I think the hospitality industry may be turning a corner…
This week I attended the Destination AI Forum in Washington, DC. (See proof below.) The rest of the panel was a great group of industry heavyweights: Laura Calin from Oracle,Greg Land from AWS, and Jeff Thoman from Salesforce.
When our moderator, David Poprawka, asked me how well the hospitality industry was adopting AI compared to others, I mentioned that I have a running joke that if you’ve ever wondered what happened to all those original IBM PCs with two floppy drives from the 1980s, just peek into the back office of just about any hotel. Let’s face it, the hotel industry hasn’t been called a technology leader by anyone outside of the industry. Ever.
But I think that might be about to change.
Last year’s conference had a small but committed group wanting to better understand GenAI and why it was all the rage. We talked about improving models, the potential for agents, and agentic commerce that could connect consumers directly to suppliers, bypassing Google. I took away a ‘wait and see’ attitude. Cautiously hopeful.
As this year’s conference continued, I noticed something very different was happening in the way the presenters were talking and in the receptivity of the audience. There was a level of enthusiasm everywhere that hadn’t fully developed last year. The presenters were more upbeat and had lots of concrete experience to relate. During the breaks, people booked follow-ups in a kind of “lean forward” way. Everybody was stoked, probably more than I’ve ever seen in a conference. As my old friend Phillip would have said, the buzz was palpable. And it really was. One panelist, near the end of the day, said something like: “I don’t know where things are going with all this, but it’s the most fun I’ve ever had at work.” Another, when asked “What are you most excited about and looking forward to in the coming year?” responded: “I’m most excited to come back here next year to see how everything’s progressed for all of us.”
The Destination AI team is tapping into something really special. Sure, there’s an element of being in the right place at the right time, but it’s more than that. They’ve brought together people who are ready to engage and have their moment. They’ve created, in two short years, a community of business people and technologists who are remembering why they got into the hospitality business in the first place and having a blast, and they want to share it with each other. I have to believe that a motivated group like this is going to deliver some serious business value in the coming months and years.
I suspect they’re also throwing out all those IBM PCs and replacing them with Macs running ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. Looks like we’re turning the GenAI adoption corner at full speed with the top down and our hair in the wind. This next year is going to be legendary!
