At HITEC 2025 in Indianapolis, we caught up with Karen Stephens, Chief Marketing Officer at Revinate, to talk about how changes in leadership are fuelling product innovation, particularly around guest data, AI, and voice. With a fresh team of tech and data leaders on board, Revinate is doubling down on efforts to unify guest profiles and rethink how technology supports human connection in hospitality. Karen also shared insights on AI’s role in luxury travel, the future of voice, and why hospitality is safe from the AI job scare.

How has recent leadership change influenced Revinate’s innovation?

Karen shared that new leadership, especially the appointment of CTO David Stevens and Chief Data Officer Maneesh Lemoine, has accelerated product development. The new team brings deep expertise from big tech, and they have already reworked key products. A newly enhanced Customer Data Platform (CDP) will be released in July, designed to offer improved performance and scale.

Do you see the role of the CTO changing within hospitality tech?

Absolutely, said Karen. In Revinate’s executive team, the CTO has a central role at the decision-making table. Since everything the company builds rests on a scalable technology foundation, it is essential that tech leadership is deeply involved in both strategy and execution.

Can you tell us more about your cart abandonment tool and its future?

Revinate’s cart abandonment feature comes from its acquisition of Navis in 2021. It is now integrated with their email marketing system, allowing hotels to send follow-up emails after a booking is abandoned. More powerfully, reservation agents can access these leads and follow up with outbound calls. These proactive calls are converting at three times the rate of email alone.

Is voice still relevant, especially in a future with digital agents?

Karen believes voice remains highly relevant, especially in the luxury segment. AI can help supervisors review calls at scale and improve conversion rates. But full automation is not the goal. For high-end travellers, the human touch still matters. The key is making human agents more efficient, not replacing them.

Can AI enhance the personalisation of voice communication?

Yes, and Revinate is already doing this. When a returning guest calls, agents instantly see their preferences, past stays, and personalised suggestions. It is about using AI to empower staff to deliver more thoughtful and efficient service, especially in environments where personal attention is expected.

What is your innovation focus for 2025 and 2026?

With a stronger data team, Revinate is investing heavily in unifying data across platforms, email marketing, sales, and reservations. The goal is to eliminate silos and provide a clean, centralised guest profile. Once that foundation is in place, the potential for intelligent personalisation becomes much greater.

Would you say hospitality is behind other industries in terms of personalisation?

Yes, Karen agreed that hospitality is still catching up with industries like e-commerce and streaming, which have perfected 1:1 personalisation. Siloed systems and fragmented guest data remain major obstacles, but she believes hospitality is getting closer to solving this.

Do tech silos also create human silos in operations?

They do. Tech silos lead to misalignment across departments like revenue, sales, and marketing. Karen mentioned how important it is to surface the right data at the right time so that teams can collaborate more effectively and provide a consistent guest experience.

Is hospitality safe from AI-related job loss?

Karen believes so. Hospitality is built on human interaction, and most people working in the industry are there because they love creating guest experiences. AI can help make teams more efficient by taking repetitive tasks off their plate, but it will never fully replace the human connection that defines a great hotel stay.

About Revinate

Revinate is a direct booking platform that leads the hospitality industry in driving direct revenue and increased profitability.

Our products and our people combine to give hoteliers the superpowers they need to crush their goals. With Revinate, hoteliers shift share away from OTAs and drive tangible results across an individual property or a portfolio. Our industry-leading, AI-powered customer data platform collects, unifies, and synthesizes data to give hoteliers a foundational advantage.

Hoteliers gain critical intelligence — guest lifetime spend, stay preferences, ancillary revenue, and more. With Revinate's Rich Guest Profiles™ data, hoteliers don't need to guess who their most profitable guests are or struggle to drive conversions across email, voice, messaging, and digital channels.

Revinate's direct booking platform and omnichannel communication technology powers 950+ million Rich Guest Profiles across 12,500+ hotels to drive over $17.2 billion in direct revenue.

Related