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.
HFTP and Destination AI partner to expand year-round AI education, with the 3rd annual Destination AI Hospitality Summit set for September 29-30, 2026 in Washington, D.C., targeting 500 attendees.
James Watson argues that AI's most promising role in hospitality design is not to generate atmospheres autonomously, but to give human designers the precision and responsiveness needed to make spaces that genuinely breathe — adapting in real time to occupancy, mood, and moment. The risk, he warns, is not that AI replaces designers, but that without strong human vision guiding it, it flattens the industry into an algorithmically pleasant, characterless sameness.
A panel discussion with four industry executives on where hotel robotics is generating real ROI, barriers to wider adoption, workforce implications, and what lies ahead.
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.
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.
Accor and Banque des Territoires will transform the 16th-century La Citadelle Vauban into a 90-key Emblems Collection luxury hotel and museum, set to open in summer 2027 on Belle-Île-en-Mer.
Set along the Son River and embraced by the limestone peaks of Phong Nha–Ke Bang UNESCO World Heritage Site, home to the world's largest cave system including the legendary Son Doong caves, Auko Eco-Wellness Lodges is set to open its doors on 20 July 2026, as a new expression of regenerative hospitality in Vietnam. This summer marks the perfect moment to be among the first to find your way.
Survey of 100 AIHA members finds hoteliers prioritize practical AI guidance, shared standards, and benchmarking over generic AI commentary, with 78% citing trend leadership as their top engagement driver.
RobosizeME CRO Sean Anderson explains why the company uses RPA over AI for defined hotel workflows, citing cost, reliability, and compliance as key factors over AI-first approaches.
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.
Alan Young argues that voice recognition technology at the front desk is not a cost-cutting measure but a means of restoring something the industry has been quietly losing: the agent's attention. By offloading administrative commands to speech, the technology frees staff to do what no system can replicate — make a guest feel genuinely seen upon arrival.
Central Auckland apartment hotel, The Chancellor on Hobson, has completed a full soft refurbishment of all 65 guest rooms, delivering modernised contemporary accommodation in one of the city’s best-located properties.
Canopy Bangkok Sukhumvit is now accepting reservations ahead of opening its doors on 1 August 2026, marking the brand's debut in South East Asia. As a high-end boutique hotel brand, Canopy brings together layered design, considered food and beverage, and social spaces shaped by the neighborhood, offering travelers a welcoming sense of home while they discover somewhere new. Located on Sukhumvit Soi 12, the hotel will introduce a locally inspired experience to Asoke, one of Bangkok's most connected neighborhoods.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Friday closed a strong week with Lighthouse data showing AI referral traffic to hotel websites surging more than 50% after ChatGPT expanded outbound links, a pointed warning that AI-generated hotel tech market maps are distorting purchasing decisions, and CoStar weekly data showing U.S. RevPAR up 9.6% driven by FIFA World Cup demand in Miami and San Francisco. Two HITEC floor conversations with Shiji and Cendyn and a string of Asia Pacific pipeline signings 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 Natalie Kimball, VP of Strategic Account Management for Horizon Distribution and Iceportal Content at Shiji.