Ahead of HITEC, this opinion piece warns hoteliers not to repeat big tech's costly "tokenmaxxing" mistakes, urging outcome-based AI evaluation over vendor-driven consumption metrics.
Drawing on HRI researcher Helen Hastie's live robot trials, the article identifies five trust principles hoteliers must apply when deploying robots: calibration, graceful failure, transparency, appropriate form, and genuine utility.
A live webinar on June 25 will gather hospitality operators and robotics leaders to discuss ROI, adoption barriers, and real-world deployment of robots across U.S. hotels.
MMGY Travel Intelligence's 2026 study finds 52% of UK travellers use AI for trip planning, up 12 points year-on-year, the fastest growth among five major European markets surveyed.
Despite AI's proven revenue impact in sales, senior commercial leaders resist adoption because AI threatens the structured judgment that built their authority.
The author argues AI won't replace core hotel systems but will transform the analytics layer, eliminate spreadsheet workarounds, and let hotels use AI agents to build custom workflows without waiting on vendors.
The author proposes Token Cost Per Guest (TCPG) as a standard metric for hospitality AI spend, drawing parallels with healthcare to argue that metered, per-unit AI cost tracking is essential across all industries.
The author argues that hospitality's next competitive advantage lies not in visibility but in maintaining consistent, trustworthy information across every digital touchpoint from discovery through arrival.
The piece argues hotels deploy visible AI features without redesigning underlying operations, creating "AI Theatre" that impresses owners but fails to improve business metrics.
A critical reading of Booking.com's partner messaging argues its "protection" pitch to independent hotels masks a platform dynamic where independents are the foundation being guarded for Booking's own benefit.
The author introduces TCPG (Token Cost Per Guest) as a discipline for hotel operators to meter AI spending, arguing most deployments fail because costs are invisible inside bundled platform contracts.
TRAVHOTECH's HumAIn Framework proposes a four-layer AI architecture for hospitality, separating data infrastructure, software automation, physical robotics, and human strategic oversight.
Booking Holdings and Airbnb are each funding separate AI travel ventures as hedges, raising the risk that hotels will soon rent visibility from the same parent that runs both the OTA and the assistant.
A hotel operations veteran argues hoteliers should focus less on AI tools and more on clean data, open integrations, and AI discoverability before demand-side shifts erode visibility.
The AI Hospitality Alliance has formed a 22-member inaugural Advisory Board spanning hotel brands, cloud infrastructure, payments, academia, and AI platforms to guide responsible AI adoption and standards across the industry.
The author argues that "GEO" and AI SEO packages sold to hotels are largely ineffective, citing Google's own documentation to debunk popular tactics in favor of data quality.
IHG launched a ChatGPT app enabling search across 7,000+ hotels with real-time pricing and availability, and will add conversational AI search to IHG.com and its One Rewards app.