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Having a human at the helm, not just in the loop, is key to setting AI agents' goals, limits, and escalation triggers, and then to being able to watch the audit trail for anomalies.First, delegate commercial tasks that already operate on written rules, reserving human judgment for those that don't.These tasks go first because the limits are already written.

Hotels have increasingly adopted AI for data analysis and recommendations, yet decision-making and execution remain largely manual. The next leap is moving from AI-powered insights to autonomous action, with humans focusing on governance, strategy and exceptions.In Revenue Management, agents can monitor demand and adjust rates, inventory and restrictions autonomously.

We've seen that significant revenue opportunities, both from groups and leisure guests, exist inside reservation teams' Outlook inboxes, but they often lack the time and capacity to systematically manage them.I think one of the first things hotels should delegate to AI agents is managing these opportunities from the initial inquiry all the way to a booking, although that is very hard to do correctly and responsibly.AI agents should be able to understand guest requests, check availability and rates, prepare relevant offers, and proactively follow up if the guest, travel agent, or whoever made the inquiry doesn't respond.

The hospitality industry faces persistent structural challenges, including low pay, demanding working conditions, seasonality, unsociable hours, limited career progression and poor work–life balance. Additionally, AI, labour mobility, economic pressures and employment uncertainty create new challenges that contribute to high employee turnover, increasing recruitment costs, loss of expertise, reduced operational efficiency and compromised service quality.During the “Great Uncertainty”, organisations must move beyond traditional engagement approaches, recognising that employees are more likely to care for guests when they feel cared for themselves.

Employee engagement depends on whether people feel secure, valued and respected at work. During the “Great Uncertainty”, hospitality employers need to give employees confidence that their effort will be recognised, fairly rewarded and supported.This starts with good working conditions, manageable workloads and decent salaries, particularly at the lower end of the pay scale.

The level of uncertainty in today's workplace is unprecedented. Social media promotes unrealistic lifestyles and income opportunities, causing many employees to question their current jobs and contributes to the "grass is greener" phenomenon.

Diversify revenue streams. A wellness asset that relies too heavily on one guest segment carries unnecessary risk. Balance hotel guests with local residents, memberships, structured programmes and other recurring income so that no single channel determines performance.

One of the biggest ways to manage geopolitical and climate uncertainty is to localize supply chains. It can be very hard, often impossible for a lot of goods, but it can both protect against tail risks as well as tell a fantastic story.

After more than three decades in spa and wellness operations, I have learned that stability comes from financial discipline, prepared teams and consistent guest care. Protect profitability. Understand treatment margins, staffing costs, equipment utilization and provider agreements.

One of the most impactful immersive experiences has been creating opportunities for guests to move beyond being observers and become active participants in the destination. Rather than simply providing a service, we focus on creating meaningful moments that engage the senses, tell a story, and encourage genuine interaction.A particularly memorable example is our locally inspired culinary experiences, where guests can discover regional ingredients, learn about cultural traditions, interact with our culinary team, and participate in elements of the preparation and tasting.

When I became General Manager at Hard Rock Hotel New York, I wanted our arrival experience to reflect the soul of the property and the people who power it. With more than 35 years across five hotel brands, I’ve learned that the most memorable moments in hospitality come from teams who believe in a shared purpose.

Upon joining my latest property, I wanted to make the destination part of the guest experience rather than simply something guests could see from the hotel.I identified a number of exceptional local organic producers within 45 minutes of the property and developed direct partnerships with them, working closely with our Chef to integrate their products into our menus and create dishes that could only truly belong to this destination.We worked with a local goat cheese producer, a grower cultivating more than 120 varieties of citrus, an olive oil producer whose oil reaches 584 mg/kg of polyphenols, and Morocco’s only truffle producer.The objective was not simply to source better ingredients, but to give our guests a story behind what they were eating: where it came from, who produced it, and why it was unique to the region.The experience became a way of discovering the destination through taste, conversations and local craftsmanship.

It was about time! The EU’s tighter rules on environmental claims give hospitality a reason to examine what sits behind the word “green”.For me, the real test is whether a hotel makes life better for the people and place around it.

With EmpCo but without Green Claims Directive our industry finds itself in an uncomfortable position: the obligation is here, the instruction manual is not. For most hotels, the data behind disclosures would not yet survive serious scrutiny — not because of bad intent, but because we built sustainability reporting as a communications exercise before we built it as a data exercise.

Credible sustainability reporting starts with integrity: clear definitions, traceable sources and transparent methods. AI can help organise and analyse information, but measured data, estimates and projections must remain clearly distinguished.

Ask Alibaba, Not Google.200 million. That's how many AI-native orders ran through Alibaba's Qwen app during Spring Festival alone. Fliggy's AI-driven bookings jumped 800% year-over-year in that same window, with attraction-ticket conversion now matching OTAs that have run for two decades.

Google's agentic booking will flourish if its conversational AI collapses hours of travel research into simple, secure Google Pay transactions backed by major hotel and OTA partners. However, it will fizzle if consumer anxiety over high-cost bookings prevents users from trusting an AI agent without traditional visual validation, or if strict global regulations like the EU's DMA permanently limit its market footprint.

I believe “this time is different.” Both “Book on Google” and agentic booking are not MoR and instead route bookings to the end service providers (OTA or direct). So clearly, the question is why would travelers be comfortable “submitting” bookings directly to AI, but not BoG?With BoG, Google tried to close the loop and become a semi-transactional layer.

Over the years, I’ve seen that the most successful technology partnerships rarely start with technology. They start with a clear understanding that change is needed and a shared vision for where the organization wants to go. The hotel groups that get the greatest value from technology are usually those that are willing to challenge the status quo and bring the right people together to make informed decisions.Equally important is leadership.

This resonates deeply after decades in hospitality technology. The strongest outcomes come from genuine partnerships—not merely contracts.As a P&L owner, I’ve seen that distinction from both sides. Some clients generate meaningful revenue but create a disproportionate drain on resources or dominate a roadmap in ways that do not serve the broader customer community.

In my experience running a boutique technology firm, choosing the right client matters as much as the client choosing the right vendor. Our scarcest resource is not scale. It is attention.The clients we go the extra mile for are clear about the problem they are solving, give us the real decision-makers, decide with discipline, and treat the relationship as a partnership rather than a transaction.

Hoteliers have told us for years that they have huge amounts of data, but in separate systems. The core issue is that each tool runs on its own data set and doesn't play nice with others. Your PMS is working with one set of numbers and your channel manager with another.That's partly because connecting these systems is nobody's job.

The general malaise that the industry maintains when it comes to doing the hard work of technology and data structure.This is the one initiative that is almost always pushed down the road. Largely because people hope someone else will do it.

I spoke about this topic on HEDNA's stage in Lisbon a couple of weeks back, on how AI is redrawing hotel distribution. Knowing that 79% of what AI knows about a hotel comes from OTAs, metasearch, and editorial sources — and not from the hotel itself, which only accounts for 7.5% — I believe we can agree that AI is filling the gap with third-party data.

A focus on employee well-being can translate to reduced turnover and burnout. Middle management needs to be provided training and education as well as experiences that enables them to be continually learning and growing. Managers and front-line leaders need knowledge, experiential learning opportunities, application practice time plus learning tools that focus on decision making to help create better work environments.

Supervisors and department heads are the bridge between executives and frontline employees. They may indeed be the most consequential leadership layer because they must translate policies, staffing decisions, service standards, and culture into actual workplace practices.

This is what happens when organisations treat people as numbers on a spreadsheet. Line and middle managers absorb some of the most demanding aspects of hospitality work: pressure from senior leaders and owners, the emotional needs of their teams, and the expectations, and sometimes unacceptable behaviour of customers.Good hospitality companies do exist, and many understand this reality.

A good website/ digital marketing, a decent loyalty offer, and a solid booking engine are essential for all hotels to keep a meaningful share of guest relationships. The role of the OTA should be to bring new guests to a hotel.

The debate suffers from oversimplification. First-party data is strictly contextual to the operational stage being executed—no single entity holds complete ownership.Digital Discovery & Booking: OTAs capture top-of-funnel acquisition data for indirect channels.

It is neither myth nor luxury; it is the precondition for controlling a hotel's own commercial destiny.The "myth" argument conflates two failures. Yes, most hoteliers have underinvested in direct channels for decades, and that failure lies with the industry, not the OTAs.

The percentage is the wrong question. Strategy is the right one. Throwing 6% at marketing without a plan wastes 6%. Spending 2% with clear priorities and discipline beats it every time. Here's what matters more than the number: Where are travelers actually finding you today?

I’d encourage hoteliers to approach budgeting from a slightly different direction. Every reservation that comes from an OTA costs 15% to 18%… or more. And too many hotels receive too large a share of their revenues from OTAs. Consider a very conservative example.

Let's take a step back. Before diving into traditional budget allocation, given travelers' growing openness to adopting AI-enabled services (over 70%, according to Accenture's 2026 study), hotel properties should start considering Agentic AI as a primary customer acquisition channel.What does customer acquisition via Agentic AI look like?