HOSPA expands events portfolio with acquisition of leading industry conference
HOSPA acquires the 20-year-old National Hotel Marketing Conference from Martin Evans, with the next edition scheduled for 27 May 2027 at Hilton at St George's Park.
News
The EU AI Act Is Changing How Hotels Present Themselves
Article 50 of the EU AI Act, in force since August 2026, requires hotels using AI-generated visuals, videos, and chatbots to meet specific disclosure and transparency obligations.
By Sébastien Felix, Founder, Influence Society
Personalization formats that keep luxury hotel websites on-brand
Luxury hoteliers can maintain brand consistency while personalizing the booking journey using three formats: embedded inliners, automatic content swaps, and branded overlay layers.
By Paige Lopez, Content marketer, Lighthouse
The audience for your guest reviews is no longer a guest
AI systems on Booking.com, Google, and Tripadvisor now use guest reviews to answer queries and drive bookings, making specific, detailed reviews more valuable than star ratings.
By Markus Busch, Editor/Publisher, hospitality.today
Once Upon A Stay: The Power of Storytelling in Hospitality
An opinion piece exploring how storytelling builds brand identity and emotional loyalty in hospitality, with practical homework frameworks and a student video assignment as a teaching model.
By Robert O’Halloran, Professor Director, School of Hospitality Leadership, East Carolina University
CruVu™ Helps Hotel General Managers Earn More Four- and Five-Star Reviews Through Better Guest Experiences
CruVu by Lodging Interactive collects private in-stay guest feedback to give hotel GMs real-time service recovery alerts, department recognition tools, and AI-assisted coaching to improve public review scores.
What Should Hotel Leaders Know About Google’s New AI Booking Capability? Insights from Natalie Kimball
Shiji Horizon's Natalie Kimball breaks down Google's AI Mode booking launch and what it means for hotel distribution, direct booking strategy, and content accuracy.
By Natalie Kimball, Vice President of Strategic Account Management for Horizon Distribution and Iceportal Content, Shiji
How to conduct an effective hotel displacement analysis
A practical guide to hotel displacement analysis covering data inputs, ancillary revenue, demand forecasting, and how Lighthouse's AI tool Ernest automates the process from hours to minutes.
By Jonathan Gough, Content Team Lead, Lighthouse
Same Pitch, Different League
Only 6% of hotels appear consistently in AI-generated recommendations, with 82% of AI-cited content sourced from OTAs and editorial media, putting independent and unbranded hotels at severe visibility risk.
By Terence Ronson, Founder & Managing Director, Pertlink Limited
Your hotel website stopped being how she finds you. It became how she checks you.
As AI assistants drive hotel discovery but not trust, the author argues hotel websites must shift from acquisition tools to verification tools, starting with transparent all-in pricing that matches OTA displays.
By Markus Busch, Editor/Publisher, hospitality.today
AI Is Quietly Deskilling Your Next Generation of Sales Leaders
Research from SBS Swiss Business School and MIT suggests AI tool reliance is eroding critical thinking in junior sales reps, with the author proposing a "Protected Reps Framework" to preserve core selling skills.
By Muhammad Tanveer, Author & Founder, The Sales Leadership Brief
From Access Credential to Point of Return: The Role of Wooden Key Cards in Adventure Hospitality
A supplier argues wooden key cards can serve as meaningful physical touchpoints for adventure-focused hotels, doubling as keepsakes engraved with trip details.
AI Can’t Feel Water Pressure
As AI-generated content floods the internet, hospitality and travel brands face a trust crisis where authentic human experience and perspective are becoming the primary drivers of consumer confidence and purchasing decisions.
By Nick Slavin, CEO and Co-Founder, Curacity
The lost art of a reservation call: How to build trust, capture data, and close bookings | a Revinate webinar
Revinate webinar featuring Suncadia Resort's Director of Reservations on how reservation teams can improve call handling to capture guest data, build rapport, and convert phone inquiries into direct bookings.
Karen Stephens in conversation with Dylan Cole
Inaugural Hospitality Social Media Summit (HoSS) Connects Leaders Across 14 Countries
The inaugural HoSS, held in London on 3-4 September, brought 200+ hospitality marketing leaders from 14 countries to address the gap between social media's commercial expectations and current strategy and capability.
In Europe, Google's hotel unit now shows everything except the rate
Google has stripped live pricing, date filters, and budget tags from its EU hotel search unit to comply with the DMA, leaving hotels with only a name, link, and address in the box built for them.
By Markus Busch, Editor/Publisher, hospitality.today
Hotels are vanishing in AI searches - and it’s having a big impact on corporate event bookings
With 94% of hotels failing to appear in AI search results, venues must adopt structured, detail-rich content strategies to stay discoverable to event planners using tools like ChatGPT and Claude.
By Graham Pope, Vice President International, Cvent Europe Ltd
The Hotel Website May Not Be Where AI Decides Which Hotels Matter
A study of 148 luxury hotels finds Forbes Travel Guide ratings and Michelin Keys explain 55% of AI recommendation frequency, while website schema and llms.txt files show near-zero correlation.
By Andrew Paul, Managing Director, Americas Great Resorts
Hotels need to stop selling rooms.
The author argues hotels must reframe corporate sales around outcomes like productivity, flexibility, and frictionless travel, not just room rates and availability.
By Fernando Vives, Hospitality Labs Ambassador & Chief Commercial Officer, Hospitality Labs
Cendyn brings live hotel data to Google’s Search Campaigns for Travel in closed beta test
Cendyn joins Google's closed beta for Search Campaigns for Travel, combining live ARI feeds and first-party guest data with Google's AI to improve hotel search ad performance ahead of general availability.