Agentic Browsers for Analytics deep dives
A lot of agentic stuff is really good on paper. But then it fails just on the crucial part that makes the result useless - there are exceptions.
By Martin Soler, Partner, Soler & Associates
Opinion Articles
AI-Driven Personalization: How Hospitality Brands Achieve 40% Increases in Repeat Bookings
Personalization has become essential in today's hospitality industry. Travelers now expect experiences tailored to their preferences, not generic service. While hotels and cruise lines recognize this shift, many struggle to bridge the gap between what guests want and what they currently offer. AI-driven personalization is changing this dynamic, delivering real results through increased repeat bookings and stronger guest loyalty.
By Scott Kenyon, Co-Founder & Chief Revenue Officer, Applaudo
"But We Need a Local Revenue Manager!"
"But We Need a Local Revenue Manager!" No. You need someone who knows what the hell they’re doing.
By Fabian Bartnick, Founder, Infinito
Introducing the Customer Confidence Score™ (CCS)
Recently, I wrote about a customer trust survey. The feedback was amazing, which compelled me to take this a step further. After more writing and additional research, I recognized the need for more attention to a metric that measures a customer’s trust, which will directly correlate with customer satisfaction levels, loyalty, and any metric that measures what keeps customers or drives them away.
By Shep Hyken, Customer Service and Experience Expert, Keynote Speaker and Bestselling Author, Shepard Presentations, LLC.
4 strategies hoteliers are using to run their social channels
Social media is both an opportunity and a threat for hotels. An opportunity because social selling is becoming a big revenue generator, and social is a space where brand building is endemic. But it’s a threat too – because many hoteliers lack time, knowledge and resources to feel they can be truly effective. Here’s what hotel teams are actually doing in practice to make their social channels work.
By Ryan Haynes, Director/Lead Consultant, Hoteliers' Voice Podcast/ Haynes MarComs Ltd
5 simple principles that help your hotel appear in AI recommendations
The age of AI search is here and it’s already reshaping how travelers discover and book hotels. Instead of scrolling through endless links, guests now expect AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity to “do the Googling for them” and deliver one trusted answer. As a hotel operator, your job is to make sure your property is part of that answer. That ensures that you: stay visible, capture more direct bookings, and stay ahead of competitors in this new distribution landscape.
By Ira Vouk, Hospitality Tech and AI Consultant, Hospitality 2.0 Consulting
The guest has arrived. The card hasn’t.
It’s a scenario business travellers know all too well. You arrive at your hotel after a long flight, luggage in hand, mind on tomorrow’s meetings. The hotel lobby looks welcoming, until the front desk asks for a credit card. Again. You explain it’s a corporate booking. You mention the virtual card. The staff dig through faxes or refresh emails. Minutes pass. Frustration rises. Your trip is supposed to be starting, but it already feels off. And it’s not just anecdotal. Recent research from Conferma, surveying business travellers across the UK, US, and ANZ, shows that hotels are still tripping over the very first hurdle.
How Digital Nomads Could Reshape Global Work Dynamics, Business Ecosystems, and Travel Culture
As AI accelerates remote work, digital nomads are reshaping the global workforce and the travel industry. This article explores the evolving digital nomad culture, its impact on organizational structures, social policy, and entrepreneurship.
By Jungho Suh, PhD, Assistant Professor of Management at GW School of Business, UN Tourism Expert, GWU
Passalacqua as the World’s Best Hotel and Hospitality’s True Soul
What does it take to be recognized as the best hotel in the world? With the latest estimates putting it at around 187,000 properties worldwide, winning this distinction is, statistically speaking, more prestigious than the Academy Awards or nearly any other glamorous honor for other industries. While some may think its perfect service and glamorous accommodations, the real answer is soul.
By Larry Mogelonsky and Adam Mogelonsky
Destination AI Conference: Cutting through “AI Slop” and Finding what Hoteliers Need to Know
Stephanie Smith of Cogwheel attended the Destination AI Conference for Hoteliers in Washington DC on September 30, 2025.
By Stephanie Sparks Smith, CEO & Digital Matriarch, Cogwheel Marketing, Cogwheel Marketing & Analytics
Email Is About to Become Your Most Important Customer Interface
The hospitality industry has overlooked email and the inbox for too long. While hotels invest resources in websites and social media, email remains one of the most valuable yet underinvested in customer touchpoints. Not only the hotel’s own email marketing program, but also emails from trusted, third-party media brands that lend credibility and discovery en masse in the upper funnel, before your potential guests have started searching or making purchase decisions.
By Nick Slavin, CEO and Co-Founder, Curacity
Triptease Date Boost: Automatically focus marketing on your priority dates
Every hotelier knows the frustration of hard-to-fill dates, whether they be midweek lulls or seasonal dips. That’s why we’ve built Triptease Date Boost, our new feature that gives you more control over your priority dates and helps you fill more rooms when you need it most.
By Genevieve Horchler, Product Marketing Manager, Triptease
You Don’t Have to Bet to Hit the Customer Experience Trifecta
If you go to the horse race, you can place a bet known as the trifecta. This is where you correctly predict which horses will finish first, second, and third, and in the specific order. The payout is typically big because, while it’s simple in theory and easy to explain, it is a hard bet to win.
By Shep Hyken, Customer Service and Experience Expert, Keynote Speaker and Bestselling Author, Shepard Presentations, LLC.
The Revenue Blindspot: Seeing What You’re Missing without Data-Driven Revenue Management
Human expertise complements technology, maximizing performance through balanced oversight and trust.
By Klaus Kohlmayr, Chief Evangelist and Development Officer, IDeaS
Hotels must rethink their marketing mix: Leading industry consultants interrogate Cendyn Performance Index
Operating in a crowded, consent-addled marketplace where AI is starting to bring real value, hotels can no longer ‘set and forget’ their marketing tools if they want a Find, Book and Grow strategy that works. Here, leading industry consultants from around the world share their perspectives on the Cendyn Hotel Digital Marketing Performance Index 2025.
By Christina Leme, Senior Director, Global Media, Cendyn™
Are all Revenue Managers created equal?
Here’s a quick thought experiment: Put five Revenue Managers in a room. All have similar titles. All know their way around Excel, RMS, and pickup reports. But are they actually the same?
By Fabian Bartnick, Founder, Infinito
The Great Tech Reset: Agentic AI and the Coming Rebalance of Power in Hospitality
The hospitality industry stands on the precipice of its most profound disruption since the internet. It's an existential shift, driven by Agentic AI, and it threatens to dismantle the decades-old power structure of hotel distribution. For years, hoteliers have operated in a distribution landscape where third parties—Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) and Global Distribution Systems (GDSs)—control the customer journey. They have provided a crucial aggregation service, gathering disparate hotel inventory into a single, searchable platform.
By Mark Fancourt, Co-Founder & Principal Consultant, TRAVHOTECH
6 Hotel Marketing Budget Fixes to Survive (and Thrive) This Budget Season
When Q4 hits, hotel marketers and sales teams everywhere brace themselves for what can only be described as the “Game of Thrones” of the hospitality world: Budget Season.
By Cory Falter, Partner, Lure Agency
Optimizing your hotel database: Quantity vs quality
Tempted by big audiences and the lure of impressive returns, hotels often want to keep the number of email addresses in their databases high. But this is actually the downfall of many email marketing strategies.
By Haydee Fernandez, Senior Solutions Strategist, Cendyn™
Who is The Hotel's Customer?
Knowing your customers is the foundation of successfully expanding your hotel business and, there are plenty of hotel customer groups requiring identification and quantification, including:
By Jay Leonard and Tom Engel