I’ve spent years watching hotel managers juggle operations like circus performers. Emails at midnight, last-minute cancellations, staff shortages, unexpected group bookings, fluctuating ADRs, you name it. Managers have been trained to react. But leadership isn’t about reacting. It’s about anticipating, steering, and inspiring.
Manual accounting may seem like a manageable process—especially for small hospitality operations—but the reality is far more costly than it appears on the surface. From labor-intensive data entry to delayed financial insights, manual systems create inefficiencies that ripple across the business. In today’s hospitality landscape, where margins are tight and customer expectations are high, these inefficiencies can undermine growth and profitability.
In a world where artificial intelligence learns faster than we have time to educate it, a major risk looms: that of the mass destruction of tasks performed by humans, and with them, entire professions.
I just got back from an international trip to drop off my son to boarding school. Self-check-in / self-service is everywhere. Travel, retail, hospitality, the “check yourself in, manage it yourself” model is spreading. On paper, it’s efficient. In practice, it’s… mixed.
This article concludes Hospitality Net’s Thematics campaign with Shiji Group on Single Provider for Seamless Data. Throughout the series we have examined how integrated systems can transform hotel operations and the guest journey. For this final edition, the focus turns to one of the most pressing questions facing the industry today: how to build clean, connected datasets that can support useful applications of artificial intelligence.
Discussion about AI is rife in our industry. Is the technology good enough to implement yet? What’s the risk versus the reward? Does it really make that much of an impact? What jobs is it taking? What about ethics?
Hotels are using technology to deliver more personalized experiences at every stage of a guest’s stay, including convenient access to amenities and services on the go. A 2024 study showed that travelers were willing to pay, on average, 5 percent more for heightened convenience during hotel stays and other experiences. These factors include delivery time and service speed, with self-service technology emerging as a happy medium for both hotel operators and guests to meet these expectations.
Thanks to GenAI tools such as ChatGPT and Gemini, building a travel itinerary is easier than ever. Rather than spending hours on research, a potential traveler can type in a few prompts, say, planning an Italian vacation focused on the best restaurants in a specific region, and seconds later, receive a complete itinerary. Is it perfect? No, but it provides a unique informed place to start. GenAI certainly saves time, which is why 80% of consumers using airline, hotel, and travel platforms are leveraging AI tools.
The global hospitality industry is undergoing significant change. In recent years, humanoid AI agents have evolved from futuristic novelties to key players within the world’s most advanced hotels. In 2025, competition for guest loyalty, operational efficiency, and brand differentiation is fiercer than ever. In this environment, AI‑powered agents offer a way not just to impress guests, but to fundamentally reshape how hotels operate and connect with their visitors.
In his groundbreaking book, The Third Wave, Alvin Toffler painted a vivid portrait of a world in metamorphosis—a civilization shedding the rigidity of industrialism to embrace the fluid, fast-paced rhythm of the Information Age. He envisioned a society no longer defined by smokestacks and assembly lines, but by hyper-communication, data streams, decentralized power, and the rise of the prosumer—individuals who both produce and consume.
There’s something grounding about walking in a hotel’s back hallways and hearing real stories, in real time, from real hoteliers. Lately, we’ve been doing just that: sitting in lobbies, behind front desk counters, joining team huddles, and absorbing what’s working (and what’s not) from the people who live hospitality every day.
All it takes is one breach. Cybersecurity represents a clear and present threat for every hotel, and the topic deserves every kilobyte of attention that it gets. But this topic, and the related one of ‘Data Sovereignty’ are often framed as defensive, trepidation-filled subject matters where hotels must act now…or else…
Independent and boutique hotels in the U.S. face unprecedented challenges. Labor shortages continue to strain daily operations, with over 60% of hotels reporting difficulties in filling staff positions. At the same time, reliance on Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) cuts deeply into profitability, with commissions averaging 20–30% of gross bookings. For small operators, these dual pressures create an unsustainable environment.
AI isn’t just improving corporate productivity and efficiency. It’s poised to reshape how value is defined, delivered and captured with its ability to create content, ideas and logic, and solve problems autonomously. The result: new AI-fuelled business models are challenging long-standing business assumptions and further blurring industry boundaries, contributing to massive new value pools and growth opportunities that will emerge over the next decade and beyond.
Our industry is entering a phase where AI is no longer just powering chatbots or enabling precise revenue forecasts—it’s beginning to connect directly to core operational systems.
Imagine a world in which hospitality experiences are streamlined. When someone books a hotel, restaurant reservation, or event package, their preferences are known. The process is lightning fast. Their history - showing which experiences satisfied them, which disappointed them, and why - helps a human or AI agent automatically offer them extras, successfully upselling. And the customer experience (CX) is so enjoyable that they develop loyalty to the brand.
The Italian data protection authority (Garante) recently warned that several hotel IT systems were breached and high-resolution scans of passports and ID cards were stolen. Even when properties act quickly, these incidents highlight a structural problem in hospitality: front desks routinely create and store copies of the most sensitive identifiers a person has. Have you ever checked in and wondered why do we need to share our passport and put it on file indefinitely? This makes hotels prime targets for cyber-attacks and privacy risks.
It seems like generations ago when “Globalization” with a capital “G”, was the watchword of corporate America, and of the largest companies and consumer brands in the world. Enabling technologies such as laptop computers, the internet, and the privatization of communications infrastructure in the 1980s made it feasible to move production and delivery of goods and services closer to their end user consumers. The expansion of free trade encouraged optimizing production cost by locating each stage of a product’s value chain wherever competitive advantage dictated.
As part of our Thematics campaign with Shiji Group on Single Provider for Seamless Data, this article looks at one of the most transformative ideas in hotel technology today: the centralized, real-time guest profile. Integrated systems hold the promise of unlocking new guest experiences and streamlining operations, but the real challenge lies in turning that promise into everyday reality.
Back when I lived in London, I was friends with the Head Butler at the Savoy. He was incredible – the level of hospitality he delivered was mindblowing. He could book impossible dinner reservations, ensure a room was set up just how the guest preferred, and so much more.