AI in Hospitality

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

Hotel Robots: Integrating Automation in Hospitality

The hotel robotics market, valued at $0.76B in 2026, is expanding rapidly as labor costs hit 33% of revenue and turnover stays 76% above pre-pandemic levels, driving adoption of delivery, housekeeping, and concierge robots.

By Emma Näpänkangas, M.Sc. Student in Hospitality Management, EHL

Lighthouse's AI is built to be hired, not installed

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 Brett Kohn, Chief Marketing Officer at Lighthouse.

Post‑Stay, Pre‑Loss: Rethinking Travel Agent and OTA Commission Reconciliation

Sean Anderson makes the unglamorous but financially compelling case that post-stay commission reconciliation is one of the most overlooked revenue levers in hospitality. Using the example of a 400-property European group quietly overpaying up to $40,000 a month simply because no one was checking, he argues that the post-stay funnel deserves the same operational discipline as guest acquisition — because the money is already earned, and much of it is silently leaking away.

By Sean Anderson, Chief Revenue Officer, RobosizeME

Build Big, Build Small, or Not at All

A Pertlink white paper translates eight AI engineering signals from MIT Technology Review into property-level implications, with a 12-month readiness roadmap for hoteliers navigating chip costs, agent orchestration, open-source models, and AI-enabled fraud.

By Terence Ronson, Founder & Managing Director, Pertlink Limited

Beyond Tokenomics: The Threat of the Invisible Hotel

The author argues that AI citation share, not just AI query costs, is the next major distribution battleground, with data showing visibility concentrating among a small group of hotel brands across AI platforms.

By Patrick Burkhardt, Senior Director, Sales, Curacity

Digital Labour: Rethinking Work in Hospitality

Stanislav Ivanov reframes the automation debate by shifting the unit of analysis from jobs to tasks — and in doing so, arrives at conclusions that challenge common assumptions. Physical tasks, he argues, are often harder to automate than cognitive ones, which means low-paid housekeepers may be safer from replacement than high-paid marketing managers, and the future of hospitality labour is not fewer people but differently assembled teams of humans and machines.

By Stanislav Ivanov, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, ROBONOMICS: The Journal of the Automated Economy

How AI builds a predictive operational backbone for hotels: Front desk, housekeeping, and maintenance

An explainer on how AI co-pilots, dynamic housekeeping routing, and IoT-based predictive maintenance can shift hotel operations from reactive firefighting to proactive service delivery.

By Alan Young, VP, Strategy | Hospitality, Infor

There Is No Single AI Ranking for Your Hotel

ChatGPT's top hotel recommendation changes 45% of the time when the same question is asked twice, with only 60% of named hotels reappearing, challenging how hotels approach AI visibility strategy.

By Lynn Patchett, Founder & Head of Marketing, Kollective

Actabl wants AI that won't make things up

Hospitality Isn’t Ready for the Future Guest

Jamie Lane of AirDNA joins an STR Global Unlocked podcast episode to explore how AI-driven economic shifts, including job displacement and income redistribution, could reshape who travels, how often, and where.

Jamie Lane in conversation with Simon Lehman

Let’s Get Rid of the CIO

Mark Fancourt delivers a blunt, experience-backed argument against the industry's growing temptation to hollow out technology leadership in the name of AI efficiency. With 37 years in hospitality and 13 as a CIO, he makes the case that adding AI on top of fragmented, underfunded, and poorly governed tech stacks does not simplify anything — it compounds the chaos, and removing the people who understand the system is precisely the wrong response.

By Mark Fancourt, Co-Founder & Principal Consultant, TRAVHOTECH

Navan and Hilton to Co‑Create Hotel–TMC Direct Connect

Navan becomes the first TMC to integrate directly with Hilton's Central Reservation System via Booking and Content APIs, enabling real-time rates, rich property content, and streamlined virtual payments for corporate customers.

Hilton

2027 Global Hotel Industry White Paper—The Robotics Revolution and Asset "Binary Divergence"

A strategic white paper arguing that rising labor costs will split the hotel industry into automation-enabled winners and legacy properties forced to convert to short-term rentals, with Europe leading adoption.

By Dr. Tong Yin, Founder and doctoral researcher, InsightBridge Global LLC

Why AI in Hospitality Is Really About Human Sustainability

Davide Bernasconi reframes the AI conversation in hospitality around a problem the industry rarely names directly: operational hypercomplexity. As hotels become more digitally interconnected, the cognitive load placed on staff has quietly become unsustainable — and the most important thing AI can do is not replace people, but give them their cognitive bandwidth back.

By Davide Bernasconi, Co-Founder & COO, Hoxell

The Biggest Opportunity for Longevity Amenities at Hotels Is in the Guestroom

Adam Mogelonsky makes the case that the longevity revolution is no longer a luxury niche but a structural shift in guest expectations and that the most overlooked opportunity lies not in spas or fitness centers, but in the guestroom itself. For time-poor travelers who rarely make it to hotel amenities, the room is the only wellness touchpoint that reaches everyone.

By Adam Mogelonsky, Partner, Hotel Mogel Consulting Limited

Creating Atmosphere: Design, AI, and the Human Experience of Hospitality

James Watson argues that AI's most promising role in hospitality design is not to generate atmospheres autonomously, but to give human designers the precision and responsiveness needed to make spaces that genuinely breathe — adapting in real time to occupancy, mood, and moment. The risk, he warns, is not that AI replaces designers, but that without strong human vision guiding it, it flattens the industry into an algorithmically pleasant, characterless sameness.

By James "Eightch" Watson, Designer & Creative Director, FAKE MOON

Webinar: Robotics in Hospitality: ROI, Adoption & Operational Reality

A panel discussion with four industry executives on where hotel robotics is generating real ROI, barriers to wider adoption, workforce implications, and what lies ahead.

Sloan Dean, Susan Graves, Roman Pedan, and Reid Floco in conversation with Nazpari Aydin