Alisa Kremer on Social Media as a Commercial Discipline, Baoase on Family Hospitality and the Art of Saying Yes, Outdated AI Data Can Erase a Hotel from Shortlists

Wednesday leads with two HN originals about what makes a hospitality business durable: treating social media as a commercial discipline, and building a resort around family and the art of saying yes. Andrew Paul adds the counterweight from the AI side: the digital record of a hotel can fail it silently, costing occupancy before anyone notices.

Why Social Media Belongs in Hospitality's Leadership Thinking

Henri Roelings speaks with Alisa Kremer, founder of KORDIE, about why social media must be treated as a commercial discipline. The conversation covers the implications for measurement, AI, brand differentiation, and leadership accountability.

The interview lands in a month that has questioned how hotels measure what drives bookings and how they appear to AI. Martin Soler's attribution argument on October 15 and the Cogwheel GEO warning last Friday both point toward weaker attribution and more weight on clear positioning. Kremer's case that social media belongs in leadership thinking sits in that gap. Read the interview →

Niels and Thijs van der Valk of Baoase on Family Hospitality, the Art of Saying Yes, and Building the Caribbean's Number One Resort

Niels and Thijs van der Valk, co-directors of Baoase Luxury Resort in Curaçao, join Adam Mogelonsky to describe the philosophy behind the family-built property, its Indonesian design identity, and the expansion plans behind its number one ranking in the Caribbean.

The art of saying yes echoes the discretionary-moment theme from Charlotte Weatherall's conversation last week: both describe hospitality led by staff empowered to act rather than by procedure. Baoase adds a family-owned version, with a design identity and expansion plans behind it. Listen to the episode →

The Hotel That Wasn't There

Andrew Paul of Americas Great Resorts tells a narrative-driven story with a practical warning: outdated AI training data can erase a property from AI booking agent shortlists, costing real occupancy before the problem is even noticed.

The piece is the mirror image of the stale-data problem in Americas Great Resorts' August audit, where a demolished Miami hotel was still being recommended 108 days after implosion. There the AI recommended a hotel that no longer existed; here it fails to recommend one that does. Both depend on what the AI has learned rather than on what the hotel does today, and Monday's Booking.com piece from Markus Busch described the same dependency inside an OTA. Read the story →

Signals

Markus Busch reports that Gmail's AI Inbox reads only Primary tab emails. Booking confirmations are surfaced in guests' briefings while hotel newsletters in the Promotions tab are skipped entirely, adding an email channel to the AI-reads-first problem he described in his Booking.com piece on Monday.

ALTEK AI's analysis of 2 million emails across 48 hotels finds reply speed is a poor predictor of bookings. Only 2% of unanswered offers received a follow-up, leaving an estimated €3.7 million in unconverted value, while complete, action-oriented replies and follow-ups drove conversion rates of up to 58%. The report, by Kristoffer Pedersen and Jon-Fredrik Hopland, comes from ALTEK AI, a vendor, and fits the Revinate call data from September and The Broadmoor's follow-up result.

BWH Hotels is rebranding under the WorldHotels masterbrand. The move consolidates 4,000-plus properties and 18 brands into a single loyalty programme with 70 million members and a new digital platform.

Sébastien Felix of Influence Society looks at Webflow's Source platform, previewed in September with beta due in Q1 2027. It lets AI agents and human teams co-manage hotel websites within shared brand rules and approval workflows, arriving as hotel websites shift toward verification rather than discovery, as hospitality.today argued in September.

Apaleo reports 70% growth in MCP Server usage between July and September 2026. According to the vendor, hotels are using AI agents for bulk reservation changes, forecasting, and rate management, a live-operations data point for yesterday's viewpoint on whether ARI plumbing limits agentic AI.

People

Francesco Brunetti was appointed Deputy CEO and Asset Director at Starhotels Group. Claire Hemphill was appointed Head of Revenue at Kew Green Hotels, and Kevin Carty was named General Manager at Silversands Collection Grenada.

Properties

Thompson Rome opened as the Thompson Hotels brand's debut in Italy, and Tree of Life Amoravida opened in North Goa. Radisson Hotel Group introduced Africa's first verified net zero hotel in Hoedspruit. In Manhattan, a 1,800-room StandardX flagship is coming and Nammos will open its first U.S. destination in Midtown. Rosewood Hotel Group and SC Asset announced Rosewood Residences Bangkok, and Camp Margaritaville Resort Golden Isles broke ground in Brunswick, Georgia.