Webinar: Robotics in Hospitality: ROI, Adoption & Operational Reality
A panel discussion with four industry executives on where hotel robotics is generating real ROI, barriers to wider adoption, workforce implications, and what lies ahead.
AI in Hospitality
This dedicated AI in Hospitality section explores how AI is reshaping the industry, from guest communication and marketing personalisation to revenue management, operations, staffing, cybersecurity, and the evolving role of data and automation across the hotel and travel ecosystem. It brings together practical use cases, expert insights, product and partnership news, leadership viewpoints, and real world lessons from properties and brands of all sizes, helping hospitality professionals separate substance from hype and make informed decisions about where AI delivers value today and what to prepare for next.
What Horst Schulze Understood About Excellence That Every Hotel Investing in AI Needs to Hear
Drawing on Horst Schulze's service philosophy at Ritz-Carlton and Capella, the piece argues hotels abandon AI too early by measuring the wrong outcomes on the wrong timeline.
By Are Morch, Digital Transformation Coach for Hotels, Are Morch, AI Champion
Loyalty programs may be the one asset agents can't take
Major hotel loyalty programs, with hundreds of millions of members, may become the critical data asset that AI booking agents depend on, giving chains structural leverage in the agentic travel era.
By Markus Busch, Editor/Publisher, hospitality.today
AIHA 2026 Member Survey Report
Survey of 100 AIHA members finds hoteliers prioritize practical AI guidance, shared standards, and benchmarking over generic AI commentary, with 78% citing trend leadership as their top engagement driver.
RobosizeME’s Sean Anderson: why not all hotel automation should be AI
RobosizeME CRO Sean Anderson explains why the company uses RPA over AI for defined hotel workflows, citing cost, reliability, and compliance as key factors over AI-first approaches.
Hotel Yearbook Article The Hotel Yearbook 2026 - Technology Edition
True Recognition at the Front Desk: A More Personal Check-In
Alan Young argues that voice recognition technology at the front desk is not a cost-cutting measure but a means of restoring something the industry has been quietly losing: the agent's attention. By offloading administrative commands to speech, the technology frees staff to do what no system can replicate — make a guest feel genuinely seen upon arrival.
By Alan Young, VP, Strategy | Hospitality, Infor
Shiji's Natalie Kimball: hotels can't outspend OTAs on AI, but they can still win on experience
We didn't go to HITEC 2026 for the demos. We went for the conversations. We sat down with exhibitors right there on the show floor. No script, no prepared questions, just one starting point: tell us what you do, in plain language. This is where it went with Natalie Kimball, VP of Strategic Account Management for Horizon Distribution and Iceportal Content at Shiji.
Hotel Yearbook Article The Hotel Yearbook 2026 - Technology Edition
The Lobby Boy v2031 or How Hotels Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the HXO
Terence Ronson looks ahead to 2031, when frictionless automation will have made most hotels equally smart, equally efficient, and equally forgettable — and argues that the competitive differentiator will be a new role he calls the Human Experience Orchestrator. Part behavioral psychologist, part operational commander, the HXO is the person who reads the AI's outputs and then decides, with genuine human judgment, what to actually do with them.
By Terence Ronson, Founder & Managing Director, Pertlink Limited
Cendyn wants hotels to get ahead of "OTA 2.0"
We didn't go to HITEC 2026 for the demos. We went for the conversations. We sat down with exhibitors right there on the show floor. No script, no prepared questions, just one starting point: tell us what you do, in plain language. This is where it went with Cendyn's CEO Michael Bennett, Chief Marketing Officer Nicki Graham, and EVP of Product Kevin Duncan.
What I Saw at HITEC 2026 That Nobody Else Is Talking About
The author argues that HITEC 2026 overlooked a key market gap: back-office AI that reduces overhead and drives margins, while vendors focused almost entirely on guest-facing tools.
Hotel Yearbook Article The Hotel Yearbook 2026 - Technology Edition
AI Adoption Is Accelerating. Here’s How Hotels Are Keeping Pace
Catherine Donaldson takes a decidedly practical approach, moving past the philosophical debates about AI in hospitality to focus on where it is already delivering measurable results today. From AI voice agents answering calls around the clock to agentic workflows that coordinate operations without manual handoffs, she maps five proven use cases and makes the case that the performance gap between adopters and laggards is already widening.
By Catherine Donaldson, Director of Marketing, Canary Technologies
How AI is transforming the hotel commercial engine: Group sales, revenue management, and unified strategy
AI-powered group quoting agents and commercial strategy tools can unify hotel sales, revenue, and marketing teams on a single data view, cutting RFP response times from days to minutes.
By Alan Young, VP, Strategy | Hospitality, Infor
Agilysys' Frank Pitsikalis: fix the data before you fix the AI
We didn't go to HITEC 2026 for the demos. We went for the conversations. We sat down with exhibitors right there on the show floor. No script, no prepared questions, just one starting point: tell us what you do, in plain language. This is where it went with Frank Pitsikalis, SVP of Product Strategy and CMO at Agilysys.
Hotel Yearbook Article The Hotel Yearbook 2026 - Technology Edition
The Execution Layer Hotels Are Missing, and Why It Matters Before Agents Arrive
George Roukas identifies the layer most hotel AI strategies are skipping entirely: execution. Brands can build sophisticated loyalty programs and accept intent-rich bookings from AI agents, but if the operational infrastructure cannot reliably deliver what was promised — the right room, the right amenities, the right moment — none of it compounds into loyalty. His argument is that an ontology-based digital twin of hotel operations is what closes that gap, and that now is the time to build it.
By George Roukas, President, GAIPAN
Radisson Hotel Group launches hospitality industry-leading AI-powered real-time price matching technology
Radisson Hotel Group's AI system automatically detects and matches lower OTA rates on RadissonHotels.com in real time, replacing the manual Best Online Rate Guarantee claims process across all properties worldwide.
Trybe runs the parts of a hotel the PMS doesn't
We didn't go to HITEC 2026 for the demos. We went for the conversations. We sat down with exhibitors right there on the show floor. No script, no prepared questions, just one starting point: tell us what you do, in plain language. This is where it went with Ricky Daniels, Co-Founder of Trybe.
Hotel Yearbook Article The Hotel Yearbook 2026 - Technology Edition
The Agentic Hotel: How Open Infrastructure Turns AI Into Operational Performance
Stephan Wiesener argues that the hospitality AI conversation has moved past experimentation into a harder question: what infrastructure actually allows AI agents to take reliable action across real hotel operations? Through concrete case studies from citizenM, THE FLAG Zürich, and Cocoon & Eckelmann Hotels, he makes the case that open, API-first architecture is the unglamorous foundation on which everything else depends.
By Stephan Wiesener, Founder & CTO, Apaleo GmbH
The Guest Has a Companion Now
UBTech's consumer humanoid robot launch signals a shift in guest expectations that hospitality must address, as home companion AI sets a new relational benchmark hotels are unprepared to meet.
By Terence Ronson, Founder & Managing Director, Pertlink Limited
Choice Hotels International Appoints Artificial Intelligence Leader Ali Keshavarz to Board of Directors
Choice Hotels appoints CVS Health's Ali Keshavarz, a data and AI expert with McKinsey and Aetna backgrounds, to its board to support AI-driven growth across its franchise portfolio.
Oracle's Tanya Pratt: Cloud was the foundation, AI is the decoration
We didn't go to HITEC 2026 for the demos. We went for the conversations. We sat down with exhibitors right there on the show floor. No script, no prepared questions, just one starting point: tell us what you do, in plain language. This is where it went with Tanya Pratt, Global Vice President of Strategy and Product Management at Oracle Hospitality.