Expedia executive Elisa Ragno discusses AI's impact on hospitality and the balance between technology and human connection in guest services.
The Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International (HSMAI) Foundation today released its newest special report, “How Generative AI is Reshaping Executive Hiring in Hospitality,” featuring new insights, industry benchmarks, and a case study from SearchWide Global. The report offers an in-depth look at how artificial intelligence (AI) is accelerating and redefining executive recruitment strategies across the hotel and travel industry, while providing guidance for leaders pursuing senior roles on navigating this rapidly evolving landscape.
A few years ago, the best hotel salespeople had one superpower: they could read their guests.
UN Tourism has successfully concluded the biggest General Assembly in its 50-year history, confirming new leadership, and announcing a shared vision for innovation and Artificial Intelligence.
Think about all the things we say we want to do but do not have time for: follow-up calls to candidates, monthly wellness check-ins/stay interviews, individualized onboarding paths, coaching based on performance data.
Every industry has its golden moment of obsession, that period when a single innovation promises to rewrite every rule we’ve ever lived by. For hotels, we’ve lived through many. Online travel agencies were going to make our own websites obsolete. Review platforms were going to destroy reputation management. Social media was going to replace loyalty. And yet, through every so-called revolution, the heartbeat of hospitality never stopped.
As artificial intelligence (AI) has revolutionized how businesses recruit and select talent, job seekers must also adapt to this new reality. This week, we shift the focus from how companies and HR managers can lead the process to how job seekers can use AI strategically to enhance their success in the job application process while maintaining authenticity, integrity, and self-awareness.
Milestone Inc., a leading provider of AI-powered digital experience platforms, in partnership with the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International (HSMAI), today announced the release of a new eBook titled “How AI is Impacting the Hospitality Customer Journey.”
In the latest episode of Matt Talks, Mews CEO Matt Welle spoke with Jason Noronha, co-founder of D3x – an AI company built by hoteliers, for hoteliers. What began as a solution to a single operational pain point has evolved into a technology that promises to change how hotels operate.
If you’ve been anywhere near LinkedIn lately (including my profile), you’ve probably been hit by an alphabet soup of acronyms: AI, GenAI, AEO, GEO, MCP, A2A, and maybe even a mysterious “agentic something”.
Just days into OpenAI’s new app marketplace, Booking.com and Expedia have seized a commanding lead. They’re not just experimenting with artificial intelligence (AI). They’re embedding themselves directly into the core of how travelers search, discover and book stays at your hotels. And because they’ve moved first—with no safeguards to stop them—they are about to become the default middlemen of the AI age. If that happens, hoteliers will spend the next decade paying for access to their own guests.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has revolutionized how we recruit and select talent. HR and hiring managers are no longer just recruiters. They are strategic supervisors of the whole AI ecosystem. The new challenge is to lead responsibly, ensuring that technology enhances rather than replaces human judgment.
In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has moved from buzzword to business essential. From revenue management to guest communication, AI is already reshaping how hotels operate. But one area where its impact is truly transformative — and still vastly underused — is digital advertising.
The hospitality industry is facing an immediate and existential competitive threat unlike any seen since the rise of the OTAs. In the past, your website data was a marketing expense; today, it has become the primary fuel source for the next generation of conversational AI and automated booking agents. The simple rule is that if your data is published, Artificial Intelligence (AI) can, and will, scrape it to train its models and service its customers. This practice is fundamentally transforming the distribution landscape by creating a massive, scalable data problem that bypasses the hotelier's website entirely. This shift pits the world's most powerful technology companies (Google, Microsoft, OpenAI) and their integrated partners (Expedia, Booking.com) directly against your direct channel strategy.
A guest is about to check in. They’ve booked a city-view room for two nights, and your data knows they stayed six months ago and splurged on a spa treatment. Before they even arrive, your front desk gets a quiet nudge: “Offer the spa package again. Add a glass of champagne on arrival.”
Some big companies have recently been crowing about how much of their code is generated by artificial intelligence (AI).
Much has been written about the potential of AI in hospitality—particularly its promise to enhance the customer journey, reduce operational costs, and mitigate staff shortages. Yet, when viewed from a broader perspective, one could argue that AI may ultimately become the sector’s most powerful growth driver—but not necessarily in the way most anticipate. And the path toward this opportunity may be quite turbulent.
In recent years, the increasing use of artificial intelligence has transformed many stages of the hiring process. Among these recruitment tools, Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) have become particularly widespread, offering organizations a way to manage high numbers of applications more systematically. These systems are designed to streamline recruitment by filtering and ranking candidates, but their growing influence also raises considerations regarding their reliability and limitations for both recruiters and job seekers. Can all the qualities that make someone suitable for a role really be captured by such systems?