89% of guests want AI working behind the scenes, not running the front desk, Mews finds
A Mews survey of 3,250 travelers finds 89% want AI in a supporting or background role, with humans preferred over AI at all nine guest touchpoints tested.
News
Ernest, Lighthouse's AI teammate for hotel commercial teams, is now generally available
Lighthouse's AI teammate Ernest, trained on 3 billion daily hotel data points across 80,000+ hotels, is now available globally to hotel groups, chains, and management companies.
Hospitality Leads the Way with a First-of-Its-Kind AI Governance Framework
The AI Hospitality Alliance has published a free, five-pillar AI governance framework covering accountability, data security, vendor oversight, and AI agents, designed for hotel operators of all sizes.
From Gimmick to Infrastructure: The 2026 Operational Labor Reset and the Rise of Scalable Robotics
The article argues that robotics and automation have become standard hotel infrastructure by 2026, shifting human labor toward high-touch guest experience roles that technology cannot replicate.
By Francesco Derchi, Associate Professor and Director of SPARK, Les Roches
Buying a PMS: lessons from an ex-hotelier who now works in hotel tech
A former hotelier turned Mews employee shares hard-won advice on PMS procurement: start with operational pain points, involve all staff, and use the switch as a chance to rethink workflows.
UrVenue Honors Hospitality Leaders at Inaugural Hospitality Innovation Awards
UrVenue presented its first Hospitality Innovation Awards at The Venetian Resort in Las Vegas, honoring Caesars, TAO Group, Circa, Wynn Resorts, and OpenTable during G2E week.
Bartech Launches Smart Minibar Solution Designed Specifically for Short-Term Rentals
Bartech STR uses QR-code-based purchasing and a $9.99/month subscription to let vacation rental hosts offer a hotel-style minibar without PMS integration or item-level tracking.
Italian hotel tech company Blastness accelerates international expansion with launch of BlastnessPay
BlastnessPay, built with Adyen, automates the full hotel payment cycle from booking to reconciliation and is estimated to save a 150-room property over 90 person-days of admin work annually.
AI Won’t Replace Hospitality. It Might Save It.
Based on h2c's AI Hotel Chain Tech Report 2026, 91% of hotel chains use AI, with 61% focused on efficiency gains and 42% aiming to free staff for higher-value guest interactions.
By Wolfgang Emperger, SVP For Europe, Africa, And UK & Ireland, Shiji
The Invisible Guest: Why Guest Data Needs a Home of Its Own
Ireckonu data shows 22% of hotel guest profiles have no room stay, making the case for a dedicated hospitality CDP to unify and trust guest identity across all touchpoints.
By Hanna Schiller, VP of Sales, Ireckonu
Agentic Booking Has an Answer for Travel Agencies: "Out of Scope"
The Universal Commerce Protocol's lodging draft, adopted by Google for AI Mode hotel booking, has no fields for travel agencies, commissions, or group business terms like attrition and room blocks.
TrustYou Replaces the Dashboard With a Conversation
TrustYou launches Ask TrustYou, an AI conversational analytics tool replacing traditional dashboards, included on all hotel plans from Lite to Enterprise starting today.
Not Done Weekly - Destination AI Summit Recap!
Survey of 107 hotel leaders finds 63% use AI regularly but only 12.6% have a scaled strategy, 35% don't measure ROI, and less than 6% record AI savings in the P&L.
By Sloan Dean, Founder & CEO, AIHG
The Hidden Cost of Disconnected Hotel Operations
Fragmented hotel tech forces staff to manually bridge system gaps, creating a hidden labor cost that connected platforms like FCS1 claim can cut task response times by up to 40%.
By Rob Schneider, Freelance Hotel Investment Journalist, FCS Solutions
Lobby and Crewfare win Global Startup Pitch People’s Choice Awards at WiT Singapore 2026
Lobby AI and Crewfare won the People's Choice Awards at the WiT Singapore Global Startup Pitch, and will present at The Phocuswright Conference in Fort Lauderdale in November.
Lobby and Phocuswire
Put AI on the P&L
A framework for hotel operators to move AI spend from "hours saved" to named P&L lines, using Wyndham's voice AI and industry survey data as anchors.
By Terence Ronson, Founder & Managing Director, Pertlink Limited
Despite P(doom), Hoteliers Are All In on AI
Recap of the Destination AI Summit in Washington D.C., where hoteliers, owners, and tech leaders discussed AI's role in automating back-office functions, redefining hotel jobs, and reshaping booking distribution.
By Jason Freed, Head of Content & Communications, Otelier
Can AI Really Make Your Hotel Paid Ads Perform Better?
Article examines whether AI tools can meaningfully improve paid advertising performance for hotels.
By Savina Karaivanova, Marketing & Product Strategist, Userguest
Forget Me Not
Twilio's 2026 APAC research finds 70% of consumers have abandoned AI interactions due to lost context, exposing hotels' fragmented guest data infrastructure as the root cause and proposing a governed Guest Memory Layer as the fix.
By Terence Ronson, Founder & Managing Director, Pertlink Limited
Navigating The 2026 Hospitality CISO Landscape
A benchmark of 200+ security leaders reveals AI is now the top CISO friction point in 2026, with budgets growing modestly and AI governance becoming a core part of the hospitality security role.
By Suzie Squier, President of the Retail & Hospitality ISAC (RH-ISAC), Retail & Hospitality ISAC