The CIOs and CTOs of hotel groups including Radisson, citizenM, Mandarin Oriental, Wyndham, Aimbridge and Choice sat down with the CEOs and founders of Oracle, Mews, Shiji, Infor, Apaleo and HotelKey. Off the record at HITEC San Antonio, they debated AI, data ownership, integration costs, and the widening gap between what operators and suppliers are each optimizing for.
Friday closed the week with hospitality.today's argument that hotel connectivity has stopped being neutral infrastructure and become the entry condition for AI-driven distribution, Simone Puorto on the Cloudbeds podcast arguing the hotel industry is drowning in software it doesn't need, and SiteMinder data showing Spain hotel bookings up 76% ahead of August's total solar eclipse. Duetto on RevPAR as a vanity metric, Faraway Hotels debuting in two markets at once, and a bumper properties day closed the session.
Thursday closed the week with a World Panel viewpoint asking whether Visa's new travel booking product signals a fundamental shift in hotel distribution, Namastay founder Frédéric Robles on why checkout friction, not pricing, keeps direct booking rates stuck below 15%, and HotelPORT on the hidden operational taxes quietly draining hotel value. Strong C-suite appointments, three new property openings from Charleston to Montana, and Langham's circular food waste program rounded out the session.
Visa Destinations is an interesting development, but it's too early to call it a major shift in hotel distribution. Visa has huge global reach through its billions of payment cards, giving it the potential to become a significant travel booking platform.
I wrote some time back about the emergence of banking as a genuine alternative to traditional distribution and their depth of customer intelligence as compared to other business types competing for the same customer.It’s a mistake to look at this strictly through the lens of Visa's direct customer relationships or draw parallels to Amazon's travel missteps.
Visa's 4.3 billion cards in circulation miss something AMEX has: an aspirational brand cardholders actively choose because of what it says about them.That distinction matters more than scale here. Amex built travel credibility over decades with their concierge desks, Centurion Lounges, curated hotel collections...
Wednesday brought hospitality.today's warning that Booking Holdings is unifying its B2B wholesale operation to resell hotel net-rate inventory across bank apps, airline checkouts, and loyalty portals at scale, JD Power's 30th annual study finding North America hotel guest satisfaction at a 30-year high of 665 out of 1,000, and Urban Cowboy founders on 12 years of growth with no marketing spend. Revinate's HITEC booth conversation, the Sunshine Protection Act's impact on hotel operations, and a record-breaking properties day rounded out the session.
We didn't go to HITEC 2026 for the demos. We went for the conversations. We sat down with exhibitors right there on the show floor. No script, no prepared questions, just one starting point: tell us what you do, in plain language. This is where it went with Frank Trampert, Chief Revenue Officer at Revinate.
Urban Cowboy founders Lyon Porter and Jersey Banks discuss their 12-year journey across multiple locations, zero marketing spend, and plans for larger properties including a beach location and branded residences.
Tuesday brought the launch of Hospitality Net's Boardroom Reboot podcast with Mews founder Richard Valtr tracing a unicorn from night audit boredom in Prague, a World Panel viewpoint on whether humanless hotels represent the future or a threat, and HSMAI Europe's whitepaper on agentic AI making hotels either AI-bookable or invisible. Lighthouse's Brazil rate surge data, Monaco and Madrid performance records, and a renovations-heavy properties day rounded out the session.
Mews founder Richard Valtr traces the origin of the hospitality unicorn from night audit boredom in Prague to a billion-dollar PMS, sharing predictions on AI, loyalty, and the future of hotel work.
The reality is much more complex than black and white. There are already many humanless hotels (mostly in Asia). So there will be: - regional differences in approach to human vs machine balance - variations between different segments (short-term rentals adopted self-service from the get go, many limited service hotel properties followed, but we won't expect to see if in the luxury segment any time soon, maybe never) It will be a spectrum.
In the future, a purely automated, no-human operational model will increasingly become the way of things. For this to fully materialize, our industry and our customer will have accepted all forms of artificial intelligence—both soft and hard.
No. Humanless hotels will become more common, but they are unlikely to become the norm.Automation and AI are excellent for repetitive tasks like check-in, payments, and guest requests, helping hotels reduce costs and improve efficiency.
Monday opened with hospitality.today's warning that AI tools are describing hotels from outdated sources and guests arrive expecting what no longer exists, a Les Roches argument that the traditional hotel org chart fragments guest value across silos, and Cornell professor Chris Anderson on AI shifting commercial strategy from pricing optimization to personalized offer curation. Canary Technologies' HITEC conversation, the AI Hospitality Alliance's crowdsourced use case launch, and a strong Asia Pacific properties day rounded out the session.
We didn't go to HITEC 2026 for the demos. We went for the conversations. We sat down with exhibitors right there on the show floor. No script, no prepared questions, just one starting point: tell us what you do, in plain language. This is where it went with SJ Sawhney, Co-Founder and President of Canary Technologies.
Friday closed a strong week with Mood Media data showing satisfied guests don't repeat and atmosphere outranks price and service as a hotel choice driver, three European hoteliers on what happened when they eliminated the front desk, and CoStar weekly data showing U.S. RevPAR up 10.9% on America 250 demand. HotelKey's HITEC conversation on what actually counts as AI, Accor's 5,300-key Vietnam deal, and a bumper properties day from Cappadocia to Cheshire rounded out the session.
We didn't go to HITEC 2026 for the demos. We went for the conversations. We sat down with exhibitors right there on the show floor. No script, no prepared questions, just one starting point: tell us what you do, in plain language. This is where it went with HotelKey's two co-founders, CEO Fareed Ahmad and President Aditya Thyagarajan.
Thursday brought Curacity's argument that AI citation share, not query cost, is hospitality's next major distribution fight, Pertlink's translation of MIT AI engineering signals into a 12-month hotel readiness roadmap, and ETC data showing Europe arrivals up 5% year-to-date despite Middle East headwinds. Lighthouse's HITEC booth conversation on hiring AI rather than installing it, Fattal's first US acquisition, and a properties day spanning Kenya to San Sebastián rounded out the session.
We didn't go to HITEC 2026 for the demos. We went for the conversations. We sat down with exhibitors right there on the show floor. No script, no prepared questions, just one starting point: tell us what you do, in plain language. This is where it went with Brett Kohn, Chief Marketing Officer at Lighthouse.
Wednesday brought hard data showing ChatGPT's hotel recommendations are unstable and winner-take-most by market, a white paper arguing robotics will split hotels into automation winners and legacy properties forced out, and Actabl's HITEC argument for AI that admits what it doesn't know. Navan and Hilton's direct TMC connect, Aspen Hospitality's New York debut, and a record properties day from Punta Cana to Tuscany completed the session.
We didn't go to HITEC 2026 for the demos. We went for the conversations. We sat down with exhibitors right there on the show floor. No script, no prepared questions, just one starting point: tell us what you do, in plain language. This is where it went with Jerimi Ford, Chief Innovation Officer at Actabl, and Rob Bahl, SVP AI Asset Management at Actabl, who'd recently joined the tech company from Marriott.
Tuesday brought a pointed argument that hotels optimize for AI name searches while failing the category queries guests actually use to build shortlists, an Infor HITEC interview predicting hotels will build their own AI with Google and Anthropic as the real competitive threat, and Meyer Jabara Hotels' 24% turnover rate as a data point on what intentional leadership culture is worth. Accor's China push to 1,600 hotels, Vietnam's rise to Asia's top branded residences market, and a heavy properties day rounded out a content-rich session.
We didn't go to HITEC 2026 for the demos. We went for the conversations. We sat down with exhibitors right there on the show floor. No script, no prepared questions, just one starting point: tell us what you do, in plain language. This is where it went with David Poprawka, Innovation Strategist at Infor Hospitality.