HITEC Paris 2026: The Rise of AI Agents and the Value of Being Human

For the first time, HITEC arrived in Paris as part of EquipHotel, bringing together hospitality technology professionals, researchers, innovators, and industry leaders for a day dedicated to the digital transformation of the hotel sector. Organised by RX Global in partnership with Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals (HFTP®), the inaugural HITEC Paris expanded the international reach of one of the industry's most established technology conference series.

The agenda covered some of the most pressing challenges facing hospitality today, from artificial intelligence and cybersecurity to automation, guest experience, and operational performance. But beyond the technologies themselves, a more fundamental question emerged: Are we using technology to make hospitality better, or are we gradually redefining hospitality around what technology can do?

That question was central to the opening AI panel, moderated by Lyle Worthington (HFTP) and featuring Dr. Alexander Schmidt (Hotelschool The Hague), Fabio Maggioni (Belmond), and Simone Puorto (Hospitality Net, Travel Singularity, Elegia).

The discussion brought together three complementary perspectives: academic research into AI adoption and its structural implications, practical experience building proprietary AI systems within a luxury hospitality organisation, and a more philosophical examination of technology's impact on the human foundations of the industry.

Hospitality's Next Intermediation Problem

One of the opening arguments came from Alexander Schmidt, whose research suggests that hospitality remains among the slowest industries in adopting artificial intelligence. In the Netherlands, for example, only approximately one in ten hospitality businesses currently uses AI, even as AI-enabled companies represent a substantial share of economic activity across the broader business landscape.

But low adoption is only part of the problem. Schmidt warned that artificial intelligence could introduce another powerful layer of intermediation between hotels and their customers.

The comparison with online travel agencies is difficult to ignore. For decades, hotels have struggled to maintain control over distribution, customer relationships, and commercial margins as digital intermediaries consolidated their positions. Now, a similar transformation could unfold through conversational interfaces and autonomous AI agents.

As technology companies invest enormous amounts of capital into foundation models and AI infrastructure, the economic pressure to monetise those investments will only increase. For hotels, the risk is not simply paying additional technology fees. It is losing ownership of the guest relationship once again.

The question is no longer only who controls hotel distribution, but who controls the intelligence layer through which travellers discover, evaluate, and eventually book accommodation.

If AI assistants become the primary interface between consumers and hospitality providers, hotels may find themselves negotiating with a new generation of intermediaries. And this time, those intermediaries could control not only visibility and transactions, but also the information and recommendations shaping travellers' decisions.

From Buying Software to Owning the Intelligence

Fabio Maggioni offered a different perspective, drawing on his experience developing proprietary AI agents at Belmond. His argument challenged one of the hospitality industry's longstanding assumptions: that hotel companies should focus exclusively on operating hotels and leave software development to technology vendors.

In an increasingly AI-driven environment, that distinction may become less relevant. Maggioni emphasised the importance of owning the underlying data architecture rather than becoming dependent on individual software providers.

The key is to own your data layer. When your information lives in your own platform, you can plug in any third-party system, move faster, and deploy your own AI agents without waiting for vendors.

Fabio Maggioni, Belmond

When a hospitality organisation controls its information layer, it can experiment with different models, integrate new services, and develop internal applications without waiting for lengthy vendor development cycles. The objective is not necessarily to create large software engineering departments. Small, multidisciplinary teams combining technical expertise with operational knowledge can build and test solutions rapidly.

But there is an important prerequisite: you cannot build an intelligent organisation on top of an unintelligible technology stack.

This point became one of the recurring themes of the discussion. Many hotel companies are rushing to adopt AI agents while still operating fragmented environments where property management systems, central reservation systems, customer relationship management platforms, and operational applications barely communicate.

Adding artificial intelligence to that architecture does not automatically resolve the underlying problems. It can simply make an already inefficient system more expensive.

The panel therefore challenged the assumption that every hospitality business urgently needs an AI strategy. Perhaps the more useful priority is developing an architecture capable of accommodating technologies that have not yet been invented. Open interfaces, accessible information, flexible integrations, clear data ownership, and organisational interoperability may ultimately prove more valuable than any individual AI application.

The Three Dimensions of AI Adoption

Another important contribution came from Schmidt's research into the relationship between operational efficiency, employee experience, and guest experience.

Technology vendors understandably tend to emphasise the first. Automation reduces repetitive work, increases productivity, and potentially lowers operational costs. But those improvements do not happen in isolation. Every technological intervention also changes the experience of the people working with the system and the guests receiving the service.

Schmidt proposed evaluating AI investments across three interconnected dimensions:

• Operational efficiency: Does the technology improve productivity, reduce friction, or create measurable economic value?

• Employee experience: Does it support staff, enhance their capabilities, and improve working conditions, or introduce additional monitoring and pressure?

• Guest experience: Does it make hospitality more relevant and meaningful, or simply replace human interaction with automated processes?

As Schmidt summarised during the discussion:

Every AI decision affects three dimensions: operational efficiency, worker experience, and guest experience. The technology matters, but the strategic position you choose matters more.

Dr. Alexander Schmidt, Hotelschool The Hague

The distinction matters most when considering what organisations do with the time saved through automation. Organisations can absorb efficiency gains into existing operations, redirect them toward employee development, or convert them into headcount reductions.

These represent fundamentally different strategic choices. A hotel might automate administrative tasks so employees can spend more time building meaningful relationships with guests. Another might use exactly the same technology to operate with fewer employees.

Both approaches can be economically rational, but they do not necessarily represent the same understanding of hospitality. Their suitability depends heavily on the brand's positioning and promise.

When Humans Are Measured Like Machines

The conversation also addressed a paradox increasingly visible in hotel operations. We celebrate artificial intelligence for becoming more human-like while simultaneously evaluating hospitality employees through increasingly mechanical performance indicators.

Consider the traditional check-in process. In many organisations, speed has become the dominant measure of success. A receptionist who completes a check-in in thirty seconds may be considered more efficient than one who spends several minutes speaking with a guest.

But is that necessarily a better hospitality experience?

A short transaction might be exactly what a traveller wants after a long journey. Another guest might appreciate a conversation, a personal recommendation, or simply feeling recognised. The problem arises when hospitality is reduced to a standardised sequence of measurable transactions.

As Puorto argued during the discussion, the industry may be experiencing a reversal of the traditional uncanny valley: rather than machines becoming disturbingly human, humans are increasingly being trained to behave like machines.

We're training humans to work like machines and evaluating them on technical KPIs. Until we start measuring humans on human KPIs and machines on machine KPIs, rather than the other way around, we'll keep missing what makes hospitality truly human.

Simone Puorto, Hospitality Net / Travel Singularity / Elegia

This raises an uncomfortable question. If we measure people exclusively through machine-oriented KPIs, why should we be surprised when machines eventually outperform them?

Schmidt reinforced the argument with the example of AI-enabled employee monitoring, where technology can assess how frequently employees use specific expressions or follow prescribed behavioural patterns. Such systems may generate measurable operational improvements while simultaneously diminishing employee autonomy and authenticity.

The challenge, then, is not simply to make employees more productive. It is to reconsider which dimensions of the human experience should be measured, and which should perhaps remain beyond the reach of optimisation.

Luxury, Automation, and the Value of Human Imperfection

The debate became particularly interesting when it moved into luxury hospitality. Will luxury hotels increasingly use AI to deliver perfectly personalised, frictionless experiences? Or will authentic human interaction become an increasingly valuable differentiator precisely because technology makes it optional?

Maggioni highlighted the importance of recognition and personalisation. Luxury guests do not necessarily want to repeat their preferences every time they interact with a property. They expect continuity, familiarity, and an effortless experience. Intelligent systems can help deliver those expectations, particularly when they support employees rather than replace them.

Puorto introduced another perspective through his Humans-as-Luxury framework.

In a world where intelligence, content, service interactions, and operational processes become increasingly automated and replicable, genuinely human experiences could acquire a new form of scarcity. Not because humans will always be faster, more accurate, or more efficient, but precisely because they will not.

A spontaneous conversation, a personal gesture, or even an imperfect interaction may become meaningful differentiators in an environment dominated by algorithmic predictability.

This does not imply that every guest wants a human interaction at every stage of the journey. Quite the opposite. For certain travellers and situations, a completely automated experience may be preferable.

The strategic question is whether hotels can offer a coherent experience aligned with their positioning, rather than forcing every property into the same technological model. In that sense, the future of luxury may be less about choosing between technology and humanity, and more about preserving the freedom to choose.

The Difficult Future of the Middle Market

One of the more provocative concerns raised during the panel involved the potential polarisation of hospitality.

At one end of the spectrum, highly automated properties could use AI to operate at scale, reducing transactional friction and labour requirements. At the other, luxury hotels could increasingly differentiate themselves through personalised, human-intensive experiences supported by sophisticated technology.

But what happens to the properties in between?

Midscale hotels often face the greatest technological fragmentation, limited investment capacity, and increasing pressure on operating margins. They may lack the resources to develop proprietary AI infrastructure while simultaneously struggling to sustain the staffing levels required for meaningful human service.

This creates the risk of a difficult middle ground: hotels that cannot fully capture the benefits of automation but also cannot afford to distinguish themselves through human interaction.

The outcome is not inevitable, but the strategic challenge is significant. Technology adoption alone will not solve it. Hotels will need to reconsider their positioning, operating models, organisational structures, and ultimately the value they promise to guests.

When AI Agents Become the Guests

The conversation also explored an emerging transformation in the relationship between hotels and travellers. What happens when the primary consumer of hotel information is no longer a human browsing a website, but an autonomous AI agent evaluating properties on their behalf?

Schmidt suggested that AI-mediated discovery could fundamentally change hotel marketing economics. Traditional visual storytelling, advertising campaigns, and promotional messaging may become less influential when agents prioritise structured information, transparent pricing, availability, guest reviews, and clearly defined benefits.

Rather than navigating dozens of websites, travellers may delegate the entire discovery and comparison process to digital assistants. This could create a new competitive environment in which the quality, accessibility, and reliability of hotel data become as important as the quality of its marketing.

Puorto argued that the priority for hotel operators should therefore be the creation of a single, reliable source of truth. Property descriptions, room categories, amenities, menus, services, policies, and guest preferences should not remain scattered across disconnected systems.

The same applies to customer identities and historical interactions. An AI agent cannot deliver meaningful personalisation when the organisation lacks a consistent understanding of its guests.

As agent-to-agent interactions become increasingly common, the ability to provide structured, accurate, and accessible information could become a prerequisite for commercial visibility.

Digital Sovereignty and the Cost of Dependency

Beyond operational applications, the panel also examined the economics of artificial intelligence.

Most AI-powered hospitality solutions ultimately depend on a relatively small number of foundation-model providers. This creates a potentially significant concentration of technological and economic power.

Today, businesses may benefit from relatively accessible AI capabilities, but future pricing, usage costs, and access conditions remain uncertain. The risk becomes particularly relevant when companies build critical workflows around external AI infrastructures they do not control.

Companies also tend to use autonomous agents for tasks that could be performed more efficiently through conventional system integrations. An agent interacting with a legacy interface may technically automate a process, but that does not necessarily make it the most economical or sustainable solution.

Sometimes an API is still a better answer than an AI agent.

The broader lesson is that technological sophistication should not be confused with operational intelligence. A solution is valuable because it solves a problem effectively, not because it uses the latest technology.

The Human Question Nobody Can Avoid

Perhaps the most consequential part of the discussion concerned employment and the future of hospitality careers.

AI promises to eliminate repetitive tasks and free employees to focus on higher-value activities. But whether those promises translate into better jobs, fewer jobs, or entirely different organisational structures remains an open question.

The panel challenged the comforting assumption that automation will necessarily augment human capabilities rather than replace them. Particularly concerning is the potential disappearance of entry-level positions through which young professionals traditionally develop expertise.

If the repetitive tasks that once marked the first steps of a career become automated, how will future hospitality leaders gain the experience, judgment, and practical understanding needed to manage increasingly complex organisations?

The implications extend beyond productivity. They touch education, professional development, social mobility, and the long-term sustainability of the hospitality workforce.

Worthington brought the discussion back to one of its most fundamental contradictions:

Are we freeing people up, or are we just trying to remove them? That's ultimately the question we need to ask ourselves when we talk about automating hospitality.

Lyle Worthington, HFTP

As Worthington emphasised in the closing exchange, learning how to learn and developing the ability to deal with difficulty may become increasingly important professional capabilities. In an industry facing technological change at unprecedented speed, adaptability may matter more than mastering any particular application.

Beyond AI Readiness: Choosing What Hospitality Should Become

The inaugural HITEC Paris offered an important opportunity to explore technologies that will undoubtedly influence the industry's future. But the opening panel also showed why innovation cannot be reduced to adopting new software.

The essential questions are increasingly strategic, organisational, and philosophical.

Who owns the guest relationship? Who controls the information intelligent systems depend on? How should hotels distribute the economic benefits of automation? What happens to employees when efficiency becomes the dominant objective? And which elements of the hospitality experience are we willing to automate, even when automation becomes technically possible?

The discussion did not produce a single answer. Nor should it have.

Different hospitality models will require different technological strategies. What works for an economy property may be inappropriate for an ultra-luxury resort, and what makes sense for a multinational group may be unrealistic for an independent hotel.

But one principle emerged clearly: the ability to adopt technology is not the same as having a reason to adopt it.

Hotels should invest in technological foundations, interoperable systems, accessible data, and organisational capabilities that allow them to adapt. At the same time, they must become more deliberate about the experiences, relationships, and forms of value they want to preserve.

The future of hospitality will certainly involve more artificial intelligence. Whether it will also involve better hospitality remains a choice.

And that may be the most important decision the industry has to make before 2030.

Media Contact

Simone Puorto

Global Hospitality Top 100 Thought Leader | Published Author (5x)| MBA Lecturer | Founder: Travel Singularity, Elegia, Rebyū | Head of Innovation: Hospitality Net | Advisor: RobosizeME, Takyon [email protected] +393756343456