Its not the large that eat the small, its the fast that eat the slow..

For decades, hospitality tech has operated as a loose federation of systems—PMS, CRS, RMS, CRM—stitched together through sometimes brittle integrations and workarounds. AI doesn’t fix that, it will put more pressure on it.

78% of hotel chains already deploy AI, yet only 22% have the data infrastructure to use it effectively. And only a small minority treat AI as central to their business model. Because AI is only as good as the foundation it sits on and in most cases, that foundation was never designed for it.

Everyone is talking about AI. Far fewer systems actually have AI at their core. Except RMS systems that have always used AI at the core the majority are still what they’ve always been: transactional systems with a layer of automation on top.

Integration is where this becomes real. It’s not just about having APIs. It’s the constant, invisible work of keeping integrations alive as systems change, data shifts, logic evolves. A huge amount of effort today goes into making sure the connections don’t break. Ironically, this is exactly where AI could help but today, it’s also where the weaknesses are most exposed.

By 2030, the conversation will shift. Hotels currently pursuing the evolution from manual to automated will soon set their sights on moving from assisted to autonomous.

But autonomy requires trust. And trust is still missing. Hoteliers believe in AI, but they don’t rely on it. Until systems can explain decisions, handle uncertainty, and operate consistently across the entire commercial ecosystem, that won’t change.

AI won’t eat established vendors, but it will force a choice: either become part of an intelligent, connected decision layer across the business or remain another silo that AI learns to route around.