🏨 AI in Hotel RFPs +200%

Sitting on payment data you can't actually see? Most hotels lose revenue at points they never track - this playbook from Planet shows exactly where it leaks and how to find it.

The playbook breaks down the "golden path" from booking to post-stay, the daily, weekly, and monthly habits that keep revenue tight, and the do's and don'ts hoteliers use to stop silent losses. It's a practical read for anyone deciding how their property should handle payments.

👉 Get the playbook and find your hidden revenue

Anthropic just launched Claude Tag, an AI agent that lives inside Slack and can be summoned like a coworker using "@Claude." Unlike traditional chatbots that wait for instructions, Claude Tag maintains context across conversations, proactively flags important updates, breaks down tasks, and works asynchronously over time.

🎯 Why it matters: This is the next step beyond chatbots and copilots. Most hotel AI deployments today are still request-response systems: ask a question, get an answer. Claude Tag represents a shift toward persistent AI coworkers that monitor workflows, retain institutional knowledge, and take action without being explicitly prompted each time. The same model is starting to appear in hospitality, where AI agents are handling guest messaging, group sales inquiries, revenue management decisions, and operational workflows long after employees have logged off.

🔑 Key takeaway: Hotel executives should start thinking about AI as digital labor, not just software. The most important question is no longer "What can AI tell my team?" but "What work can AI own?" Whether it's responding to meeting leads, monitoring guest requests, reconciling invoices, or adjusting rates, the industry is moving toward persistent agents that sit inside existing workflows rather than standalone AI tools. Read More →

As hotel AI matures, the market is splitting into three distinct approaches: co-pilots that help employees make better decisions, agents that complete tasks autonomously, and forward-deployed engineering (FDE) teams that build custom AI systems around a hotel's unique data and workflows. These aren't competing technologies so much as different answers to the same question: how much work should the machine do versus the human?

🎯 Why it matters: The industry conversation is shifting from whether or not to use AI to how it should be deployed. Co-pilots help revenue managers, marketers, and operators work faster. Agents handle repetitive workflows like guest messaging, reservations, and invoice reconciliation. FDE models tackle high-value, company-specific problems that off-the-shelf software can't solve. The strategic challenge is matching the right AI architecture to the right business problem.

🔑 Key takeaway: Most hotel groups will likely end up with a combo approach. The more important insight is that AI adoption is increasingly becoming an operating model decision, not a software purchasing decision. Hotels that clearly define which work humans own and which work machines own will see far greater returns than those simply buying the latest AI feature. It’s worth remembering that in industries further along in AI adoption, fewer than 1 in 20 AI pilots achieve even a 50% success rate, making real-world references and measurable outcomes more important than impressive demos. Read More →

A federal appeals court ruled that Workday must face a lawsuit alleging its AI-powered hiring tools discriminated against older applicants, Black applicants, and people with disabilities. The case stems from a job seeker who claims he was rejected from more than 100 positions after being screened by automated systems. The ruling is notable because it suggests AI vendors—not just employers—may be held accountable when algorithms influence hiring decisions.

🎯 Why it matters: Hospitality is facing persistent labor shortages while rapidly adopting AI across recruiting, scheduling, and workforce management. Most conversations about AI in hotels focus on productivity gains, but this case highlights a different risk: accountability. As AI takes a larger role in employment decisions, operators may need to scrutinize not only how their own teams use AI, but also how third-party vendors train, test, and govern their models.

🔑 Key takeaway: Treat AI governance as seriously as cybersecurity or data privacy. As AI moves from assisting decisions to making them, the ability to audit, understand, and defend how a system arrived at an outcome may become just as important as the productivity gains it delivers. Read More →

✅ FLYR Hospitality: Better data analysis for more profitable decision-making.

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

✅ Siteminder: Capture direct bookings, syncs rate and reduce OTA commissions.

1️⃣ How to Bring AI Into Your Hotel Organization

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.

2️⃣ The Hotel Upsell Playbook

Learn why traditional upselling programs often fail to scale and what separates hotels that consistently grow revenue from those that rely on inconsistent frontline performance.

3️⃣ How Independents Can Leverage Loyalty to Drive Repeat Bookings and Higher Guest Spend

Traditional loyalty programs dilute value with complexity and price-driven incentives that strip independents of what makes them special. Learn how to restore real loyalty to hospitality, empowering brands to connect with guests through personalization, experience, and genuine recognition.

👨‍💻 Inside Choice Hotels’ next phase of technology innovation

🔄 IHG’s CTO on what actually makes transformation work

🔐 Hotels have a new AI cybersecurity problem

🤝 Hotel tech succeeds when it empowers staff instead of replacing them

🔗 Expedia: connected hotel tech stacks drive revenue and reduce guest friction

🏢 Marriott expands into branded apartments and rental living

✊ Philadelphia and Seattle hotel workers strike as labor tensions escalate

🏨 Hilton eyes new brands but owners demand clear ROI

🔍 AI is rewriting the rules of travel discovery and visibility

💼 Corporate hotel programs lean on AI to manage rising costs

⚖️ AI-powered law firm wins court case, marking legal milestone

MARA Solutions’ AI-powered reputation management software centralizes guest reviews, generates personalized responses in your brand voice, automates review workflows, and provides analytics to uncover trends across your properties.

👉 Improve review visibility with MARA

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.

What happens when the biggest threat to hotel owners isn't brands, OTAs, or labor costs - but AI?

In this episode, Sloan Dean, former CEO of one of the largest hotel management companies in the United States, shares why he believes the hospitality industry's incentives are fundamentally broken, which hotel technologies actually move the needle, and why many operators may be underestimating the disruptive force of AI.

During his tenure as CEO of Remington Hospitality, Sloan Dean helped grow the company from roughly 80 hotels to more than 150 properties generating over $1.6 billion in annual hotel revenue. With a background in engineering, asset management, and hotel operations, Sloan brings a rare perspective that spans ownership, management, technology, and investment.

👉🏼 Check out our interview with Sloan Dean on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Want to advertise with us?

💌 Sponsor this newsletter (here) or a dedicated eblast (here) to our 65k subscribers

⭐️ 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 (learn how)