Will guests trust AI with their travel plans?
Revinate CMO Karen Stephens and Highgate VP of CRM Aaron Miller discuss how hotels can adopt AI for search, discovery, and personalization without sacrificing the human connection guests expect.
AI may be transforming how travelers search and book hotels, but the guest experience is still deeply human. In this episode of Hotel Moment, Karen Stephens, Chief Marketing Officer at Revinate, sits down with Aaron Miller, VP of CRM at Highgate, to explore how hospitality brands can embrace AI without losing the human connection guests expect.
From AI-powered travel discovery and the future of hotel search to personalization, convenience, and trust, the conversation dives into how hotels are navigating one of the industry’s biggest shifts yet.
As travelers increasingly use tools like ChatGPT to research and plan trips, hotels are adapting to a new era of discovery, booking, and personalization. This episode explores how AI is reshaping hotel search and guest engagement while reinforcing the importance of delivering a personal, human guest experience that drives direct bookings.
Tune in to hear why the hotels that win in the AI era won’t just automate faster, they’ll use AI to create smarter, more personalized guest experiences that still feel human.
Meet your host
As Chief Marketing Officer at Revinate, Karen is focused on driving long-term growth by building Revinate’s brand equity, product marketing, and customer acquisition strategies. Her deep connections with hospitality industry leaders play a key role in crafting strategic partnerships. Karen has more than 25 years of expertise in global hospitality technology and online distribution — including managing global accounts in travel and hospitality organizations such as Travelocity and lastminute.com
As the host of The Hotel Moment podcast, she interviews top players in the hospitality industry. Karen has been with Revinate for over 11 years, leading our global GTM teams. Her most recent transition was from Chief Revenue Officer, where she led the team in their highest booking quarter to date in Q4 2023.
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About Revinate
Revinate is a direct booking platform that leads the hospitality industry in driving direct revenue and increased profitability.
Our products and our people combine to give hoteliers the superpowers they need to crush their goals. With Revinate, hoteliers shift share away from OTAs and drive tangible results across an individual property or a portfolio. Our industry-leading, AI-powered customer data platform collects, unifies, and synthesizes data to give hoteliers a foundational advantage.
Hoteliers gain critical intelligence — guest lifetime spend, stay preferences, ancillary revenue, and more. With Revinate's Rich Guest Profiles™ data, hoteliers don't need to guess who their most profitable guests are or struggle to drive conversions across email, voice, messaging, and digital channels.
Revinate's direct booking platform and omnichannel communication technology powers 1.1 billion Rich Guest Profiles across 12,500+ hotels to drive over $24 billion in direct revenue.
About Highgate
Highgate is a leading global real estate investment and hospitality management company widely recognized as an innovator in the industry. Highgate is the largest owner and operator of hotels in New York City and the dominant player in major U.S. gateway cities including Boston, Miami, San Francisco and Honolulu, with a growing footprint in Europe, the Caribbean and Latin America. The hospitality forward company provides expert guidance through all stages of the property cycle, from planning and development through recapitalization or disposition. Highgate has a proven record of developing its diverse portfolio of bespoke lifestyle hotel brands, legacy brands, and independent hotels and resorts with contemporary programming and digital acumen. The company utilizes industry-leading revenue management tools that efficiently identify and predict evolving market dynamics to drive outperformance and maximize asset value. With an executive team consisting of some of the most experienced hotel management leaders, the company is a trusted partner for top ownership groups and major hotel brands. For more information, please visit www.highgate.com.