CHTA has commissioned FIU's Chaplin School to conduct a six-month, multi-destination study quantifying tourism demand, economic leakages, and local sourcing opportunities across at least six Caribbean jurisdictions.
Five-star resort and member of The Leading Hotels of the World, Carlisle Bay Antigua is continuing its multimillion-dollar renovation with the second phase set to debut in October 2026. Building on the successful launch of Phase One in October 2025, which introduced fully renovated Ocean, Bay and Garden Suites designed by London-based designer Miminat Shodeinde of Miminat Designs, the next stage of the transformation will unveil newly reimagined Carlisle Suites and twenty Beach Suites now known as Signature Beach Suites. The second stage will be co-led by Shodeinde alongside Cara Doherty, part of the ownership group of Carlisle Bay.
1. More than a great idea, an imperative but still some years away to mainstream adoption as no widespread/recognised framework exists for triple materiality, yet.2. If it can be proven to increase future asset value, possibly meet/exceed local planning requirements and to offer a more relatable and reassuring sustainability alignment message to guests' own narratives.3.
Under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), companies are expected to disclose how their climate targets align with the global goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C. While the CSRD does not require organisations to obtain approval from the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), it does require transparency about whether their emissions-reduction targets are science-based and consistent with climate science.
Double materiality is an important step forward, but on its own it does not yet tell us whether hospitality is moving fast enough - or in the right direction - relative to planetary and social thresholds. That is why the idea of triple materiality is so compelling.In principle, it is exactly the challenge our sector now needs.
UNICO Hotel Collection today announced that reservations are now open for UNICO 18˚77˚ Montego Bay, marking the brand's first expansion beyond Mexico. Opening March 1, 2027, the adults-only, all-inclusive resort invites travelers to experience personalized service, thoughtful design, and immersive local experiences inspired by Jamaica.
Hotels should continue reducing unnecessary rate leakage because it protects pricing integrity, strengthens partner relationships and improves profitability. But pursuing absolute zero leakage is increasingly unrealistic in a fragmented global distribution ecosystem.
Zero rate leakage is a bit of a fantasy: a room that never appears cheaper elsewhere.Distribution is a network. A room moves from hotel to wholesaler to bedbank to affiliate to OTA, and every layer that is added also removes visibility.
Asking whether hoteliers should stop chasing rate leakage suggests accepting contract breaches as a routine cost of doing business. The issue isn't technological complexity or API caching—it is a direct breach of written commercial agreements.Historically, wholesale rates resided in printed brochures as opaque, bundled packages—a volume trade-off generating incremental demand without exposing room pricing.What changed?
The Ocean Club, A Four Seasons Resort, Bahamas, is pleased to announce the enhancement of its celebrated Hartford Wing Ocean View accommodations, unveiling a refreshed design for 24 Hartford Ocean View Guestrooms and two Hartford Ocean View Suites beginning October 2026. The redesign introduces a brighter, more contemporary interpretation of the wing's timeless character, featuring an airy palette inspired by the shifting hues of the sand and sea, complemented by all-new furnishings, finishes, and textures.
Grand Cayman Marriott Resort is entering a new chapter as it restores its beachfront and introduces a series of enhancements designed to elevate the guest experience along the island's most celebrated coastline.
The Pinnacle Jamaica is an exclusive luxury residential lifestyle estate developed by LCH Developments and Ennismore, a joint venture with Accor, offering a unique living experience that is both architecturally distinctive and authentically rooted.
After more than 35 years in hotel leadership, I've seen our industry evolve through major technological shifts. I began my career as one of the youngest leaders in the hotel, and today I'm often the person with the deepest institutional knowledge and operational experience.
My first honest lesson with AI was this: the technology was never the hard part. The people were. Our earliest AI applications were practical — sentiment analysis and review response support, demand forecasting tools, and pre-arrival personalization.
As a General Manager, my biggest learning has been that AI is not a replacement for hospitality—it is an enabler of better hospitality.Our first steps with AI focused on improving productivity rather than replacing people. We have used AI to support content creation, communication, brainstorming, data analysis, guest feedback summarisation and operational planning.
The Sunshine Hotel & Suites has officially entered its next chapter, announcing the grand completion of a top-to-bottom property transformation. Guests can enjoy exclusive access to its sister property located right on famous Seven Mile Beach with full access to all of its amenities including the beach, pool loungers and more. The refreshed boutique resort sits at the center of the island’s lively dining and entertainment scene.
Fix your data first. Compset, segmentation, rate mapping, etc. AI is only as good as the data behind it and most "AI failed" stories are really mapping stories. The bottleneck moves from analysis to decisions. When analysis takes minutes instead of days, the question becomes who decides, how fast, and which old meeting you can delete.
I think we're making the same mistake we make with every technological evolution (again, NOT revolution): we OVERestimate what AI will do in the next six months and UNDERestimate what it will do over the next six years. Today, I don't think there's a single killer application that every hotel should rush to deploy.
There's no shortage of AI noise, but most of it won’t tell you where to start. Here’s what I’d advise someone tackling it for the first time: Start with the problem, not the technology - The wrong question to start with is "how can we use AI?" The right one is "where does my team spend time on things that shouldn't need a human?” Repetitive guest messaging, manual reporting, rate updates, back-office admin.
After more than 35 years in hospitality across Marriott, The Ritz-Carlton, Courtyard, Sheraton, and Hard Rock, I've witnessed a fundamental shift in what defines a successful General Manager.Earlier in my career, the GM's role centered on service excellence, team leadership, culture, and guest satisfaction.
The tension described in this question is not a future concern for luxury GMs. It is the daily reality of the role right now. I oversee two properties within a complex institutional ownership structure with exacting financial standards.
The expectations of a luxury hotel General Manager have changed significantly over the past decade. Today, owners are looking for more than operational excellence, they expect a trusted business partner who understands investment priorities, protects asset value, and can confidently navigate an increasingly complex ownership landscape.From my perspective, however, this evolution should not come at the expense of what defines our industry.
Marriott International today announced the signing of an all-inclusive resort agreement with Catalonia Hotels & Resorts for a Marriott Hotels All-Inclusive Resort in Montego Bay, Jamaica, reinforcing Marriott's continued expansion in the all-inclusive segment. The agreement was signed on July 22 in Barcelona.
The Botany opens this winter on a stretch of coast that feels worlds away yet is just minutes from the airport. Twenty villas. A secluded gated community within The Preserve at Botany Bay. The point where the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic converge at Mermaid’s Chair. Steps from Sandy Bay Beach and immersed in 300 acres of natural beauty.
Hospitality’s growing role as a talent pipeline for luxury retail, private healthcare, wealth management and the wider experience economy reflects not a failure to produce people, but the opposite: the industry develops highly transferable capabilities that many other sectors now actively seek.
The hospitality industry and its education arm have been fighting the battle for business credibility for many years. We “hospitality” has typically been seen as offering jobs on the way to something better, a specialty function that anyone can do.
This is proof that human connection - critical to a guest experience in a hotel or resort - is everlasting. Neither AI nor Covid 19 can take down the power of the "emotional human touch" of welcoming people into our establishments.
No. The question bundles several things under "Google search marketing." Ads, Hotel Ads, Business Profile and YouTube sit alongside organic, and zero-click only erodes one slice of that, informational organic clicks.Booking intent is transactional and local, the query types least touched by AI Overviews: under 10% of commercial searches trigger one.
The zero-click phenomenon on Google is a fact. So, how can hoteliers benefit from it? What does it mean for hotel marketing? The answer is very simple: If there are no clicks, Google Hotel Ads and Google Ads become FREE BRAND MARKETING for the hotel since Google charges CPC only if someone clicks on your sponsored listings (Google Ads or Google Hotel Ads).The moral of the story?
Should hoteliers abandon Google search marketing because of zero-click search? All of the structural evidence suggests not. This is still the foundational architecture of online content as we enter the next generation of search—or AI Search, as I coin it.Whether consumers use an AI-powered browser layout or a native generative application, they are initially looking for frictionless information.
Last week, Club Med, the pioneer of the all-inclusive concept with nearly 60 resorts in some of the world’s most desired vacation destinations, and VICI Properties Inc. (NYSE: VICI), an S&P 500 experiential real estate investment trust, broke ground on Club Med St. Croix in a traditional ground breaking ceremony, officially launching the development and brand's return to U.S. territory, while kicking off a new chapter for the all-inclusive industry.
Visa Destinations is an interesting development, but it's too early to call it a major shift in hotel distribution. Visa has huge global reach through its billions of payment cards, giving it the potential to become a significant travel booking platform.
I wrote some time back about the emergence of banking as a genuine alternative to traditional distribution and their depth of customer intelligence as compared to other business types competing for the same customer.It’s a mistake to look at this strictly through the lens of Visa's direct customer relationships or draw parallels to Amazon's travel missteps.
Visa's 4.3 billion cards in circulation miss something AMEX has: an aspirational brand cardholders actively choose because of what it says about them.That distinction matters more than scale here. Amex built travel credibility over decades with their concierge desks, Centurion Lounges, curated hotel collections...
There is a tendency, whenever a new technology emerges, to describe it using the language of those that came before it. The automobile was initially called a horseless carriage, early cinema was dismissed as photographed theatre, and the internet was variously described as a global library, a digital encyclopedia, an electronic newspaper, or, in one now-famous 1995 Bill Gates television appearance, something that even David Letterman struggled to distinguish from a particularly sophisticated radio.
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.