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Traditional SEO is not dead, but traditional search is! Consumers simply do not search as they did 10 or 15 years ago. Social search is now a big component of the customer journey: from TikTok to YouTube to Instagram, the platforms are diverse and usage greatly vary depending on age and traveler habits.

In spite of all the buzz around genAI, the AI Search market share today is estimated around 6% of the total search market, and estimated to go up to 14% by 2028 (Search Engine Land). Google's own Gemini AI has already been made available to Google's 84 billion monthly users - compare this to ChatGPT's 121 million users!

I don't believe that SEO is dead. I am of the view that the role of SEO is going to develop in alignment with the evolution of search. After all, it doesn't resemble the way it began with the incumbent approach. The challenge remains how to be found.

The first observation is that things are developing very quickly. As compared to Moore's law, the pace of next generation AI capablities are developing at a speed that is hard to fathom based upon our species past technical endeavours.

AI Agents are a fundamentally different way to interact with data and knowledge. We are now in the phase of replicating the current status with agents (for example, to build a travel itinerary), like the first TV programs were radio shows with a camera, but pretty quickly we'll evolve to find new ways of doing the same things.

No, most hoteliers are not ready for the new era of personal AI agents. Hotels have historically been cautious about new technology, and for good reason. But AI-driven hotel discovery isn't necessarily about tech adoption. It's about storytelling.AI relies on natural language processing, so hotels should publish blog posts and substantive content that answer traveler queries on their websites.

As companies face increasing pressure to report their GHG emissions, the role of business travel, mainly flights, is coming under great pressure. Business travel contributes significantly to a company's carbon footprint. In my opinion, hotels will be less affected than airlines, but they will need to relearn to focus more on short—and medium-distance travellers.

The growing interest in sustainability and events is shifting competitiveness in a new direction. For those hotels and events venues that have been leading the way for decades by implementing sustainable management practices and measuring the carbon footprint of operations their hard work is paying off.

The role of sustainability information in business travel is increasingly critical, particularly for hotel groups like Radisson Hotel Group, as corporate clients prioritize sustainability in their procurement processes. A growing requirement for sustainability data in corporate RFPs significantly impacts the competitiveness of hotels.

We can hope regulators will someday "reimagine" policies to enable innovation, but let's face it: this is entirely beyond the industry's control. Expecting governments to grasp the complexities of hotel tech is like waiting for a no-show guest to miraculously fill your occupancy gap.

Technical fragmentation has long been a challenge in all aspects of hospitality. Some of this is a reality. Some of it is by choice and driven from vendor marketing propoganda about 'Best of Breed'. The reality is that to overcome this general challenge in industry, consolidation and unification is required.

Website analytics in isolation from the rest of the hotel tech stack has lost its importance. Combined with the property's CRM, RMS, a personalization engine and the rest of the tech stack, it is priceless and impacts many revenue-generation functions: Revenue Management: The website browsing behavior, booking engine denials, time spent on web pages of various packages, offers and hotel amenities are important data signals for the RMS and property pricing strategies.

This is not the first attempt for an ill-conceived differentiated pricing by the OTAs. 15 years ago Orbitz was caught jacking up prices for Apple computer and laptop users under the presumption that Apple users were more affluent than PC users.

This research is indeed intriguing. As a product manager for Lighthouse's parity management solution, I've seen firsthand how hotels use extranet promotions to offer location-specific and platform-specific discounts. However, this study reveals a fundamentally different scenario.

Why not? There are many across industry examples where location and socio-demographics impact pricing for products and services. A few brief examples - Fuel - Drive around your own town and you will find vast differences. Not to mention long weekends.

By 2025, over 85 million existing jobs will be lost due to the seismic shift toward AI, robotization and automation, according to WEF, McKinsey and OECD. Last year labor costs exceeded 1/3 of hotel revenue and AI, robotization and automation are becoming increasingly appealing to hotel owners and operators.

Could we see digital workers comprising half of the hospitality workforce, as they already do at Amazon in this decade? Yes. This model aligns perfectly with the limited and select service layer of the industry. Under such a model I would call it the 'no service' or dormitory management layer.

To thrive in an increasingly digital world, hotels must embrace AI to deliver the highly personalized experiences modern guests demand. However, as with any transformation, it's critical not to put the cart before the horse. Before investing in advanced AI-driven solutions, hotels should first establish a strong, sustainable data foundation—a Central Guest Profile (CGP) that aggregates guest information across all touchpoints of the customer journey.