The Anti-Strategy Strategy: How Doing Less Will Win 2026
Julia Krebs, Senior Lecturer and Hospitality Consultant at Les Roches Marbella, argues that the stand-out hotels of 2026 will be the ones that dare to do less, not more. Her “anti-strategy” swaps add-ons and AI hype for staff-led revenue insight, fixing basic integrations, owning slow days like Tuesday, and turning the luxury of less into a clear commercial advantage.
While everyone's chasing AI and adding amenities, the winners of 2026 will be doing the opposite. They'll be carefully subtracting, not adding. Listening, not automating. I have spent years watching hotels make the same expensive mistakes. Adding the same "innovative" features and buying the same "revolutionary" technology. In short, following the same "best practices." The future of commercial strategy isn't in what you add. It's in what you have the courage to remove, ignore or completely reimagine.
Your operations staff knows more about revenue than your RMS, empower them through a “Staff Insight Council”. These are the people who understand your channels, your partnerships and even more your real competitive position. So let them have voice in strategic decisions.
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.