📊 Google Debuts Hotel Price Tracker

Insider Highlights

• Google’s massive AI-powered travel feature launch

• Tech influences 2% RevPAR growth forecast

• Marriott partners with smart handwashing system

• Are digital nomads still a segment worth going after?

• + much more!

• 🛠️ 6 Tech tools you should try

• 🎧 Podcast: Hear how CIC Hospitality measures employee satisfaction and ties it to efficiency and revenue metrics.

BIG STORIES

Big headlines this week

💰 Hospitality M&A activity remained strong in 2024, with tech-driven brands and asset-light models attracting the most investment.

🤖 Perplexity AI now handles hotel bookings, testing the potential of AI-driven travel search and transactions.

🏨 CBRE forecasts 2% U.S. hotel RevPAR growth in 2025, emphasizing tech-driven revenue optimization amid economic uncertainty.

📱 Accor's Sofitel brand taps into TikTok marketing to engage younger travelers and drive direct bookings.

TOOLS & TACTICS

⚒️ Hotel Tech Tools You’ve Gotta Try

✅ Canary Technologies: Powerful but simple digital guest journey platform.

✅ Unifocus: Optimize hotel staff schedules to boost productivity.

✅ ROH: Empower your sales team with digital payments tech.

✅ Hireology: Find and hire reliable staff faster to fill key hotel roles.

✅ Bookboost: Cuts response times and boosts upsells with smarter guest messaging.

✅ Cloudbeds: Comprehensive hotel management software at the speed of AI.

GOING DEEPER

1. New AHLA Report: Wages Have Surged Globally

Hotel wages have surged globally according to a new AHLA Report — up 25.6% since 2019 in the U.S. alone — as competition for talent intensifies. Yet 73% of job seekers abandon applications that take too long, and nearly 90% expect an interview within a week. To stay competitive, hotels must streamline hiring processes with mobile-friendly, fast-response tools that match the urgency of today’s labor market.

🎯 Why it matters: Speed wins in hiring. With 73% of job seekers abandoning slow applications and 89% expecting interviews within a week, hotels that simplify and accelerate their recruitment process — especially through mobile-friendly tools and text-based applications like Hireology — will have a major advantage in attracting and retaining top talent in a tight labor market.

🔑 Key takeaway: Audit and streamline your hiring process immediately. That means: eliminate long applications, make them mobile-friendly, enable text-based communication, and commit to interviewing qualified candidates within 7 days. Speed isn't just a perk — it's now a baseline expectation for talent, and falling short means losing great candidates to faster-moving competitors. Read More →

2. Google Announces AI-Powered Travel Upgrades

Google just rolled out several AI-driven travel features, including hotel price tracking and alerts (similar to what is already offered on Google Flights), AI-generated trip itineraries, and screenshot-based trip planning. These tools aim to make travel planning easier for users while increasing price transparency and personalization.

🎯 Why it matters: Google’s latest updates give travelers more control over their trip planning, making it easier to track hotel prices, organize travel ideas, and receive AI-generated recommendations. As Google becomes more embedded in the guest booking journey, hotels must refine their pricing strategies, optimize online visibility, and ensure their content stands out (and is up-to-date).

🔑 Key takeaway: AI-powered travel planning is rapidly evolving, and Google’s not the only big player (keep an eye on Perplexity and OpenAI too). Hotels that don’t optimize their online presence, i.e. competitive pricing, strong visuals, and stellar guest reviews, risk losing visibility in the AI-driven booking landscape. Maintain a competitive edge by embracing these changes and adapting strategies for AI use cases. Read More →

3. Hotel Guests Say: Give Us Apps, But Don’t Take Away the People

Digital adoption in UK hotels is surging, with 49% of guests using automated check-in and 47% expecting mobile room keys, yet most still demand human support when things go wrong. 63% of 18–34-year-olds prefer tech-first experiences, but 85% of older guests cite human interaction as a non-negotiable. The winning formula? Smart hotels that combine tech convenience with responsive, visible staff.

🎯 Why it matters: More than 70% of guests want hotels to offer app-based services like Canary for simple tasks like ordering towels or controlling room settings—but failed automation without human back-up is a major frustration. Automation alone won't cut it; success hinges on pairing tech with staff support.

🔑 Key takeaway: Audit your tech touchpoints—especially check-in, room keys, and service requests—and ensure every one has a reliable staff fallback. Guests expect digital options, but they'll remember the hotel that rescued them when tech failed. Investing in both automation and people is the only way to deliver on rising expectations. Read the Report →

AROUND THE HOTEL INDUSTRY

Other hospitality happenings this week

🎙️ Experts weigh in on the evolving role of AI in hotel operations and guest experience.

🏗️ Construction costs may rise as new tariffs on steel and aluminum impact hotel development budgets.

🤖 25% of travel operators have yet to implement AI, highlighting a growing gap in digital transformation.

🛡️ Marriott partners with PathSpot to deploy real-time AI-driven hand hygiene monitoring across its properties.

🚀 Airbnb accelerates an 18-month code migration using large language models, completing it in just six weeks.

🌍 Hotels are adapting to the shifting digital nomad trend with tech-enabled flexible stays and remote work-friendly amenities.

📈 Despite launching upper-midscale brands Hyatt Studios and Hyatt Select, Hyatt remains committed to catering to high-end travelers.

HOTELIER SPOTLIGHT
🎙 CIC Hospitality's CEO on Eliminating Manual Tasks in Hotel Management

How can technology redefine the guest experience in the hospitality industry? In this episode, Mattias Tanski and Erik Bergsten from CIC Hospitality reveal their innovative approach to integrating cutting-edge tech into their operations.

Key Takeaways:

• Discover how CIC Hospitality leverages hologram receptionists and AI-driven systems to enhance guest interactions and streamline operations.

• Learn about the importance of employee satisfaction tools and how they correlate with operational efficiency and revenue.

• Explore the role of sustainability in hotel management and the technology used to track and reduce resource consumption.

👉🏼 Check out the interview on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

Want to advertise with us?

⭐️ Become a premium member, join the best companies in the industry (here)

🎯 Set up a PPC campaign to drive high-intent traffic from our homepage and category pages straight to your website in under 3-minutes (here)

💌 Sponsor this newsletter (here) or a dedicated eblast (here) to our 100k subscribers

👀  Run a site takeover campaign (here) to drive downloads of your lead magnet