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Short answer: In many hotels, yes. We ask teams to think like owners, then reward them like department managers.My position is clear: the whole leadership team should share one final objective, and that objective is GOP. What the hotel actually keeps after operating costs.

This is a topic that is coming up with increasing frequency in my conversations with hotel leadership teams and asset managers. And the reality is that far too often, departmental goals are disconnected from one another and, more importantly, from the financial objectives of ownership.One thing I advocate for passionately is the implementation of a balanced scorecard that aligns every department, every leader, and ultimately every individual with the overarching objectives of the asset.

If we want teams to optimize profit, we have to stop paying them to optimize something else.Owners and operators will always struggle with paying a sales manager more for a lower-rated piece of business. But if that business fills a need period, costs less to service, or has big ancillary revenue contribution, that may be exactly what they should do.

Beyond Pampering: Hotels Must Become Partners in the Guest's Wellbeing JourneyI believe the future of hospitality wellness lies in conscious restoration—the “Golden Glue.” Hotels must move beyond traditional pampering and purely clinical approaches to become partners in their guests’ lifelong wellbeing journeys.Throughout three decades in spa and wellness, I have witnessed evolving expectations.

The introduction makes a very strong case for The Golden Glue as being the Golden Mean or Goldilocks Zone of taking guests where they are in their individual wellness journeys then giving them the right mix of well-serviced programming along with those activities that will inspire guests to be more resilient.

The most effective role sits between hospitality and wellbeing. Hotels can offer everything from restorative experiences and relaxation to fitness, movement, nutrition, and performance-focused programmes. The key is recognising that wellbeing looks different for every guest and providing a range of experiences that allow individuals to engage in the way that best suits their needs and goals.The real opportunity is to create environments that help people feel their best.

Hotel websites are not becoming unimportant, but they have shifted from being a competitive differentiator to essential digital infrastructure.A beautiful website will rarely win a guest if the price parity is poor, the online reputation is mediocre, or the property is invisible on AI discovery platforms.

If argue that websites are more important than ever because that's how assistants like Muse, Dit, Grok Bot and Instinct find and book hotels (not via API or MCP). We're just optimizing for bots now, not humans.

Having spent nearly two decades helping owners define their marketing strategy, the real answer to this is nuanced; it depends on the type of hotel. Now with agentic commerce, a schism is happening as follows:(1) Heads in beds hotels / "lodging" = no need for website, only plumbing + AI agents(2) Luxury, boutique, resorts etc / "hospitality" = website VERY importantThe first camp is simpler to understand.

Yes, the existing piping is not ideal. Remember, a bunch of hotels in Europe still use Booking.com as their booking engine, because there's no piping at all (no booking engine of their own, or their PMS is premise-based and lacks APIs).

Yes, outdated ARI plumbing is a huge immediate obstacle, but it isn't the only one.Legacy hotel systems rely on slow, cached data and one-way connections that frequently crash when AI agents try to make real-time bookings. However, even if the technology is fixed, bigger business problems remain: hotels fear losing customer relationships and revenue margins to AI intermediaries, and payment liability for AI errors remains unclear.In short, while the technical pipes are broken, the deeper issue is a lack of trust, clear business models, and secure payment systems for autonomous bookings.

The main impediment isn’t tech plumbing; it is inherent in the concept of “agentic AI” itself. It is based on Gen AI LLMs, which are probabilistic, next-best-word engines. They have no “real-world” models, eg understanding higher / lower, before / after, logic, distance, numbers. They mimic very well. Super for wordsmithing and unstructured data / document analysis, poor for most everything else.

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.