, inviting all industry professionals to contribute in 60 seconds.

AIHA and HEDNA

AI is confidently wrong about your hotel, and the guest arrives believing it

AI tools confidently describe hotels based on outdated sources, leaving front desk staff to manage guest disappointment when closures, renovations, or changes don't match expectations.

By Markus Busch, Editor/Publisher, hospitality.today

Panem, Circenses, and Prompt Engineering: What Ancient Rome Already Knew About AI

Andrzej Wajda traces the AI revolution back to Antiquity, arguing that what we call automation today is structurally indistinguishable from what ancient Romans achieved through slavery — and that Aristotle essentially predicted it. The real lesson for hospitality, he contends, is not technological but perennial: if you cannot manage people and operations well today, no tool, ancient or artificial, will save you.

By Andrzej Mateusz Wajda, Hospitality consultant & Sociologist, Wajda Hotel Consulting

HotelKey is picky about what counts as AI

Beyond Bias: AI and the Reconstruction of Perception

Rita Jusztina Varga raises an uncomfortable question the industry is only beginning to grapple with: when AI summarizes guest reviews at scale, whose experience actually gets represented? Drawing on her own decade-old stay as a case study, she argues that AI bias in review aggregation systematically amplifies certain voices while quietly erasing others — and that the hospitality industry urgently needs to rethink how it collects, segments, and trusts feedback data.

By Rita Jusztina Varga, CEO, RAIZUP

How Brand Identity Evolves in an AI World

Martin Soler argues that AI does not threaten brand identity by making bad content — it threatens it by making an overwhelming volume of acceptable content, which over time erodes the distinctiveness that makes a brand worth remembering. In a world of infinite iteration, he contends, consistency and taste become scarcer and therefore more valuable, not less.

By Martin Soler, Partner, Soler & Associates