Technology in Hospitality

I think a very visible observation at this year's Restaurant Show was logical tech instead of theoretical. There was less "glimpses into the future" and more "proof of concept." Here's one of those in action: For two and a half years, Wingstop has worked on a new Smart Kitchen that forecasts demand in 15-minute increments, telling the store how many wings to drop. The system takes into account more than 300 variables tailored to each unit, like weather, sales trends, and sports. It also features digital touch-screen displays at every work station instead of paper chits and an order-ready screen at the front so consumers can keep up with their order. Another feature: there are now sticker print outs that identify what flavors are in each package. At restaurants where the technology has been installed, wait times have been cut in half to about 10 minutes, and there have been notable improvements in guest satisfaction, accuracy, consistency, and employee turnover. In the delivery channel, Wingstop has been able to show up in under 30 minutes. Why is this important? Shorter wait times allow the brand to become a greater consideration. Instead of serving as a destination—with an average frequency of just three times per quarter and once a month—the quicker service could entice guests to visit more often, especially during on-the-go periods like the afternoon daypart. The Wingstop Smart Kitchen is in 400 restaurants and the chain hopes to complete the rollout by the end of the year. Again, real-time innovation in the back of the house. That seems to be the battleground right now. More here: https://lnkd.in/eMHMUkmZ

Radisson now has 1,000+ hotels inside ChatGPT. IHG Hotels & Resorts is bringing 7,000+ hotels into conversational search. Amazon is opening Alexa+ to travel partners like Priceline. The old journey looked like this: Guest → Google → OTA / hotel website → booking engine → PMS The new journey could look like: Guest → AI agent → hotel / OTA agent → CRS / PMS And this creates three very different futures. AI → Hotel direct ChatGPT discovers the hotel, accesses live availability and sends the guest directly to the brand. In this scenario, AI could actually reduce OTA dependency. AI → OTA → Hotel Alexa+ recommends a hotel through Priceline. Now there really is another layer between the guest and the property. AI → Multiple suppliers This is the most interesting one. Imagine asking: “Find me a beachfront luxury hotel in Phuket under €700 with a kids club and late checkout.” The AI could compare: Marriott direct IHG direct Booking Expedia Priceline Independent hotels Hotels will increasingly need structured content, live rates, inventory, APIs, CRM context and PMS connectivity that machines can use. The next competitive advantage may not be SEO. It may be becoming machine-actionable. For hotels on OPERA Cloud, OHIP and MCP-style integrations suddenly become much more strategic.

I mapped 120+ hotel tech companies across 14 categories onto a single page. Here's the full 2026 hotel tech stack, organised the way it actually works. Most hotels run a dozen tools and have never seen them laid out together. So I built the map. Every category, the credible players in each, in the order a hotel actually adopts them. Here's how it breaks down: 1. The core: Your PMS sits at the centre, everything else plugs into it. Get this right first, because every other decision depends on it. Examples include: Mews, Cloudbeds, Oracle Hospitality, Apaleo, Stayntouch 2. The revenue layer: -> Revenue management: is the brain. It tells you what price to charge for each room, on each night, based on demand signals, competitor rates, booking pace, and historical data Examples include: IDeaS Revenue Solutions, Duetto, RoomPriceGenie -> Channel management: is the distributor. It takes that rate and pushes it out to all the places where rooms are sold: Examples include: SiteMinder, D-EDGE Hospitality Solutions -> And your booking engine captures the guests who come direct, without paying OTA commission. Examples include: The Hotels Network, Triptease, Profitroom. 3. The guest layer: Everything the guest actually touches. Messaging and guest experience: Examples include: Canary Technologies, Duve, Bookboost, Asksuite Reputation Management: Examples include: TrustYou,Shiji Reviewpro Reputation GuestRevu 4. The operations layer:i ncl The tools your team lives in but guests never see. Housekeeping and staff ops, payments, business intelligence, smart room and access. Examples include: Unifocus, hotelkit, Alice by Actabl, Flexkeeping. Business intelligence: the layer that tells you how the whole operation is actually performing. Examples include: Lighthouse, Actabl, Juyo Analytics, M3 (Full map below. Save it for your next stack review.) P.S. Which ones would you add?

The ultimate "Behind the Scenes" vs. "Final Product" flex. Have you been there? Most brand marketing still relies on legacy, static playbooks. This is what happens when real-time spatial technology and AI-driven automation take over. Instead of traditional cut-and-paste production, this single-take FPV drone flythrough showcases a luxury resort in real time—with the pilot navigating tight corridors, pools, and guest suites while sitting in a moving golf cart. Beyond the stunning visuals, this represents a fundamental shift in how tech is redefining digital marketing and operations: 1. Spatial Intelligence Over Static Media Standard photography captures moments; spatial tech captures flow. FPV precision combined with immersive hardware creates a 1:1 sense of digital presence, giving potential guests a authentic, uninterrupted visual tour before they ever set foot on the property. 2. AI-Driven Workflow Acceleration Behind single-take shots like this, AI edge processing, automated flight stabilization, and dynamic real-time color grading eliminate weeks of post-production. What used to require a full film crew, heavy lighting rigs, and months of editing now happens dynamically on the fly. 3. Predictive Personalization & Spatial Data Captured visual maps aren't just for promotional content. Paired with spatial AI models, these precise 3D environments can feed directly into digital twins, interactive room previews, personalized virtual concierge experiences, and predictive hospitality operations. The Executive Playbook: Show the Machine Behind the Magic: Audiences value authenticity. Revealing the technical execution creates double the engagement. Compress Production Timelines: Utilizing automated flight pathing and smart camera tech cuts media asset acquisition costs by orders of magnitude. Bridge Physical & Digital (Phygital): Immersive visual capture is the first step toward building AI-powered digital storefronts and spatial search assets. Is your organization leveraging spatial tech and AI to reimagine customer acquisition, or are you still relying on traditional media pipelines? #SpatialComputing #FPV #AIinMarketing #HospitalityTech #ContentInnovation #DigitalTransformation #FutureOfMarketing

A brain that learns across thousands of hotels beats any single operator's in-house model. For years, the rule in hotel software was pretty simple. Land the big enterprise brand, and you were set for a decade. Now that same brand is the one most likely to walk, because it can just build its own AI and stop renting yours. That sounds like rough news for hotel tech, and for a lot of it, it is. For the corner of the market I care about, it actually runs the other way. The real moat in hospitality was never the booking system. It is the loop that learns. Which room fills up every festival weekend, which corporate guest always books late, which review pattern quietly hints a cancellation is coming. A mid-sized chain can go build a team to chase all that, and plenty of them want to. Trouble is, they end up with a model that only ever sees their own dozen properties, and it costs a fortune to run. The smarter operators are doing something else. They just plug into a brain that learns across thousands of hotels instead of betting on their own four walls. Looks like the humble move, but it is the smart one. The picture below sums it up. One operator only ever sees itself. A shared platform sees how thousands of hotels price, handle calls, and win guests, and each hotel's own data stays private the whole time. The enterprise gets to own its loop. Everyone else gets to borrow a much bigger one, and that is what we are building.

A GM in Singapore just killed the hotel industry as we know it. The real disruption isn't in the numbers anymore. It's in who's holding the keys. Last week, I watched this 34-year-old GM manage her entire hotel from her phone. Check-ins, housekeeping, revenue optimization. All automated. She spent her day doing what algorithms can't: building relationships with a Korean startup to POC their services. That startup chose her hotel over the one next door. Why? Because she understood their business. This is the shift few tech founders grasp. You're not disrupting hotels. You're empowering a new generation of GMs who think like CEOs, not caretakers. The numbers tell the story: - Hospitality will create 119 million jobs by 2034 - Gen Z will make up 30% of the workforce by 2030 - 72% of hotels report better advancement opportunities than pre-2019 Meanwhile, the best GMs are learning from Y Combinator videos and treating their hotels like startups. Innovation drives them. Knowledge backs them up. For Guests: Your next hotel stay won't feel like a hotel. It'll feel like staying with a friend who happens to have 200 rooms and knows exactly what you need before you ask. For GMs: Your job isn't operations anymore. It's orchestration. You're not managing a building. You're curating experiences, leveraging data, and building communities. For Startups: Stop trying to eliminate the human touch. Start amplifying it. The winning formula isn't B2C or B2B. It's B2GM...building tools that turn good managers into great leaders. It's not about tech replacing people. It's about people using tech to become irreplaceable. And that 34-year-old GM? While we were debating disruption, she was already building it. Welcome to hospitality's next chapter. The disruptors aren't in Silicon Valley. They're at the front desk. #HospitalityInnovation #StartupEcosystem #FutureOfHotels #PeopleFirst #HospitalityTech The photo is Singapore's skyline - the story could be any forward-thinking hotel here

What is holding back hospitality from rapidly adopting technology? HospitalityNet asked its World Panel of Hospitality Tech Experts the following question: Modern technology solutions available today have the potential to transform our industry into genuine tech and data-driven entities. Yet, the question remains: What's holding us back? Here is my take: Last year hoteliers invested in technology less than 2.75% of room revenue (STR) - compare this to 15%-20% for the OTAs. Hoteliers need to understand that only through accelerated investments in technology - cloud, mobility, AI, robotics, IoT, etc. can the hospitality industry reduce staffing needs and unsustainable labor costs, and “appease” the exceedingly tech-savvy guests and their exceedingly high tech expectations. By investing in technology, hoteliers can reduce their staffing needs and afford to pay their employees living wages, train them better and empower them to provide stellar service. What's holding us back? Reluctance to invest in technology, coming from the lack of understanding that we are serving technology-obsessed travel consumers who demand a hotel technological experience equal or better to what they have at home. The technology and data fragmentation in hospitality is another big impediment to adopting technology in hospitality. Guest data lives in multiple "data islands" that do not talk to each other: PMS, CRM, CRS, Social Media, Web Analytics, Marketing Data, and BI. Very few properties and hotel companies can boast a single view on customer data with live data feeds from ALL touchpoints with the traveler. Lack of proper education and professional development opportunities on digital hospitality technology and the latest technology innovations, trends and best practices. How many hospitality schools today teach hospitality technology courses to educate future hoteliers on the importance of technology in this tech-obsessed world? Only a few. New York University's Tisch Center for Hospitality offers “Current and Future Hospitality Technologies” graduate course since 2019, which I am privileged to teach. Antiquated accounting in hospitality treating most cloud and SaaS tech applications as Sales, General and Administrative Expenses, and not amortizible capital expenses. And finally, we have become an industry of buzzwords and flashy gadgets, Not investments in a well-thought out tech stack, but singular flashy tech applications in the hope of impressing guests, owners, and investors. Ex. Robot butler by a property without CRM technology and 7-year old website. Well, whether some hoteliers like it or not, the hospitality industry is moving from low-tech and high-touch to high-tech and high-touch. But what kind of high-touch? Fewer, well-trained and well-paid employees using technology to provide stellar service. Service, which currently the poorly paid and trained employees, overwhelmed by labor shortages and mundane, repetitive tasks simply cannot provide.

This ChatGPT feature will change travel & hospitality forever. The day AI stops recommending and starts selling is here. Until recently, ChatGPT could tell you what to buy. Now, it can sell it to you directly. No browser tabs. No booking engines. Just: “I want this.” → “Buy.” → Done. It’s called Instant Checkout, built with Stripe . At launch it’s limited to simple products, but the direction is clear AI is becoming a commerce layer, not just a conversation. Why this changes everything for hotels For years, hotels have been optimising for search: keywords, metasearch, OTA rankings, paid clicks. That era is ending. Soon, travellers won’t “look” for hotels they’ll ask an assistant to design their stay. “Find me a design-led hotel in Florence with great coffee and an outdoor tub.” “Book a weekend where I can switch off completely, yoga, silence, forest.” And ChatGPT won’t just show links. It will build the itinerary, compare inventory, and complete the purchase inside the chat. That means the question is no longer “How do we rank higher on Google?” BUT “How do we become understandable and buyable to AI?” What tomorrow could look like Instead of booking engines, imagine this flow: Guest: “Plan me a 2-night recharge in Tuscany.” ChatGPT: “Would you like thermal baths, vineyard spa, or forest retreat?” Guest: “Vineyard.” ChatGPT: “I’ve found 3 properties. One includes cold plunges and biodynamic dining, €890. Confirm?” That’s not science fiction it’s the logical next step of Instant Checkout. The entire funnel collapses into a single dialogue. How hotels can prepare right now 1️⃣ Make your experiences machine-readable Structure your offers like data. “Private wine tasting, €120, 60 min, available Tue–Sat, includes transfer.” 2️⃣ Rethink your product catalogue Instead of “rooms” and “rates,” design modular experiences: morning rituals, energy resets, chef-led tastings, sunset rituals. 3️⃣ Expose your inventory to AI Ensure your website and PMS feed clear, structured information that APIs and agents can read and understand. 4️⃣ Keep ownership of fulfilment When bookings happen through assistants, whoever fulfils keeps the relationship don’t outsource that part. Hospitality used to be about visibility. Now it’s about readability. The hotels that speak the language of algorithms clear, structured, meaningful experiences will appear first when AI plans your guest’s next trip. AI won’t replace hoteliers. But it will reward the ones who make their experiences easy to buy. P.S. If you found this valuable, that’s exactly what we do. We help hotel brands refine their positioning, branding and user journey to drive direct bookings. Send me a DM for more info :)

I spot a clear hospitality trend: hotel owners are awakening to the fact that a 3% investment in tech isn’t enough. The hospitality industry ranks near the bottom in digital transformation, investing around 3% of net revenue into technology, which is just above agriculture and construction. Meanwhile, industries like retail, finance, and even online travel agencies are allocating up to 15%-17% in technology, reaping the benefits in efficiency, customer satisfaction, and profitability. This disparity is costing hoteliers dearly. Here’s why 3% isn’t enough: → Hotels clinging to outdated systems are missing out on the efficiency gains. Manual processes, fragmented data, and poor integration are costing not only money but also growth opportunities. → Today's guests demand seamless, tech-driven experiences. Whether it’s mobile check-in, AI-powered customer service, or personalized marketing, failing to meet these expectations can lead to a decline in guest satisfaction and loyalty. The shift is already happening - data from McKinsey and Hospitality Net shows it. → Recognizing the need to catch up, hoteliers are planning an average 16% increase in tech investments over the next year. This is more than just a trend—it’s a necessary evolution. → 1 in 5 hoteliers are planning to invest over 20% more than last year, focusing on solutions that drive automation, optimize revenue management, and enhance guest engagement. This is critical as we move into a more data-driven era of hospitality. → Over the next three years, 78% of hoteliers plan to increase their technology investments. This isn’t just about adopting the latest tools; it’s about creating a sustainable, competitive edge in a rapidly evolving market. 👉 Ready to transform your hotel’s tech strategy? Explore the latest solutions on Hotel Tech Report and make informed investments that will keep your property ahead of the competition. #HotelTech #HospitalityIndustry #Hospitality #DigitalTransformation HotelTechReport.com | The Leading Authority on Hotel Technology Follow me for more hotel software and technology insights.

73% of restaurant brands are investing in AI. Only 9% say it's making a meaningful difference. That gap isn't a technology problem. It's an execution problem. I sat down with Jenifer Kern, CMO at Qu, to go deep on their 7th annual State of Digital Report, and the headline is clear: the industry has moved from "should we do this?" to "why isn't this working yet?" Here's what stood out to me: Digital is no longer a channel. It's core infrastructure. 57% of brands now generate over 25% of total sales digitally. QSRs just made their biggest jump yet. And with that scale comes a new set of problems nobody fully planned for. Fragmentation is the silent killer. Guest satisfaction on digital orders runs up to 10 points lower than in-store. Not because the food is different. Because the experience spans channels, systems, and data silos. Tech spend is actually going up, despite margin pressure. That surprised me. But it makes sense. Brands that dumped money into experiments now need those experiments to work. Cutting tech spend would just make the ROI problem worse. The smartest question right now isn't "what AI should we buy?" It's "what outcome are we trying to drive, and does our data infrastructure support it?" The year of serving smarter doesn't start with technology. It starts with getting your foundation right. Full episode and report breakdown in the comments.