The Growth Code: Why Human Investment is the Ultimate Advantage in an AI Era

As hotels race to automate, Tanja Stegmüller, co-founder of TRUSTmenti, makes the case that resilience will come from intentional hybridity: blending digital efficiency with human wisdom, global standards with local soul, and automation with empathy. She lays out a ten point playbook for building hybrid leaders, learning ecosystems, and people centred cultures, arguing that technology can handle tasks, but only humans can deliver judgment, emotion, and the moments that define great hospitality.

In this shiny new era of buzzwords and bots, the most resilient hotels won’t be the ones boasting about their latest AI widget or blockchain booking gimmick. No, the winners will be the ones that master hybridity by design: the art of mixing digital with human, global with local, automation with empathy, standardization with personalization, growth with responsibility.

Hospitality is already in a love affair with AI. Algorithms predict demand, robots carry towels, and chatbots have mastered the art of answering “What time is breakfast?” in seventeen languages. Impressive, yes. But here’s the plot twist: the more automated we become, the more desperately we need people who can think, care, and lead.

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The Hotel Yearbook 2026 - Annual Edition

The hotel industry in 2026 finds itself at the meeting point of powerful, converging forces: rapid technological progress, climate urgency, shifting guest expectations, labour market disruption and economic realignment. This edition of The HOTEL Yearbook looks at how hotel organisations respond, not by choosing one direction over another, but by designing integrated strategies that combine digital and human, global and local, automation and empathy. A large share of this year’s contributions focuses in particular on artificial intelligence and its growing influence across almost every segment of hospitality, confirming AI as one of the defining themes of this moment. Bringing together expert voices from around the world, the publication explores strategy, technology, sustainability, finance, asset management, food and beverage, human resources, design and more, all through the lens of intentional hybridity in an age of convergence. The message is clear: in 2026, hybridity is no longer optional; it is strategic, and it will be the leaders who approach it with real intention who shape the future of our industry.
www.hotelyearbook.com/edition/2026.html