Innovation

🛫 Phocuswright Conference interview reveals Booking.com's strategic stance against AI competition in travel. Booking.com, led by Rob Ransom, believes their value lies in orchestrating the full travel journey, not just aggregating options. Partnering with AI giants like Google and ChatGPT, they aim to maintain their role as a trusted marketplace. Over half of bookings flow through their app, highlighting their strategic focus on mobile. Booking.com expands into in-resort services to enhance customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.

💻 By 2026, hospitality tech evolves, redefining operations through AI-driven automation and data integration. Digital agents will manage workflows, transforming hotels into cohesive entities. Administrative tasks like inventory checks and guest check-ins will be automated, enhancing guest experiences and allowing staff to focus on empathy. With real-time analytics and predictive intelligence, hotels will offer hyper-personalized services and accelerate business operations, ultimately enhancing profitability and the human element in hospitality.

🏨 Soft brands promise global distribution and loyalty programs while retaining hotel names. However, in the AI era, individuality is crucial. Soft brands blur hotel identities with uniformity and incur fees for brand, marketing, technology, and compliance. As AI favors specificity and meaning, independent hotels with distinct identities become more discoverable. DNA Hotels offers a semantic framework through the Meaningful Architectural Index, emphasizing clarity and expression over mere affiliation, preparing hotels for the next discovery layer.

📑 Pertlink Limited's Business Continuity Playbook aids hotel leadership in managing operational disruptions during peak times, emphasizing guest safety and service continuity. It features a rapid 10-minute activation protocol led by an Incident Commander, coordinating various departments. Pertlink began on October 23, 2000, in Hong Kong, focusing on IT consultancy for the hospitality industry. The company is globally recognized for its expertise in Hotel and IT sectors, enhancing guest experiences through technology.

📈 Y2K didn't disrupt travel booking, but hoteliers struggled against online travel agencies (OTAs) like Expedia and Booking.com for two decades. Brad Brewer, founder of Brewer Digital Marketing, aims to change this by connecting hotels directly to AI platforms such as ChatGPT. His TravelOS MCP system allows hotels to bypass intermediaries, paying a flat fee instead of commissions. Brewer advocates for hotel independence, data ownership, and fair competition in the AI-driven marketplace.

📱 Rohith Kori and Ryan King highlight the evolution of POS (point of sale) systems in hotels, now central to guest experiences beyond transactions. Integrated with cloud technology, these systems connect with hotel platforms for real-time data access, enabling personalized guest services. Modern POS systems offer scalability, flexibility, and extensibility across property types, enhancing efficiency and guest satisfaction. Future advancements may include AI-driven personalized recommendations and augmented reality features. Ensuring resiliency and intuitive interfaces remains crucial for operational continuity and guest engagement.

🏨 roommaster, a hospitality software company, has launched the Premium Booking Engine globally, aiming to boost hotel revenue and reduce OTA costs. This AI-powered tool offers mobile-first design, real-time pricing, and metasearch visibility. Hotels reported a 35% higher conversion rate, 15% increased booking value, and 60% growth in mobile bookings. Established for over 30 years, roommaster serves hotels in over 100 countries, focusing on simplifying operations and enhancing guest experiences.

💻 In 2025, as the U.S. labor market slows, AI is reshaping job applications. Over 50% of organizations use AI for recruitment, with a third of ChatGPT users leveraging it for job searches. Dartmouth and Princeton research reveals post-2022, AI-enhanced cover letters became longer yet less impactful, complicating hiring and reducing average starting wages. The study analyzed thousands of applications on Freelancer.com, highlighting challenges AI poses to identifying qualified candidates.

📱United Airlines launched a new app amid skepticism as 85% of users access it only on flight days. By 2026, Ramp Economic Lab forecasts AI will automate significant customer service roles, particularly in hospitality. Sweetgreen's co-founder Nathaniel Ru departed after 19 years, following a $1 billion failed robot kitchen venture and brand issues in 2025. The future lies in evolving jobs to manage AI systems, reminiscent of how travel agents adapted in the internet era.