Hospitality leaders gather on the opening day of Rome Future Week to explore why human presence could become the ultimate luxury in an increasingly automated industry
ROME, ITALY — 21 September 2026 — Rome Future Week (https://romefutureweek.it), Rome’s city-wide festival dedicated to innovation, technology and the future, opened its 2026 edition with hundreds of events taking place across the Italian capital.
On the festival’s opening day, hospitality leaders, hoteliers and technology experts gathered at Villa Spalletti Trivelli (https://www.villaspalletti.it), an intimate luxury hotel and historic aristocratic residence in the heart of Rome, just steps from the Quirinal Palace.
Against this particularly fitting backdrop, “Humans-as-Luxury: The Value of Human Connection in the Age of AI” explored one of the defining questions facing hospitality in the age of artificial intelligence: when machines can do almost everything, what will remain uniquely human, and how much will it be worth?
The event was sponsored by Hoxell (https://hoxell.com), an intuitive hospitality operations platform that connects hotel departments in real time, streamlines daily workflows and gives staff more time to focus on delivering personalised guest experiences.
It opened with a keynote by Simone Puorto, techno-philosopher, hospitality strategist, author, Head of Emerging Trends & Strategic Innovation at Hospitality Net and founder of Travel Singularity and Elegia (https://elegia.io).
Puorto presented his Humans-as-Luxury thesis (humansasluxury.com): in a world where most operational activities can increasingly be automated, genuine human interaction may become scarce enough to acquire a new economic and symbolic value.
FROM HOSPES TO HUMANS-AS-LUXURY
Puorto began by returning to the linguistic origins of hospitality.
The Latin word hospes can refer to both the person who offers hospitality and the person who receives it. Hospitality, therefore, is not simply a service one person delivers to another, but a reciprocal relationship in which host and guest exist through one another.
The concept echoes the ancient Greek tradition of xenia, the sacred relationship between host and stranger.
From this perspective, Puorto argued, the central question surrounding automation is not whether technology should enter hospitality. It already has, and its role will continue to grow. The more important question is what should be automated, and what should deliberately remain human?
Rather than treating full automation as inevitable, Puorto proposed three possible models for the future of hospitality.
- Technocentric hotels would embrace extensive automation and self-service, minimising human interaction and competing primarily through efficiency, convenience and price.
- Hybrid hotels, likely to represent much of the industry, would use AI and automation for repetitive, administrative and operational tasks while allowing employees to dedicate more time to meaningful interactions with guests.
- Anthropocentric hotels would make a radically different choice: preserving human presence even where automation could technically perform the same task more efficiently. In this model, human interaction itself becomes part of the luxury proposition.
WHEN HUMANS START BEHAVING LIKE MACHINES
Puorto also introduced what he calls the Olympia Effect, or Reverse Uncanny Valley (https://www.hospitalitynet.org/article/122000583/foreword-by-the-editor-in-chief-the-olympia-effect).
The traditional Uncanny Valley describes the discomfort people experience when machines become almost, but not quite, human.
The Olympia Effect reverses that idea.
As hospitality becomes increasingly standardised, scripted, measured and mediated by technology, employees themselves risk beginning to behave like machines: repeating identical phrases, following rigid procedures and focusing more on screens and systems than on the person standing in front of them.
The danger, Puorto argued, is therefore not simply that machines will become more human.
It is that humans will become more machine-like.
TECHNOLOGY SHOULD GIVE HUMANITY TIME BACK
The keynote was followed by a panel moderated by Puorto featuring Alessandro Massimo Nucara, Director General of Federalberghi; Davide Bernasconi, Co-Founder of Hoxell; Michela Mola of Singer Palace Hotel; and Andrea Spalletti Trivelli of Villa Spalletti Trivelli.
The discussion explored how these ideas translate into the everyday reality of hotel operations.
Michela Mola, owner of Singer Palace Hotel (https://singerpalacehotel.com), highlighted the advantages independent hotels can have in this transition. Smaller properties can often experiment, adapt and make decisions more quickly than large, highly structured groups. Technology, she argued, should make employees feel supported rather than constrained, strengthening their ability to deliver genuinely personal hospitality.
Andrea Spalletti Trivelli brought the perspective of independent luxury hospitality, emphasising the importance of spontaneity, personal relationships, memory and storytelling. At a property such as Villa Spalletti Trivelli, where hospitality is deeply connected to the family’s history and the building’s identity, technology can support the experience but cannot become the experience.
Alessandro Massimo Nucara, Director General of Federalberghi (https://www.federalberghi.it), broadened the conversation to the institutional, ethical and social implications of artificial intelligence. The discussion touched on employment, regulation, responsibility and the danger of delegating not only tasks but also thought itself to AI systems. As adoption accelerates, institutions and industry associations will play an increasingly important role in helping the sector develop responsible frameworks for using these technologies.
Davide Bernasconi, Co-Founder of Hoxell, focused on technology’s ability to remove operational friction. By simplifying communication between departments and automating repetitive processes across areas such as housekeeping and maintenance, technology can give hotel employees something increasingly precious: time. The objective is not to eliminate people, but to allow them to spend less time managing processes and more time looking after guests.
AUTOMATION IS NOT DESTINY. IT IS A CHOICE.
One of the central conclusions emerging from the event was that hospitality does not face a binary choice between technology and humanity.
AI, robotics and automation will increasingly perform activities that humans have traditionally carried out, particularly repetitive, administrative and transactional tasks. In many cases, this will be necessary to address productivity challenges and structural labour shortages across the industry.
But technological capability does not automatically determine what hospitality should become.
Hotels will still have to decide which interactions should be optimised, which should be automated and which should remain deliberately inefficient, spontaneous and human.
In a world obsessed with frictionless experiences, some forms of friction may even become desirable: an employee who breaks the script; a gesture that cannot be predicted, standardised, or scaled. These apparent imperfections may ultimately become part of what guests value most.
Technology can make hospitality more efficient, but human beings are what make it hospitality.
EVENT INFORMATION
Humans-as-Luxury: Il valore umano nell’era dell’AI
Rome Future Week 2026
21 September 2026
Villa Spalletti Trivelli, Rome
Keynote and Moderator: Simone Puorto
Panel:
Alessandro Massimo Nucara, Federalberghi
Andrea Spalletti Trivelli, Villa Spalletti Trivelli
Davide Bernasconi, Hoxell
Michela Mola, Singer Palace Hotel
Sponsored by: Hoxell
Photography by: Stefano Pinci (https://www.stefanopinci.com)
