Adrian Zecha's Azuma Farm Koiwai launch is used as a lens to examine the 50-year structural rise of agriluxury, driven by guest demand for calm and simplicity in an overstimulated world.
Terence Ronson looks ahead to 2031, when frictionless automation will have made most hotels equally smart, equally efficient, and equally forgettable — and argues that the competitive differentiator will be a new role he calls the Human Experience Orchestrator. Part behavioral psychologist, part operational commander, the HXO is the person who reads the AI's outputs and then decides, with genuine human judgment, what to actually do with them.
The Ascott Limited (Ascott), the lodging business unit wholly owned by CapitaLand Investment (CLI), has announced the signing of Oakwood Thao Dien Ho Chi Minh City, as it continues to expand its presence across Vietnam's high-growth destinations.
The Ascott Limited (Ascott), the lodging business unit wholly owned by CapitaLand Investment (CLI), has announced the signing of Somerset Non Nuoc Da Nang Resort, as it continues to expand its presence across Vietnam's high-growth destinations.
The Ascott Limited (Ascott), the lodging business unit wholly owned by CapitaLand Investment (CLI), has signed Citadines Quy Nhon Resort, marking its first footprint in this emerging coastal city as it continues to expand its presence across Vietnam's high-growth destinations.
HARRIS Hotel & Conventions Sunshine Penang officially opens its doors today, marking the debut of the HARRIS brand in Malaysia and introducing a vibrant new hospitality, meetings and lifestyle destination in the heart of Ayer Itam.
In partnership with Verso Projects, a riverside renaissance at Shafston House will introduce Capella’s private residential expression to Brisbane in 2029.
ITC Hotels Limited announced the signing of a management agreement for Welcomhotel by ITC Hotels Salasar, a 145-key hotel set amidst one of Indias’s most revered spiritual destinations. Designed on a 6-acre site, the proposed hotel is envisioned to introduce a distinctive new destination that celebrates the region's rich cultural heritage while catering to the growing demand for pilgrimage tourism, destination weddings, social events, and experiential leisure travel.
Catherine Donaldson takes a decidedly practical approach, moving past the philosophical debates about AI in hospitality to focus on where it is already delivering measurable results today. From AI voice agents answering calls around the clock to agentic workflows that coordinate operations without manual handoffs, she maps five proven use cases and makes the case that the performance gap between adopters and laggards is already widening.
George Roukas identifies the layer most hotel AI strategies are skipping entirely: execution. Brands can build sophisticated loyalty programs and accept intent-rich bookings from AI agents, but if the operational infrastructure cannot reliably deliver what was promised — the right room, the right amenities, the right moment — none of it compounds into loyalty. His argument is that an ontology-based digital twin of hotel operations is what closes that gap, and that now is the time to build it.
Marriott's Luxury Group surveyed 2,800 affluent travelers across 8 Asia Pacific markets, identifying four Gen Z archetypes that are redefining luxury through wellness, disconnection, heritage, and tradition.
Stephan Wiesener argues that the hospitality AI conversation has moved past experimentation into a harder question: what infrastructure actually allows AI agents to take reliable action across real hotel operations? Through concrete case studies from citizenM, THE FLAG Zürich, and Cocoon & Eckelmann Hotels, he makes the case that open, API-first architecture is the unglamorous foundation on which everything else depends.
Ongoing geopolitical tensions across the Middle East are having a real commercial impact on hospitality, tourism and leisure businesses worldwide. Uncertainty is now shaping how travellers make decisions — where they go, how far ahead they book, and how confident they feel about travel at all.Airspace restrictions and rising operating costs have dampened visitor demand in some regions, while destinations seen as safer alternatives — particularly in Southern Europe, Asia and the Americas — are picking up displaced demand, especially at the luxury and ultra-luxury end of the market, notoriously oblivious of geopolitical tensions.Investors and developers are also treading more carefully.
Much of the industry conversation has focused on what recent Middle East tensions might take away from travel demand. The more interesting question, from where I sit in Portugal, is where that demand goes instead.In my recent piece on the next European hotel buy cycle, I noted that while top-line demand should remain broadly stable in the short term, it will be increasingly reallocated across destinations.Portugal’s latest tourism statistics show the country entered this recent period of geopolitical tension from a position of sustained strength.
Vassilis Syropoulos argues that before hospitality can benefit from agentic AI, it needs to solve a problem most organizations are actively avoiding: the data foundation underneath it. Using the Prometheus metaphor to frame both the promise and the danger, he maps a four-quadrant framework that shows why clean data without hospitality context is still dangerous, and why trust — earned incrementally, proven on the record — is the only legitimate path to autonomous action.
Indian Hotels Company (IHCL) ,India’s largest hospitality company, today announced the opening of Ginger Gadchiroli, Mul Road.
Hilton today announced the opening of Kahavadi Chiang Rai, Curio Collection by Hilton, marking the brand's first foray into Northern Thailand. Part of Curio Collection by Hilton, a global portfolio of individually remarkable hotels hand-picked for their distinct character and deep connection to place, the property brings one-of-a-kind local discovery to guests while delivering the service standards and benefits of Hilton's worldwide hospitality network.
Drawing on a background in filmmaking, Kristian Lupinski offers a candid, first-person account of experimenting with AI video generation for hospitality marketing and quickly discovering that creative vision and machine output are far from the same thing. The piece raises an unsettling question for the industry: in a race toward synthetic perfection, are hotels optimizing themselves out of the very authenticity that makes a stay worth remembering?
PATA and PolyU project Asia Pacific international arrivals to hit 789.2M by 2028, reaching 115.6% of 2019 levels, with Vietnam and Mongolia among the fastest-growing destinations.
Stefano Pinci writes from the photographer's perspective on what AI actually does — and does not do — to hotel imagery. The technology has become a genuine problem-solver in post-production, he argues, but its greatest risk is not bad output: it is the seductive pull toward a frictionless, anonymous visual average that makes every property look the same and none of them look real.
NoMad Hilton Singapore is set to open late 2026, marking the brand's debut in Asia Pacific. The hotel will embody NoMad's signature approach to luxury hospitality, featuring three distinctive dining and bar concepts plus a poolside lounge to deliver immersive dining and cocktail experiences across the 19-storey property.