Technology

The reality is much more complex than black and white. There are already many humanless hotels (mostly in Asia). So there will be: - regional differences in approach to human vs machine balance - variations between different segments (short-term rentals adopted self-service from the get go, many limited service hotel properties followed, but we won't expect to see if in the luxury segment any time soon, maybe never) It will be a spectrum.

In the future, a purely automated, no-human operational model will increasingly become the way of things. For this to fully materialize, our industry and our customer will have accepted all forms of artificial intelligence—both soft and hard.

No. Humanless hotels will become more common, but they are unlikely to become the norm.Automation and AI are excellent for repetitive tasks like check-in, payments, and guest requests, helping hotels reduce costs and improve efficiency.

United States will never adopt the same ruling. It's a capitalist country where businesses needs (not the government) dictate business actions. Smart operators will implement automation where it makes sense and where it augments "human touch".

The classic philosophy in hospitality is that guests require services provided by super nice, smiling, well-trained humans. I believe this philosophy is greatly exaggerated, especially today. A great example of why guests do not care about human-provided services comes from the vacation rental sector.Today, 20% of roomnights are consumed at vacation rentals/ short-term rentals: houses, villas, condos and apartments.

So far I haven't personally seen AI actually cut jobs. I'm not saying it hasn't but I haven't personally seen it yet. It has however empowered people to do a whole lot more, so it might slow down future hires. But I haven't seen it replace anyone that was hired, unless the person utterly refused to learn how to use AI.

Bold prediction: The PMS isn't going anywhere by 2030 — but it will look nothing like it does today. It becomes the heart of the hotel, connecting and coordinating most AI tools, agents and decisions running across the property.

The death of the PMS was mooted back in 2014 when I joined hospitality from airlines. 14 years later, we still have PMSes. Their primary all-in-one functions were:-         Handle check-in/out-         Manage room key cutting-         Take payments-         Set up the hotel room inventory and types-         Assign a price per room-         Link to selling channels like OTAs-         Manage housekeeping-         Manage facilities management/maintenance-         Handle on-site eventsSeparate RMSes now do pricing and push rates to PMSes.

The Enterprise PMS will still be around in 2030. Every hotel needs a system of record to manage reservations, inventory, rates, guest profiles, financial transactions, and operational controls. AI doesn't remove that requirement.

Generally, more people with access to AI will not mean better solutions, it will mean more noise in the market, more fragmented and badly deployed technology - just like the last decades, but at a bigger scale, and the people who suffer are hotel employees and guests.   I do believe that to stand out from the pack and deliver something truly remarkable, you need genuine innovators to bring all these solutions together in a coherent ecosystem that is open, collaborative, and truly end-to-end in how we serve guests.   The best technology partners will build closer partnerships at the backend layer, while hoteliers can build complete AI workflows on the frontend.

By HITEC 2030, AI will not have eaten established hospitality tech. It will have eaten the repetitive workflow layer around it. Hotels will still rely on PMS, CRS, RMS, payments, distribution, and other systems of record. Those systems are too operationally critical to disappear quickly.

2030 is a long time from now, especially in AI-years, which are only about 60 days long!If I think about the current trajectories and strategies of the bigger companies that will lead this movement, I see larger travel enterprises implementing foundational agentic backbones like Frontier from OpenAI or Claude Enterprise from Anthropic.

The AI platforms need to monetize their traffic, since AI computing is exceptionally expensive! The quickest way to do so is to partner with well-established travel brands and to start earning affiliate commissions from them. To achieve that, AI connectors play a crucial role, but what kind of connectors?The keyword here is “invisible B2B connectors” that service well established hotel and travel brands, but remain invisible in the background.Ex.

The question lands precisely where the industry tends to look away. Travellers do not wake up wanting orchestration. They want outcomes: the right option, at the right price, with minimal friction and maximum trust. The moment a connector introduces one extra decision — which system to link, whether it is safe, whether it will work — adoption collapses outside a narrow power-user segment.Where connectors genuinely solve a problem is on the supply and enterprise side.

At least in their current form, I think AI connectors risk solving more of an industry problem than a real user need.The idea of a unified journey makes sense, but it breaks when it assumes that travelers will actively connect tools, authorize systems, and manage infrastructure they’re not familiar with.

Specific to the thrust of Max's question, in this context we are referring to search/find from the booking/transaction perspective. In that light...For me it is the next generation of search.Depending upon the user, we can now be far more specific with the input to get more targeted output.We will be able to speak and converse, which is more natural and a next gen over multiple queries or filters.I do believe that when the buying time comes after the research phase the customer will still 'come' to the point of booking.

The Internet enabled you to find things yourself. Agentic AI will do everything for you. That’s why it’s: Much bigger than blockchain or the metaverse. And closer to how big the Internet was.

“When your grandmother can use a new technology, that’s when you know it will reach widespread adoption.” I’m paraphrasing this Kevin O’Leary here but the principle is nevertheless highly instructive for why blockchain and metaverse technologies didn’t have prominent adoption in the travel sector.

Guest preferences for automation vary significantly by region. Business heavy markets in Europe and North America lean toward automation, while the Gulf and Far East tend to favor human interaction, partly driven by lower trust in technology.Regardless of hotel tier, certain roles will always remain in human hands, e.g., chefs, spa therapists, maintenance engineers, duty managers, and any function centred on safety, emotional intelligence, or complex judgment.

Replace - very junior level "support" roles who mainly answer "how do I do this" type of questions. AI agents will be trained on SOPs and do this. Help desk staff can be reduced or upskilled for more complex work.Reshape - Contact Center Agents: As above, simple questions can be answered by AI Agents, and an AI powered PBX will answer the phone for high volume restaurants and make the bookings on a phone call via integration to table booking system, and send confirmation by SMS or WhatsApp.

AI won’t replace hospitality, but it will reduce the number of people needed to run it.In the next 3 years, we’ll see 30–60% productivity gains across call centers, guest messaging, revenue management, distribution, loyalty, back office, and even parts of development.This is not just automation, it’s a redefinition of roles.