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Hotel Yearbook Article The Hotel Yearbook 2026 - Annual Edition

Can we please not say Hybrid, please

Hybrid is hospitality's buzzword du jour—but what if it's a dead end? Matthias Huettebraeuker, Hospitality Strategist & Senior Executive Advisor, argues that "hybrid" represents terminal thinking, not transformation. Instead of reassembling old boxes, he proposes three conditions for discovery: convergence, fluidity, and versatility. The key metric? Engagement—and redefining hospitality around how much of someone's life we hold space for.

Matthias Huettebraeuker
By Matthias Huettebraeuker, Hospitality Strategist & Senior Executive Advisor, Matthias Huettebraeuker
Hotel Yearbook Article The Hotel Yearbook 2026 - Annual Edition

Context-Driven Hospitality: The Next Evolution

Rok Kokalj, Co-founder and CEO of Nevron, describes “context-driven hospitality” as the next step for an industry facing uncertainty and rising complexity. He argues that hotels should move from binary thinking to hybrid intelligence, building clear identity and purpose first so technology, especially AI agents, can support human connection and turn back-end complexity into front-end simplicity that feels seamless for guests.

Rok Kokalj
By Rok Kokalj, Co-founder & CEO, Nevron
Hotel Yearbook Article The Hotel Yearbook 2026 - Annual Edition

How AI is Powering Efficiency and Imagination in Hospitality Design

Lisa A. Haude, Principal-Interior Designer at Studio RYS, shows how AI is becoming a practical creative partner in the studio. She describes using AI to speed up drafting, modeling, admin work, and BIM based visualisation, letting designers test more ideas, reduce errors, and give clients richer, real time ways to see and shape a project. Her main point is that AI should stay in the background as a tool for precision and sustainability insight, while the human side storytelling, taste, and emotional sense of place remains what makes hospitality design truly memorable.

Lisa A. Haude
By Lisa A. Haude, Principal-Interior Design, Studio RYS, Studio RYS (formerly RYS Architects)
Hotel Yearbook Article The Hotel Yearbook 2026 - Annual Edition

Why Presence is the Next Amenity

Susie Arnett of Six Senses explains that as hotel service becomes more automated, the real value of hospitality moves back to the human relationship between guest and host. Drawing on lessons from retreat centres, she shows why future staff must act more like guides than service workers, and why training should focus on presence and emotional intelligence so guests feel truly seen, not just served.

Susie Arnett
By Susie Arnett, Director of Wellness Programming, Six Senses
Hotel Yearbook Article The Hotel Yearbook 2026 - Annual Edition

Bringing it All Together: How All-Inclusive Resorts Changed the Narrative

As all inclusive resorts shed their old value only reputation and reemerge as serious players in the upscale leisure space, Ricardo Orozco Arce of The Villa Group shows how the category’s revival is powered by “hybrid by design” thinking. He maps the unlikely pairings redefining the model luxury and explains how blending these forces can broaden appeal, deepen loyalty and keep the guest experience feeling effortless and worth it at every step.

Ricardo Orozco Arce
By Ricardo Orozco Arce, Vice President Operations, The Villa Group
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Hotel Yearbook Article The Hotel Yearbook 2026 - Annual Edition

The Growth Code: Why Human Investment is the Ultimate Advantage in an AI Era

As hotels race to automate, Tanja Stegmüller, co-founder of TRUSTmenti, makes the case that resilience will come from intentional hybridity: blending digital efficiency with human wisdom, global standards with local soul, and automation with empathy. She lays out a ten point playbook for building hybrid leaders, learning ecosystems, and people centred cultures, arguing that technology can handle tasks, but only humans can deliver judgment, emotion, and the moments that define great hospitality.

Tanja Stegmüller
By Tanja Stegmüller, Co-Founder, TRUSTmenti
Hotel Yearbook Article The Hotel Yearbook 2026 - Annual Edition

Closing the personalization gap: Why hotels still struggle to connect online promises with offline reality

Hotels have perfected AI powered personalization online, yet the experience often falls flat on property because guest insights stay trapped in fragmented systems and are not translated into simple, actionable cues for front line teams. Floor explains how unified data layers, predictive and agentic AI, and open standards like MCP could finally bridge this digital physical gap, as long as hotels pair the tech with training and a culture that turns insights into meaningful moments.

Floor Bleeker
By Floor Bleeker, Board Member, Advisor, Investor and Consultant, IN2 Consulting
Hotel Yearbook Article The Hotel Yearbook 2026 - Annual Edition

AI Adoption in Hospitality: Meet People Where They Are

AI may be rewriting hospitality’s playbook, but the toughest part of adoption is not the software, it is the quiet anxieties it triggers on the front line. By tracing three common fears that surface whenever AI enters the workplace, Lynn Zwibak shows how leaders can turn resistance into readiness and make change something teams help build rather than brace against.

Lynn Zwibak
By Lynn Zwibak, Founder & CEO, Zwibak | Commercial Strategy
Scott Dahl
By Scott Dahl
Expert Views (7)
Muhammad Tanveer
Muhammad Tanveer, Author - The Sales Leadership Brief (Linkedin Newsletter), The Sales Leadership Brief

This is a pivotal shift. The issue is no longer which channels we use, but who controls the guest narrative and the data behind it. Hotels will not win by fighting OTAs on scale or ad spend. We win by aligning revenue, marketing, and sales around a single guest intelligence strategy using data to drive relevance, not just reach.

Ira Vouk
Ira Vouk, Hospitality Tech and AI Consultant, Hospitality 2.0 Consulting

OpenAI, Google and Perplexity will reshape this landscape again. Nobody knows how exactly but 2 years from now the picture will be very different.

Markus Mueller
Markus Mueller, Managing Director, GauVendi

Stop playing the OTA game—change the game with the product. Yes, third parties are taking control of search, booking flows, and traveler data—but copying their playbook won't reclaim the guest relationship. If you try to "out-CRM" Expedia or "out-loyalty" Airbnb, you're choosing a scale game you can't win.

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Simone Puorto
By Simone Puorto
Expert Views (12)
Muhammad Tanveer
Muhammad Tanveer, Author - The Sales Leadership Brief (Linkedin Newsletter), The Sales Leadership Brief

The idea of AI-crafted reviews doesn't worry me as much as the possibility of losing the emotional color that real guests bring to the table. Yes, quick prompts will make feedback easier and remove a lot of noise but hospitality has always lived in the small details that guests describe in their own words.

Ira Vouk
Ira Vouk, Hospitality Tech and AI Consultant, Hospitality 2.0 Consulting

Can the future of hotel reviews be completely AI-generated? - Yes. Will it? Only if we think reviews will continue to be read by humans, which is highly unlikely, as already they're mostly digested by LLMs through semantic analysis to derive trends, sentiment, and suggested areas of improvement.

Erik Muñoz
Erik Muñoz, Business Development Director EMEA, TrustYou

In the next 3–7 years, expect: 95% of reviews to be AI-generated from structured input, platforms to become "reputation orchestrators", users to see personalized, not universal, review summaries, hotels to optimize for models, not guests, because models shape guest choice.

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Development Pipeline

Saudi's Red Sea Development to include a Fairmont property

Fairmont The Red Sea is set to redefine the relationship between luxury tourism and the natural world. The property will feature 193 rooms, six distinct dining concepts, including an overwater restaurant with views of the Red Sea, and a spa. The resort will be situated next to an 18-hole championship golf course, reflecting Fairmont's reputation as a world-class golf operator. It will set new standards in sustainable development, positioned on 125 miles of untouched coastline, an archipelago of more than 90 unspoiled islands, dormant volcanoes, rich marine habitat, and ancient archaeological sites. Opening May 2026.

Fairmont
Umluj, Saudi Arabia