✨ Accor's Meetings Glow Up

Insider Highlights

• Accor announces major MICE tech upgrades

• L.A. tourism workers set to earn $30/hour

• Hotels.com launches generative AI trip planner

• Spain removes 65,000 illegal Airbnb listings

• 🛠️ 6 Tech tools you should try

• 🎧 Podcast: GCP Hospitality’s VP of Strategy Michael Belanger on the Hotel Tech Insider podcast this week | Listen here

BIG STORIES

Big headlines this week

🛡️ Experts urge hotels to adopt layered cybersecurity strategies as cyberattacks continue to rise.

🇨🇳 Trip.com’s AI tools and focus on older travelers fuel strong Q1, with 23% revenue growth in the accommodation sector.

🧠 “Agentic AI” is gaining traction: AI that can plan, decide, and act independently like a digital concierge.

🔐 Travel brands face rising cybersecurity threats, urging stronger data protection across the guest journey.

🤖 Hotels.com launches chatbot trip planner using generative AI to streamline travel discovery and booking.

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Snapfix is trusted by hotels worldwide to streamline daily operations, reduce downtime, and keep teams accountable. It’s the simplest way to manage your hotel like clockwork—using just photos, tags, and checklists.

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GOING DEEPER

1. Accor Bets Big on Digital Meeting Sales

Accor is rolling out a global meetings and events (M&E) booking ecosystem across its 5,600 properties. Built on Oracle's OPERA Cloud Sales and Event Management platform and integrated with MeetingPackage’s meetings booking engine, the new system promises real-time availability, instant pricing, and seamless RFP automation for planners. It also connects with Accor’s ALL loyalty program, allowing members to earn rewards for M&E bookings. The new ecosystem will begin rolling out in late 2025 and aims to offer full end-to-end functionality by early 2026.

🎯 Why it matters: Hotels that offer a fully digital, self-service group booking experience—complete with real-time rates and availability—are increasingly winning deals over competitors still relying on manual RFPs.

🔑 Key takeaway: Audit your meetings and events booking process. If it still requires manual back-and-forth or doesn’t allow planners to self-serve, it’s time to prioritize a tech solution that mirrors the booking experience of leisure travel. Read More →

2. Booking.com CFO Outlines Plan to Achieve $450M in Cost Savings with AI

Booking Holdings is on track to trim up to $450 million in costs by 2027, with $150 million already saved this year, largely by automating operations with AI. The company is using generative AI to overhaul internal processes, including customer service, financial workflows, and competitive benchmarking. At the same time, Booking posted strong Q1 results with $4.8 billion in revenue (+8% YoY) and 319 million room nights booked — though U.S. growth is slowing, and macro uncertainty has tempered their full-year outlook to “mid-to-high single digits.”

🎯 Why it matters: Booking is automating its operations, slashing costs, and reinvesting in generative AI to improve traveler services and decision-making at scale. This means OTAs are getting faster, smarter, and more responsive—raising the bar for how guests expect to interact with travel providers, including hotels. Hoteliers relying on manual processes, slow response times, or outdated tech risk falling further behind in the guest acquisition race.

🔑 Key takeaway: A lot of industry experts have said that the OTAs will become irrelevant in a world where travel bookings are made by agentic AI systems. We’ve said it here and continue to reiterate that shorting OTAs in an AI world is likely to be a losing bet. Stay close to your channel partners and monitor the ways they are becoming more efficient to better leverage their agency networks and even bring those concepts into your own business. Read More → 

3. Wyndham Rolls Out Tech Stack Upgrades to Boost Owner Profitability

At its 2025 Global Conference, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts spotlighted Wyndham Connect PLUS as a cornerstone of its next-gen operations strategy. Built in partnership with Canary Technologies and already rolled out to nearly 2,000 hotels, the platform uses AI to automate up to 80% of guest inquiries, enable contactless check-in and check-out, and drive new ancillary revenue through upsells like early check-in and room upgrades. It also supports mobile tipping and real-time service feedback — all while helping lean teams do more with less.

🎯 Why it matters: The Wyndham example shows how economy and midscale properties can implement conversational AI to reduce front desk load, improve service consistency, and unlock incremental revenue. As staffing challenges persist, the business case for automation is getting stronger, and Wyndham's adoption of AI at this scale signals that it's becoming operational table stakes.

🔑 Key takeaway: AI-powered tools like Connect PLUS are evolving from “nice-to-have” to “must-have,” regardless of whether you’re operating an independent or large chain. For hoteliers, the playbook is shifting: automate the repeatable, personalize the critical, and drive conversion across the entire guest journey. If you're not already piloting AI across operations, you may be falling behind. Read More →

TOOLS & TACTICS

⚒️ Hotel Tech Tools You’ve Gotta Try

✅ Snapfix: Tracks hotel maintenance tasks using photos and simple daily checklists.

✅ Inn-flow: Simplify hotel finances with user-friendly accounting software solution.

✅ Triptease: Reduce reliance on OTAs through smarter conversion tools.

✅ Otelier: Optimize hotel budgets and forecasts with precise, data-driven insights.

✅ MeetingPackage: Simplify MICE bookings and boost event revenue.

✅ Cloudbeds: Hotel management software at the speed of AI.

AROUND THE HOTEL INDUSTRY

Other hospitality happenings this week ​

📊 Inbound travel to the U.S. rebounds in Q1; United and Delta report strong demand and rising stock prices.

🇺🇸 U.S. projected to lose $12.5B in international visitor spending in 2025, the only country forecasted to see a major decline globally, per WTTC.

💰 Los Angeles votes to raise minimum wage to $30 for tourism workers, impacting hotel labor costs.

🍽️ Uber and OpenTable partner to let users book restaurant reservations in the Uber app.

🧱 Expedia’s B2B arm expands ad and API tools, aiming to help partners scale more efficiently.

🎁 European travelers show signs of loyalty fatigue, favoring flexibility and value over traditional rewards.

🏘️ Spain orders Airbnb to remove over 65,000 illegal listings in crackdown on short-term rentals.

🌱 Radisson opening two net-zero hotels, citing funding gaps as a barrier to broader climate action.

🚫 Airbnb debuts anti-party tech to preempt disruptive bookings ahead of summer travel season.

PODCAST OF THE WEEK
🎙GCP Hospitality's VP of Strategy on Automating Revenue Without Losing Control

What can Four Seasons Bora Bora and a New Zealand hostel teach you about building smarter hotel tech stacks? In this episode, Michael Belanger, VP of Commercial Strategy at GCP Hospitality, unpacks the unique challenges—and surprising advantages—of managing one of the most diverse hotel portfolios in the world.

Key Takeaways:

• Learn why small and independent hotels are often more agile than global brands when it comes to adopting new technology.

• Get insider strategies for tech stack decisions across both luxury resorts and hostels—including tools like Mews, Triptease, and SiteMinder.

• Discover how GCP is rethinking the role of CRM vs PMS—and why that shift could unlock the next era of personalization and profitability.

👉🏼 Check out the interview on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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