Sophisticated scams are on the rise: How travel brands can secure trust
Travel is something of an easy target for cybersecurity attacks due to the nature of hospitality—and artificial intelligence (AI) may be increasing the risk for travel brands.
External Articles
Phishing campaign impersonates Booking.com, delivers a suite of credential-stealing malware
Starting in December 2024, leading up to some of the busiest travel days, Microsoft Threat Intelligence identified a phishing campaign that impersonates online travel agency Booking.com and targets organizations in the hospitality industry. The campaign uses a social engineering technique called ClickFix to deliver multiple credential-stealing malware in order to conduct financial fraud and theft. As of February 2025, this campaign is ongoing.
Phocuswire: Accor's chief digital officer talks distribution, direct bookings and loyalty
Below is a summary of an interview by phocuswire.com with Accor's chief business, digital and tech officer, Alix Boulnois. Accor, which operates more than 5,500 properties worldwide, is in the midst of a significant digital transformation that spans distribution, direct channels and loyalty. Chief Business, Digital and Tech Officer Alix Boulnois leads these three pillars, tasked with boosting Accor’s revenue while lowering distribution costs for hotel owners.
Phocuswire and Accor
2025 is the year AI agents will transform airline shopping
OpenAI recently announced a new shopping agent called “Operator," one of many artificial intelligence agents that will be released from the big tech companies in the next few months.
The Future of Hospitality: AI-Driven Hotel Set to Open in Las Vegas
The Otonomus Hotel, the world’s first fully AI-powered hotel, is set to open its doors in Las Vegas in the summer of 2025. This futuristic 303-suite property will begin accepting reservations on March 3, 2025, via its website, otonomushotel.com. The hotel’s leadership claims it will deliver a revolutionary hospitality experience—but is this a technological marvel or just another way for corporations to monitor and track consumer behavior under the guise of convenience?
What deregulation could mean for U.S. airlines and the payment industry
It’s 2025, Donald Trump’s second term as president of the United States is about to commence, and the signs are clear that the new administration will be on the side of deregulation.
The citizenM Founding Story (And What It Teaches Us Today) - Michael Levie
In this episode, Michael Levie, co-founder of citizenM, shares the story of how the innovative brand began, the challenges they faced, and the unique strategies that set them apart in the industry.
By Michael Levie, Principal Owner, SMARELS
High-tech hospitality: Ph.D. student Abraham Terrah offers insight into AI’s growing role in hotel service
After a long day of navigating noisy airports and congested highways, an exhausted traveler enters a hotel room with expectations of peace and comfort.
Is this the end for the magnetic stripe?
As he slipped the key card into the reader on his hotel room door and tried the handle - to no avail - he realised what he had done.
Global IT Outage Highlights Travel Industry's Need for Resilience
A flawed update by CrowdStrike on Friday caused a global IT outage, severely impacting the travel industry by grounding airports, canceling flights, and causing significant delays for travelers. The financial repercussions and damage to customer trust are profound, underscoring the inevitable nature of technological failures. While some segments of the industry, like modern aircraft, have embraced redundancy to prevent single points of failure, the broader industry must adopt similar resilience strategies. The integration of AI systems, particularly embedded AI, offers a path forward. AI can enhance predictive maintenance, autonomous response, continuous learning, and security, ensuring that travel systems are more robust and prepared for future disruptions. The industry must act swiftly to adopt these technologies, moving beyond recovery to a future where disruptions are anticipated and mitigated.
Oracle Hospitality Exec on Its AI Plan in ‘Every Single Release’
Oracle Hospitality is gradually incorporating the latest AI advancements into its hotel technology products. However, once the momentum picks up, it will be unstoppable.
As Phocuswright Europe Kicks Off, Travel Experts Weigh In On The AI Buzz
It’s been a busy spring in the travel world, with product rollouts from Expedia Group, Google and OpenAI, among others. So when more than 500 travel insiders gathered in Barcelona Monday for the start of the 2024 Phocuswright Europe conference, there was a lot to chew over even before the start of the networking happy hour.
How to Translate Science into Felt Experiences
Following the launch of our cultural study ‘Neuroaesthetics—Design for the Mind’ in partnership with FSB Franz Schneider Brakel, we invited Kinda Studios co-founders Katherine and Robyn to host a webinar to answer these questions, and to bring to life the study’s findings.
The Future of Travel: How Design is Shaping Travel Experiences
As the days grow longer and the temperatures rise, our minds naturally turn to our summer adventures. The prospect of an open summer is tantalizing yet requires more consideration than ever before. Travel has changed, from the pandemic’s challenges and restrictions to our shifting mindset towards more sustainable ways to get away.
The Future Of Work Is Brand-Led Hospitality
As I sat across a video call interviewing Arian Lewis, one of the founders behind Kiln, a lifestyle-focused coworking brand, I couldn’t help but notice the perfectly curated room in the background behind him. I had recently visited that very Salt Lake City Kiln location and was impressed not only with the beauty of the spaces but also with the small details, including the way all the cushions were gently plumped in the exact same way, reminiscent of a high-end hotel lobby. Refresh rooms, music studios, podcast rooms, and warm meeting spaces that felt like you were walking into your very own living room peppered the high-ceilinged, art-infused environment. Everything about this coworking space, from the distinct lighting in each space, down to the books on the coffee tables, seemed intentionally handpicked to spark conversation and evoke specific human interactions.
Brian Kirkland Of Choice Hotels International: How We Leveraged AI To Take Our Company To The Next Level
Choice is currently piloting a new technology with AWS called Amazon Q where we’re leveraging AI to integrate customer interactions to inform and personalize other touchpoints in their journey. One place this will be used is by giving Choice customer service agents a holistic understanding of who the customer is, helping to drive bookings for hotel owners and provide customers with a personalized and better experience.
Preparing Travel For The Future Of AI Search
Predicting the speed and shape of how search marketing will be changed by artificial intelligence is an impossible task. But marketers should take one thing for granted: Search marketing in Google should stay on top of the priority list for the foreseeable future.
PricingService.ai Democratizes Dynamic Pricing in the Hospitality Industry
Identifying a significant gap in the market, Dan Zhang (Associate Dean for Research and Academics at University of Colorado Boulder) saw an opportunity to bring advanced, AI-driven pricing optimization to independent hotels, which represent about two-thirds of the market yet lack the sophisticated pricing strategies of their franchised counterparts. Many of these hotels, he noted, rely on rudimentary pricing due to the prohibitive costs of acquiring and maintaining advanced pricing systems.
Unleashing business value from technology investments
Digital and business transformation, enabled by cloud, isn’t really optional anymore. Enterprises that fail to capitalize on new cloud-driven technologies, such as generative artificial intelligence (Generative AI) and machine learning (ML), and don’t modernize their infrastructures with cloud-native software engineering principles and practices risk falling behind competitors. Most organizations will continue to make significant investments in cloud. However, budget scrutiny will place those investments under a microscope forcing leaders to measure and unlock more value from them.
Hackers Found a Way to Open Any of 3 Million Hotel Keycard Locks in Seconds
When thousands of security researchers descend on Las Vegas every August for what's come to be known as “hacker summer camp,” the back-to-back Black Hat and Defcon hacker conferences, it's a given that some of them will experiment with hacking the infrastructure of Vegas itself, the city's elaborate array of casino and hospitality technology. But at one private event in 2022, a select group of researchers were actually invited to hack a Vegas hotel room, competing in a suite crowded with their laptops and cans of Red Bull to find digital vulnerabilities in every one of the room's gadgets, from its TV to its bedside VoIP phone.