Central & South America - Latest

As the technologist in the room looking through the lens of the melding of industry workforce and the application of technology, I find this development curious for a number of reasons:AI Singling Out: It's interesting to see the specific technology of AI singled out.

The recent court ruling highlights an important principle: AI adoption should not be a labor replacement solution. The more meaningful question is how AI can help employees work smarter, more efficiently, and ultimately more effectively.Hospitality has always been a people-centered industry.

Hospitality has never been just about systems, processes or efficiency. It has always been about people. The ruling highlights an important point: AI may change how we work, but it should not change what hospitality stands for.As an industry, we should not see AI only as a way to reduce labour costs.

United States will never adopt the same ruling. It's a capitalist country where businesses needs (not the government) dictate business actions. Smart operators will implement automation where it makes sense and where it augments "human touch".

The classic philosophy in hospitality is that guests require services provided by super nice, smiling, well-trained humans. I believe this philosophy is greatly exaggerated, especially today. A great example of why guests do not care about human-provided services comes from the vacation rental sector.Today, 20% of roomnights are consumed at vacation rentals/ short-term rentals: houses, villas, condos and apartments.

So far I haven't personally seen AI actually cut jobs. I'm not saying it hasn't but I haven't personally seen it yet. It has however empowered people to do a whole lot more, so it might slow down future hires. But I haven't seen it replace anyone that was hired, unless the person utterly refused to learn how to use AI.

Bold prediction: The PMS isn't going anywhere by 2030 — but it will look nothing like it does today. It becomes the heart of the hotel, connecting and coordinating most AI tools, agents and decisions running across the property.

The death of the PMS was mooted back in 2014 when I joined hospitality from airlines. 14 years later, we still have PMSes. Their primary all-in-one functions were:- Handle check-in/out- Manage room key cutting- Take payments- Set up the hotel room inventory and types- Assign a price per room- Link to selling channels like OTAs- Manage housekeeping- Manage facilities management/maintenance- Handle on-site eventsSeparate RMSes now do pricing and push rates to PMSes.

The Enterprise PMS will still be around in 2030. Every hotel needs a system of record to manage reservations, inventory, rates, guest profiles, financial transactions, and operational controls. AI doesn't remove that requirement.

Generally, more people with access to AI will not mean better solutions, it will mean more noise in the market, more fragmented and badly deployed technology - just like the last decades, but at a bigger scale, and the people who suffer are hotel employees and guests. I do believe that to stand out from the pack and deliver something truly remarkable, you need genuine innovators to bring all these solutions together in a coherent ecosystem that is open, collaborative, and truly end-to-end in how we serve guests. The best technology partners will build closer partnerships at the backend layer, while hoteliers can build complete AI workflows on the frontend.

By HITEC 2030, AI will not have eaten established hospitality tech. It will have eaten the repetitive workflow layer around it. Hotels will still rely on PMS, CRS, RMS, payments, distribution, and other systems of record. Those systems are too operationally critical to disappear quickly.

2030 is a long time from now, especially in AI-years, which are only about 60 days long!If I think about the current trajectories and strategies of the bigger companies that will lead this movement, I see larger travel enterprises implementing foundational agentic backbones like Frontier from OpenAI or Claude Enterprise from Anthropic.

Annual reports are a key source of ESG information in hospitality, combining financial and non-financial data on sustainability performance. Increasing alignment with CSRD and frameworks like ESRS, GRI, IFRS improves comparability, though challenges remain around data reliability and aligning corporate- and hotel-level KPIs.At Hotelschool The Hague, the Business Resilience and ESG chair uses such data for applied research on resilience and sustainable transformation, combining document analysis and industry collaboration.

The Most Valuable Resources Are Still Human OnesFour years ago, the challenge was finding good information. Today it is filtering it.When it comes to accuracy, I keep returning to the Global Sustainable Tourism Council and UN Tourism.

I think the age of AI makes reliable sustainability resources more important, not less. AI can be extremely useful for summarising complex information, analysing hotel data, comparing options, and translating sustainability language into practical operational decisions.

The hotel is the company actually providing the room. If the price and conditions are the same, the AI agent should book directly with the hotel instead of through a middleman like Booking.com. Direct booking can give guests: better prices loyalty points and perks easier changes and cancellations more accurate information better customer support.

Google has already announced: they will not be the merchant of record and they're not even charging a transaction fee. Needless to say, this is a great precedent but it doesn't mean other AI platforms will follow this example.At the same time, there's nothing that prevents us from pushing AI platforms in the direction of a direct booking path integration.

I am firmly of the view that Google will eventually present all offers openly. Complementing that will be the savvier user who explicitly directs their preferred booking channel. If I am a Bonvoy member, I want to book at marriott.com to protect my loyalty assets.Right now, it's a question of structured supply.

The most significant impact might not be operational, but psychological. Why? Because it's the hotel industry's fault. Let me explain:For years, hotels have trained guests to treat bookings as placeholders: reserve today, decide later.

In my view, the Full Prepayment Model is not the future of hospitality. While full prepayment has been practiced for decades for charter vacations, extended beach vacations and unique experiences like safari tours, it’s definitely not user friendly as far as plain hotel bookings are concerned. Merchant bookings - fully prepaid bookings - at both Expedia and Booking now represent over 70% of the total gross bookings. Improved cash flow, controlling the price the customer pays, opportunities to bundle hotel stays with air, transportation and experiences are some of the reasons for the OTA preferences of the merchant model.

The biggest impact of full prepayment is that booking a hotel becomes a much bigger commitment for guests.Hotels benefit from fewer cancellations, better cash flow, and more predictable occupancy.But guests may book less often or take longer to decide because they must pay upfront.Trusted brands like Marriott International and Booking.com may benefit most, while smaller hotels could struggle more with guest trust.BNPL services may become very important because they make upfront payment feel more flexible and less risky.