Hospitality Net met with Brian Reeves, founder and CEO of roomangel Foundation, at HITEC 2025 to explore how AI is reshaping hotel distribution.
roomangel Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation, launched Hive as its first major initiative to help hoteliers reclaim control over pricing, distribution, and performance analytics. Hive is not just another AI tool, it is a foundation for the industry’s transition to what Reeves calls the “agentic future.”
What is Hive, and how does it work?
Hive draws from roomangel’s proprietary pricing datasets and integrates them into a fully AI-native environment. The goal is immediate performance improvement for hotels while building a long-term path towards AI readiness. Reeves described Hive as a “performance layer” that operates across revenue management, marketing, finance, and distribution, providing insights out of the box and enabling hoteliers to use, share, and even co-create AI-powered tools tailored to their needs.
What is the ‘agentic future’?
According to Reeves, the future of travel bookings will be defined by conversations between intelligent agents, AI-powered bots acting on behalf of both consumers and hotels. In this new paradigm, hotels must be equipped to respond to thousands of simultaneous AI queries. To do so, they must optimise pricing and performance data to operate at machine speed and with greater precision.
Reeves envisions a future where the hotel industry, using its own data and platforms like Hive, can outperform OTAs by leveraging richer, property-level insights and more accurate pricing data. “Never overpay for a hotel room” is the most sought-after feature by travellers, and only the industry itself, through roomangel’s data, can deliver on that promise.
Addressing fragmentation and silos
A recurring theme in the conversation was the fragmentation of hotel data and operations. Reeves criticised the traditional model where departments operate in silos, with marketing, revenue management, and finance each working from disconnected systems. Hive aims to bridge this gap, allowing seamless collaboration and shared intelligence.
Most of us have been trying to out-analyse our competition with incomplete information
, Reeves noted. With Hive, users can connect Google Analytics data, benchmark website conversion performance, and generate AI-powered suggestions for improvement, all in one unified platform.
Is AI replacing people?
Reeves addressed the difficult question head-on: is AI replacing people? His answer was both pragmatic and optimistic. He believes AI-driven replacement is inevitable across all industries, but Hive’s goal is to assist rather than replace. The platform is designed to augment the capabilities of marketing managers, finance directors, and revenue teams, enabling smarter decisions and better collaboration.
Cutting through the AI hype
Reeves also offered a candid assessment of the AI hype saturating the conference floor. While most companies at HITEC claim to offer AI solutions, many are simply rebranding automation. True AI, according to Reeves, is rare, but critical. He praised companies like Cloudbeds for taking sensible, meaningful steps in the AI space, while cautioning that much of what is marketed today is more fiction than function.
An invitation to hoteliers
Reeves ended with a call to action: Create a free account. Break it. Play with it. Add your data. See what you can create
. He encouraged hoteliers to view Hive not as a threat, but as an industry-owned opportunity to shape the future, one that is fast approaching.
In an era where AI could either consolidate power in the hands of OTAs or empower hotels to take control, Reeves makes it clear where he stands: the future must be direct.
Brian Reeves
CEO of roomangel
roomangel Foundation
