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Hotel Yearbook Article The Hotel Yearbook 2026 - Technology Edition

When AI Becomes the Travel Agent

Pablo Delgado argues that AI assistants are not simply adding another channel to hotel distribution — they are compressing the entire travel funnel into a single conversation, potentially owning discovery, consideration, and transaction in one pass. The hotels that wait for certainty before adapting, he warns, risk repeating the same mistake they made when OTAs arrived.

Pablo Delgado
By Pablo Delgado, Managing Partner & CEO America, Mirai
Development Rebranding

IHG Hotels & Resorts expands luxury footprint in Portugal with InterContinental Vilamoura – Algarve signing

IHG Hotels & Resorts (IHG), one of the world’s leading hotel companies, announces the signing of InterContinental Vilamoura – Algarve in Vilamoura, Portugal, in partnership with HDP Algarve SA. The signing reinforces the continued appeal of the Algarve as a top luxury resort destination in Southern Europe and marks the fourth InterContinental property in Portugal, further strengthening IHG’s leading Luxury & Lifestyle presence in the country.

InterContinental
Quarteira, Portugal
Hotel Yearbook Article The Hotel Yearbook 2026 - Technology Edition

Do You Think You’re Ready for A2A Commerce?

Ira Vouk challenges the industry's comfortable assumption that agentic AI is still a distant, chatbot-adjacent phenomenon. The real disruption, she argues, is not travelers talking to AI assistants, it is machines negotiating directly with machines, and a hospitality infrastructure built entirely around human browsing behavior that is nowhere near ready for it.

Ira Vouk
By Ira Vouk, Hospitality Tech and AI Consultant, Hospitality 2.0 Consulting
Hotel Yearbook Article The Hotel Yearbook 2026 - Technology Edition

The Signal Was Always There. We Just Had No Way to Capture It.

Drawing on a career that moved from reservation phones to housekeeping supervision to manager on duty, Are Morch argues that the real pre-stay challenge has never been technological — it has always been a signal problem. The guest intent is there, the data exists across departments, but without a system to capture and connect it, every interaction starts from scratch and the intelligence is lost.

Are Morch
By Are Morch, Digital Transformation Coach for Hotels, Are Morch, Digital Transformation Coach
Hotel Yearbook Article The Hotel Yearbook 2026 - Technology Edition

Synthetic Persuasion: AI and the Evolution of Marketing

Neil Foster maps the collision between hospitality's two tectonic forces — human connection and operational optimization — and argues that AI has become the primary mechanism through which synthetic persuasion now operates: shaping discovery, engineering desire, and guiding decisions through systems so seamlessly embedded that they no longer feel like persuasion at all. The critical question he leaves open is whether that same technology can amplify genuine care rather than replace it.

Neil Foster
By Neil Foster, Hospitality Technology Advisor, Techtonic Hospitality Services
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Development Opening

Radisson Blu Hotel, Bonn opens on the Rhine next to Germany's largest conference center

A 336-room upper-upscale hotel on the banks of the Rhine, directly adjacent to the World Conference Center Bonn (WCCB), is now open under the Radisson Blu brand. Located in Bonn's former government district, the Radisson Blu Hotel, Bonn brings together riverfront views, skyline dining and direct access to one of Germany's most important conference venues – as Bonn continues to strengthen its position as an international destination for events, institutions and leisure travel.

Radisson Blu
Bonn, Germany
Hotel Yearbook Article The Hotel Yearbook 2026 - Technology Edition

Data Isolation Is AI's Biggest Obstacle in Hospitality

Frank Trampert argues that the hospitality industry's AI ambitions are being held back not by a lack of technology, but by a data architecture problem it has largely refused to confront. Using the recurring archetype of a loyal guest who remains a stranger across ten properties of the same group, he makes the case that cross-property behavioral intelligence is the real prize — and that data discipline, not more tools, is what stands between the industry and it.

Frank Trampert
By Frank Trampert, CRO, Revinate, Inc.
Hotel Yearbook Article The Hotel Yearbook 2026 - Technology Edition

Poor Hotel Data Is Killing Direct Bookings. C.U.P.S. Can Fix It

Daniel Doppler opens with a simple experiment — ask an AI to recommend a hotel in your city — and uses the almost universally disappointing results to make a pointed argument: most hotels are invisible to AI not because of anything the technology does wrong, but because their own data is too fragmented, inconsistent, and unstructured for a machine to trust. His four-step CUPS framework offers a practical starting point for fixing that before the window closes.

Daniel C. Doppler
By Daniel C. Doppler, President, Quinta
Hotel Yearbook Article The Hotel Yearbook 2026 - Technology Edition

The Distribution Layer in the AI-First Era

Max Starkov argues that the rise of AI platforms as travel discovery tools is reshaping hotel distribution faster than most properties are prepared to handle but that chasing AI visibility without fixing the fundamentals of guest retention is a strategic mistake. The hotels most at risk, he contends, are independents that have neither invested in the tech stack needed to feed AI systems nor built the first-party data infrastructure to keep guests coming back. 

Max Starkov
By Max Starkov, Hospitality & travel technologist and digital strategist, Hospitality Net
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Development Pipeline

IHG signs first Kimpton in Spain’s Capital

IHG Hotels & Resorts (IHG), one of the world’s leading hotel companies, signs a Kimpton-branded hotel in Madrid, located in Goya Street, 89, in partnership with El Corte Inglés. The signing, advised by Colliers Hotels Iberia, marks the brand’s debut in Madrid and a significant step forward in IHG’s continued luxury and lifestyle growth in Spain.

Kimpton
Madrid, Spain
Hotel Yearbook Article The Hotel Yearbook 2026 - Technology Edition

The Invisible Shortlist

Kurt Weinsheimer draws on 25 years in online travel to argue that the shift to AI-powered discovery is categorically different from every platform change that came before it. When a search returns five options instead of fifty, being sixth is the same as being invisible — and most hotels have no idea how they appear, or whether they appear at all, on the shortlists AI systems are already building.

Kurt Weinsheimer
By Kurt Weinsheimer, President and GM Properties, Sojern