HFTP partners with The Hospitality Law Conference for a half-day roundtable at the Washington, D.C. event on October 28–29, 2026, targeting legal, development, and finance professionals.
Stanislav Ivanov reframes the automation debate by shifting the unit of analysis from jobs to tasks — and in doing so, arrives at conclusions that challenge common assumptions. Physical tasks, he argues, are often harder to automate than cognitive ones, which means low-paid housekeepers may be safer from replacement than high-paid marketing managers, and the future of hospitality labour is not fewer people but differently assembled teams of humans and machines.
We didn't go to HITEC 2026 for the demos. We went for the conversations. We sat down with exhibitors right there on the show floor. No script, no prepared questions, just one starting point: tell us what you do, in plain language. This is where it went with Jerimi Ford, Chief Innovation Officer at Actabl, and Rob Bahl, SVP AI Asset Management at Actabl, who'd recently joined the tech company from Marriott.
Delaware North Companies Parks & Resorts Inc. (Delaware North Parks & Resorts), a subsidiary of Delaware North Companies Inc. (Delaware North), today unveiled Waybound™, a purposefully-designed premium alternative lodging brand.
The Harborvale, Autograph Collection officially opens today on the shores of Lake Champlain, debuting as Burlington, Vermont's premier 161-room lakeside retreat. Joining Marriott Bonvoy's exclusive Autograph Collection, the property seamlessly blends elevated hospitality and locally rooted experiences with striking waterfront views in the heart of the city.
Mark Fancourt delivers a blunt, experience-backed argument against the industry's growing temptation to hollow out technology leadership in the name of AI efficiency. With 37 years in hospitality and 13 as a CIO, he makes the case that adding AI on top of fragmented, underfunded, and poorly governed tech stacks does not simplify anything — it compounds the chaos, and removing the people who understand the system is precisely the wrong response.
Davide Bernasconi reframes the AI conversation in hospitality around a problem the industry rarely names directly: operational hypercomplexity. As hotels become more digitally interconnected, the cognitive load placed on staff has quietly become unsustainable — and the most important thing AI can do is not replace people, but give them their cognitive bandwidth back.
Hilton (NYSE: HLT) and Reuben Brothers today jointly announced the signing of a management agreement to transform a premier Miami Beach hotel into Waldorf Astoria Miami Beach, marking the brand’s debut in the market. Owned by Reuben Brothers, the resort will undergo a meticulous renovation and repositioning ahead of its Winter 2027 planned relaunch, at which time it will be managed by Hilton.
IHG now operates 200+ hotels in Canada with nearly 40 more in the pipeline, including first voco signings in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and Niagara Falls, and a Garner debut in Alberta in 2027.
Hawkins Way Capital, a fully vertically integrated real estate company with $3 billion of assets under management, announces the launch of the fourth hotel under the new Series by Marriott™ brand — FOUND Hotels, Chicago, marking the latest U.S. property to join the new brand. In tandem with the conversion, the hotel debuts several thoughtful enhancements designed to elevate both the guest and communal experience.
The Charleston Place, a defining landmark in the heart of Charleston's historic district at the corners of King, Market and Meeting Streets, announces the completion of the next phase of its ongoing $150+ million reimagination, ushering in a renewed era for the beloved hotel and longtime gathering place for guests, locals, and visitors alike. Building on the property's transformation under BHC, this latest chapter introduces a newly reimagined Club Level, an elevated rooftop pool experience with garden bar, a redesigned arrival area, and newly refreshed guest rooms and suites.
Adam Mogelonsky makes the case that the longevity revolution is no longer a luxury niche but a structural shift in guest expectations and that the most overlooked opportunity lies not in spas or fitness centers, but in the guestroom itself. For time-poor travelers who rarely make it to hotel amenities, the room is the only wellness touchpoint that reaches everyone.
James Watson argues that AI's most promising role in hospitality design is not to generate atmospheres autonomously, but to give human designers the precision and responsiveness needed to make spaces that genuinely breathe — adapting in real time to occupancy, mood, and moment. The risk, he warns, is not that AI replaces designers, but that without strong human vision guiding it, it flattens the industry into an algorithmically pleasant, characterless sameness.
Alan Young argues that voice recognition technology at the front desk is not a cost-cutting measure but a means of restoring something the industry has been quietly losing: the agent's attention. By offloading administrative commands to speech, the technology frees staff to do what no system can replicate — make a guest feel genuinely seen upon arrival.
A Conrad New York Downtown executive outlines how hotels can use destination storytelling, co-created itineraries, multilingual content, and local partnerships to build cultural relevance into their marketing.
Terence Ronson looks ahead to 2031, when frictionless automation will have made most hotels equally smart, equally efficient, and equally forgettable — and argues that the competitive differentiator will be a new role he calls the Human Experience Orchestrator. Part behavioral psychologist, part operational commander, the HXO is the person who reads the AI's outputs and then decides, with genuine human judgment, what to actually do with them.
U.S. hotel ADR rose 9.2% and RevPAR climbed 9.6% for the week of 21-27 June 2026, with Miami and San Francisco seeing outsized gains driven by FIFA World Cup matches.
The author argues that HITEC 2026 overlooked a key market gap: back-office AI that reduces overhead and drives margins, while vendors focused almost entirely on guest-facing tools.
Catherine Donaldson takes a decidedly practical approach, moving past the philosophical debates about AI in hospitality to focus on where it is already delivering measurable results today. From AI voice agents answering calls around the clock to agentic workflows that coordinate operations without manual handoffs, she maps five proven use cases and makes the case that the performance gap between adopters and laggards is already widening.
Rising legal exposure, health inspection failures, and leadership scandals illustrate why formal governance frameworks are now a strategic necessity for hotel operators of all sizes.