It’s Thursday, July 2. AI is quietly becoming the hotel manager, with the Ritz-Carlton San Francisco cutting room prep 20% and Hilton's LightStay banking $1 billion since 2009. New data finds almost zero overlap between the jobs AI touches and the jobs nobody can staff. J.D. Power says guests are happier than they've been in 30 years, with Drury outscoring Kimpton from a lower segment. Uber's product chief mentions guests quit room service for Uber Eats. Airbnb outspent Marriott on World Cup ads and 80% of host-city hotels missed their forecasts.
🎥 Video of the week: We share an in depth video deep dive into how McDreams Hotels leverages Mara Solutions to handle 2,000 reviews/week in autopilot.
📢 Shoutout to Geoffrey Toffetti, CEO of Frontline Performance Group for joining us on the Hotel Tech Insider podcast this week and showing how hotels are getting 50:1 ROI on upselling with the right tech and processes in place.
TOGETHER WITH SOJERN
Tired of high OTA commissions and marketing fees that deliver uncertain returns? Sojern helps hotels drive more direct bookings across display, social, email, search, and metasearch - and you only pay after the guest completes their stay.
✅ Pay for Completed Stays: Reduce upfront risk with commission-based campaigns tied to actual stays, not clicks or unconfirmed bookings.
✅ Reach Travelers Everywhere: Engage potential guests across the full booking journey with coordinated, multichannel marketing.
✅ Automated Performance: Continuously optimize campaigns while tracking bookings and results through self-service reporting.
Sojern combines travel-focused data, automated campaign management, and professional creative services to help hotels compete with OTAs, strengthen brand visibility, and acquire more direct guests efficiently.
GOING DEEPER
1. Top Hotels Generate 2.6x More Room Service Revenue
SuitePad analyzed thousands of digital room service orders from several hundred 4- and 5-star hotels between January 2024 and early 2026 and found that the biggest differences in room service revenue come from operational execution—not location, brand, or hotel class. The top-performing 25% of hotels generate 2.6 times more room service revenue per room than the median by optimizing response times, menus, staffing, pricing, and digital ordering.
🔑 Key takeaway: This report reinforces a broader hospitality trend: guest-facing technology only creates value when paired with disciplined operations. The data suggests hotels can unlock meaningful incremental revenue using existing staff and systems by improving how room service is presented, ordered, and fulfilled rather than investing in entirely new offerings. Read More →
2. J.D. Power: Hotel Guest Satisfaction Climbs 13 Points as Value Scores Jump 18
Guest satisfaction improved across all nine segments and all seven measured dimensions this year, led by an 18-point gain in value for prices paid at a time when ADR moved up only about 1%. This matters because the gains trace to physical and operational investment, guest rooms, property upkeep, front desk courtesy, and pool and fitness center maintenance, which are the line items owners cut first in a soft year. J.D. Power also measured AI-assisted hotel research for the first time, and with Gen Y and Gen Z making up 72% of those users, the discovery funnel is changing while brands are still optimizing for the old one.
🔑 Key takeaway: Value for prices paid rose 18 points while ADR rose about 1%. Value perception is not tracking your rate, it is tracking condition and service. Hotels that funded rooms, upkeep, and staff training got credit for value they did not buy with discounting. Read More →
3. CBRE: AI Adoption Is Starting to Move Hotel Underwriting Assumptions
AI-driven operating gains are beginning to influence how buyers, lenders, and appraisers assess hotel risk and upside, while conceding that hard evidence tech-enabled hotels outperform is still a few years away. This matters because the underwriting question is whether your AI cost savings are durable, and if they fade after year one, capitalizing them into a sale price or a loan basis overstates the asset. The flip side is already in play: properties running outdated systems are being sorted into an obsolescence bucket by the people writing the checks, based on an assumption nobody has proven yet.
🔑 Key takeaway: Appraisers are starting to ask whether AI efficiency gains are structural or temporary, and the answer changes your valuation. A 20% housekeeping labor reduction that holds for three years supports a margin assumption. The same reduction that reverses when occupancy normalizes does not, and an underwriter who catches that discounts your whole tech story. Read More →
TOOLS & TACTICS
⚒️ Hotel Tech Tools You’ve Gotta Try
✅ Canary Technologies: Powerful but simple AI powered digital guest journey platform.
✅ Trybe: Grow your spa business with memberships, vouchers, and bookings.
✅ Sojern: Pay-for-performance hotel ads that drive direct bookings.
✅ ROH: Automate sales and finance to save time and capture more revenue.
✅ Hireology: Find and hire reliable staff faster to fill key hotel roles.
✅ Eleanor: Manage your resort’s daily guest service related tasks.
✅ Gcommerce: Audit and improve your hotel’s AI search visibility.
✅ Siteminder: Capture direct bookings, syncs rate and reduce OTA commissions.
✅ Sertifi: Simplify hotel check-ins and payments with secure digital solutions.
FREE DOWNLOADS
Trending content
To keep up with changing guest needs and rising expectations, hotels are adopting AI at scale. Dive into Canary’s research to see how AI is driving revenue growth, operational efficiency, improved guest experiences, and much more.
Learn how hotels can connect spa bookings, rooms, dining and add-ons into a more profitable guest journey. This expert-led session shares practical ways to reduce booking friction, increase upsells and capture more revenue from every stay.
Learn how to turn Google Hotel Ads into a high-performing direct booking channel. This ebook breaks down how hotel metasearch works, the metrics that matter most, and the strategies hotels use to reduce OTA dependence and grow profitable direct revenue.
VIDEO OF THE WEEK
AROUND THE HOTEL INDUSTRY
Other hospitality happenings this week
🚖 Uber’s product chief on hotels and robotaxis
⚽️ Airbnb lures fans from US hotels after World Cup marketing push
🔎 DeepSeek is preparing an IPO and chasing a $71bn valuation
⚠️ What if AI doesn’t fix travel’s labor problem
🇨🇳 Companies turn to Chinese AI models to cut costs
🏨 Hilton and ResortPass expand partnership
📲 The unsung tech that’s making the world easier to navigate
👷 Nobu Hotel Towers built with Penetron concrete waterproofing technology
AI TOOL OF THE WEEK
Ernest by Lighthouse turns hotel data into action
Ernest connects your commercial data in one AI workspace, analyzes demand and competitive performance, recommends next steps, and takes approved actions across your hotel systems.
🪄 Stop switching between dashboards and compiling reports manually—Ernest brings your data together so you can make faster, better-informed commercial decisions.
TECH TOOLS INSPIRATION GUIDE
Tech Tools for Every Business Goal
The best operators don’t just keep up they stay curious. They demo new tools, test ideas in real workflows, and talk to peers to see what’s actually working. That’s how you find the small changes that compound into meaningful results. Pick your department below and commit to trying at least one new tool this week. Even a single demo can spark an idea that improves performance, saves time, or unlocks new revenue.
Hotel Operations: Run a tighter, more efficient operation
Hotel Marketing: Capture new demand with smarter acquisition strategies
Revenue Management: Make more confident, data-driven commercial decisions
Guest Experience: Increase revenue per guest while improving the stay
PODCAST SPOTLIGHT
CEO of FPG on Scaling Hotel Upselling with AI
What if your front desk could generate millions in incremental revenue - without adding staff or compromising the guest experience? In this episode, Geoffrey Toffetti, CEO of Frontline Performance Group (FPG), shares how his company evolved from a hospitality consulting firm into a SaaS platform now used by nearly 3,000 hotels to improve frontline performance, increase guest satisfaction, and unlock measurable revenue through AI-driven coaching. Geoffrey also makes a bold prediction that may challenge how experienced hotel leaders think about the future of hotel software: AI won't just enhance software - it could replace much of it.
👉🏼 Check out our interview with Sloan Dean on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
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