Technology

Hotels are better positioned for the AI era than most people think. They own something no LLM can replicate: years of proprietary guest data and a direct relationship with the customer. That's a genuine competitive moat, and agentic AI is finally what turns it into action.

The takeaway that stays with me isn't about any single technology. It's about what AI can actually do to change the way we experience travel.An example of this was the live demo I gave on stage to change my own flight home - not by calling a helpdesk, not by navigating an app - but by having a natural conversation with an AI agent that handled everything live: rebooking, seat, baggage, transfer all in one simple phone call.The audience went quiet for a moment.

What stood out to me most at ITB Berlin this year was how much the conversation around AI has shifted from theory to real, everyday use. Hoteliers and operators are no longer asking whether AI matters, but where it can make the biggest difference for guests and teams right now.

The most transformative disruption we’ll bring to the hospitality industry by 2026 lies in end-to-end workflow automation across hotel operations, not just individual tasks, but entire processes that currently require too much manual effort with too many handoffs and that may unnecessarily create security risks in today's high data security environment.

We believe AI will most profoundly disrupt operational scheduling and resource allocation across spa, wellness, and leisure departments. These areas are traditionally managed through manual guesswork, disconnected systems, or static templates.

I believe the biggest disruption isn’t a single task - it’s the entire commercial workflow behind meetings and group bookings. A third of all hotel room nights tie back to a meeting or group, yet hotels still burn thousands of hours on manual qualification, data gathering, and proposal-building.

It's abundantly clear that the US hyperscalers are unable and unwilling to regulate themselves. A $100 million pro-AI super PAC formed in August, backed by OpenAI's president, has identified its first pro-legislation target to oust.

The divergence in AI regulation is less about "innovation versus control" and more about who will define the operating system of the future economy. The US optimises for velocity and scale; the EU for rights, accountability, and systemic risk.

Yes, the gap in AI innovation and adoption will continue and expand. This disparity is less about well-intentioned policy and more about an ongoing geopolitical battlefield where technology sits squarely in the 'armed forces' of the major powers.

In my previous airline and telcoms world, we used service buses like TIBCO to sit on top of enterprise systems. The upside was the potential of plug and play (although we never actually changed back end ERPs). The downside was extra latency and cost.

The integration hub solution is different for every hotel. The easiest answer starts with new brands or independents. Heading into 2026, there are several great PMS and GEMS players that can fulfill a variety of central operations so that one-off integrations amongst disparate, single-use services aren't as necessary as they were a few years ago.

In practice, it's not that simple. A hub always depends on common integration standards — yet many systems still lack proper REST APIs to communicate effectively. For example, we dynamically manage room assignments and reassignments based on guest fit and preferences, but not all PMSs even offer APIs that allow us to do this.