The Mapmaker's Paradox
A narrative essay argues that AI-driven recommendations are becoming the internet's new organizing principle, shifting value from clicks and search to trusted, curated guidance.
By Arlo Laitin, Chief Business Officer, Curacity
Opinion Articles
Beyond Installation: Why Remote Management and Field Services Are Critical to Self-Service Success in Hospitality
Kiosk.eu makes the case that remote management platforms and field services are as critical as hardware selection for keeping hotel self-check-in kiosks operational and guest-ready.
By Dipesh Bharambe, Digital Marketing Specialist, Kiosk Embedded Systems GmbH
How Hotels Can Use Reviews to Book More Direct Group Business
Opinion piece argues hotels neglect review-gathering for group/MICE business, and outlines a practical SOP for capturing testimonials at peak emotional moments to win direct bookings.
By Cory Falter, Partner, Lure Agency
How Much Money Is Sitting in Your OTA Virtual Cards Right Now?
An automation specialist quantifies OTA virtual card revenue leakage, showing 11 hotels recovered $228K in unprocessed balances in one month, saving ~3,600 labor hours annually.
By Linda Girrbach, Co-Founder & Head of Hospitality Consulting, RobosizeME
Culture Isn’t a Program; It’s a Way of Leading
Meyer Jabara Hotels attributes its 24% turnover rate (vs. an industry average of 78-84%) to an intentional leadership culture built on empowerment, shared ownership, and technology-enabled connection.
By Terri Tucker, Consultant and thought leader, Meyer Jabara
Ask ChatGPT About Your Hotel. Now Ask It the Question Your Next Guest Actually Asks.
Hotels that pass the name-search test on AI engines often fail category queries like "best luxury hotel in [destination]," where guest shortlists are built from third-party sources hotels rarely manage.
By Andrew Paul, Managing Director, Americas Great Resorts
How to Mentor in Hotels in the Modern World
A practical guide to hotel mentorship covering structured onboarding, digital tools, soft skills coaching, reverse mentoring, and department-by-department checklists for front office, F&B, kitchen, spa, HR, and engineering.
By Nasir Zahir
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, Digital Transformation Coach
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
The Back Hallway
A 23-year-old accountant uncovered $1.4M in vendor fraud at a midsize hotel, exposing how weak purchasing and receiving controls enabled a 12-year scheme by a trusted chief engineer.
By David Lund, The Hotel Financial Coach, David Lund
The Layer That Owns the Guest
A strategic analysis of why AI value in hospitality lies in the application layer around the PMS, not the underlying model, as Microsoft, Amazon, OpenAI, and Anthropic all launch major deployment units.
By Terence Ronson, Founder & Managing Director, Pertlink Limited
Cultural Relevance in Marketing
A Conrad New York Downtown executive outlines how hotels can use destination storytelling, co-created itineraries, multilingual content, and local partnerships to build cultural relevance into their marketing.
Azuma Brand Launch Signals Larger Hotel Category Trends
Adrian Zecha's Azuma Farm Koiwai launch is used as a lens to examine the 50-year structural rise of agriluxury, driven by guest demand for calm and simplicity in an overstimulated world.
By Adam Mogelonsky and Larry Mogelonsky
Hospitality's real question isn't legal. It's cultural.
A CDR World Panel opinion piece argues hospitality leaders must deliberately build cultures that elevate human potential as AI absorbs transactional tasks, citing IKEA's reskilling model as a benchmark.
By Colin Kingsmill and Christina Reti
Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo: How Heritage Hotels Transform Place into Luxury Value
Using Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo as a case study, the piece argues that heritage hotels compete not on amenities alone but on their ability to turn history, location, and culture into a distinctive, irreplicable guest identity.
We need to talk about fake infographics
AI-generated hotel tech market maps look convincing but contain serious errors, and as presentation quality improves, distinguishing confidence from correctness becomes harder.
By Martin Soler, Partner, Soler & Associates
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.
The Readiness Gap: Why Hospitality Graduates are Falling at The Final Hurdle
New Regent's University London research finds 80% of hospitality recruiters pass over graduates for lacking work readiness, with soft skills and practical experience cited as the critical gaps.
By Adam Frost, Director of Programme Luxury Hospitality Management, Regent's University London
Four Ways Technology Can Improve the Guest Wellness Experience
The article outlines four design principles for integrating fitness technology in hotel wellness spaces, positioning equipment as a service, revenue, and sustainability asset.
By Gary Young, Regional Director of Hospitality Sales, EMEA, Matrix
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