Rise of the ‘Hospitality Engineer’ as disconnected systems costing operators hours every week

LONDON, 23 April 2026 – Businesses across the hospitality industry are losing hours every week to disconnected systems, failed syncs and data issues, as increasingly complex tech stacks force operators to think more like “ Hospitality Engineers ”. That is according to a new joint research report from RMS , a leading global hospitality technology platform, and RoomPriceGenie , the award-winning revenue management system. The research reveals that hospitality businesses are now managing up to 10 or more systems simultaneously, with even smaller properties running four to six solutions. But the findings show the real problem is not the number of tools. Even properties using as few as one to three systems report ongoing tech issues such as incorrect rates, missing data and failed synchronisations, highlighting that weak integrations, not system volume, are driving operational friction. The impact on teams is significant. More than 80% of hospitality professionals say technology is causing operational stress. Meanwhile, 42% spend one to three hours each week fixing system and data issues, and one in five spend four or more hours. For five percent, that rises to more than seven hours every week resolving tech issues. Despite growing reliance on technology, many hospitality businesses still lack the expertise to manage it effectively. Nearly 70% of operators say success now requires both service and technical skills, yet 25% have no dedicated resource overseeing system connectivity. Staff skills, integration complexity and fear of operational disruption were all cited as key barriers to achieving improved operational outcomes and broader business goals. These statistics point to the need for hoteliers to adopt the “Hospitality Engineer” mindset, now crucial in today’s increasingly challenging and competitive travel marketplace. Rather than focusing on individual tools, this approach combines service-led hospitality with a practical understanding of systems, integrations and data flow to reduce manual work, improve performance and create more resilient operations. Sandrine Zechbauer, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at RMS , said: “Being great at hospitality is no longer enough. Operators need a technology mindset. The real issue is not how many systems a business uses, it is how well they are connected. “That is where the ‘Hospitality Engineer’ mindset comes in. It is about combining service instinct with a practical understanding of integrations and data, so teams can reduce manual work and remove the operational friction that holds them back.” Chas Scarantino, CEO of RoomPriceGenie , said: “Most operators don’t realise how much revenue is lost in the gap between systems. Every delay means revenue is left on the table, and too often that loss goes unseen. That is what is driving the shift toward a ‘Hospitality Engineer’ mindset. Teams must go beyond just using technology and start considering how it works, how it fails, and how to optimise its outputs. By eliminating the need to manually reconcile data, troubleshoot issues and manage disconnected systems, teams are empowered to spend more time executing on the decisions that drive sustained profitability.” The challenge is becoming even more urgent as hospitality businesses look

In his new role, Arsuaga will lead Cushman & Wakefield’s hotel platform in Spain alongside Bruno Hallé and Albert Grau. Madrid, 20 April 2026 – Real estate consultancy Cushman & Wakefield has appointed Luis Arsuaga as Head of Capital Markets Hospitality in Spain, with the aim of strengthening its Hospitality platform, one of the company’s key strategic growth pillars in Spain and Iberia. In his new role, Arsuaga will lead the hotel platform alongside co-heads and partners Bruno Hallé and Albert Grau. This appointment reflects Cushman & Wakefield’s continued commitment to building a leading team in a sector that is key to the Spanish economy. “We firmly believe that sustainable growth is built by attracting the best professionals in the market, combining experience, investment insight and operational expertise. With this step, we continue to strengthen our ability to support our clients with greater depth, ambition and impact in a key sector for the Spanish economy”, said Oriol Barrachina, Head of Iberia at Cushman & Wakefield. According to Arsuaga, “I look forward to bringing my experience in the hotel investment market to the firm, working alongside a strong existing team, and taking advantage of the positive momentum the sector is currently experiencing”. Spain closed the last financial year with more than €4 billion in hotel investment, 50% higher than in 2024, ranking second in Europe behind the UK, according to Cushman & Wakefield data. This appointment follows other recent strategic hires at the firm, such as Álvaro Alonso, who leads the Living and Corporate Finance businesses in Spain, in line with Cushman & Wakefield’s strategy to strengthen its capabilities in investment and advisory across key segments such as Hospitality and Residential. A highly experienced profile in hotel investment Luis Arsuaga brings more than two decades of experience in the real estate and hospitality sectors, with a strong track record in development, investment, transactions and asset management. Throughout his career, he has held leadership positions at companies such as CBRE and JLL, where he led the hotels business in Spain and Portugal. He later served as SVP Global Development at NH Hotel Group (Minor Hotels), leading international expansion. More recently, he has been CEO of Mabel Capital and Managing Director at Grupo Norvo, where he managed investment platforms with diversified portfolios of hotels, resorts and real estate assets, combining strategic vision with long-term value creation. Cushman & Wakefield’s Hospitality division in Spain was established in 2019 and is led by partners and co-heads Albert Grau and Bruno Hallé.

Thursday brought two distribution stories that point in the same direction: the channels through which guests discover and book hotels are multiplying faster than most hotels can track them. TikTok is moving from travel inspiration to live booking infrastructure. Ascott is building the architecture to be visible inside AI agents before those agents become standard. And GHA's Q1 numbers show what a well-run independent hotel loyalty alliance can produce when international travel demand stays strong. Viewpoint: What Can Hotels Do to Decrease Their Cancellation Rates? A new Cloudbeds report based on 30,000-plus hotel clients put a number on a problem hotels live with daily: OTA bookings cancel at 21.8%, while direct bookings cancel at 10.6%. That gap is not a rounding error. It means hotels taking OTA volume are managing a structurally higher rate of last-minute holes in their calendar, with the downstream pressure on ADR and RevPAR that comes with it. The World Panel question is direct: why do travelers cancel, and what can hotels actually do about it? Rate parity failures, competitive promotions, and change-of-plan flexibility are the proximate causes. The fix, however, is less obvious. Share your perspective → TikTok Is Beta-Testing Hotel Metasearch Inside User Feeds TikTok is quietly testing a hotel metasearch feature that places booking cards directly in users' For You Page feeds, sitting in place of the next video. The cards show a hotel photo, name, and rate options from OTAs, with Expedia, Booking.com, and Trip.com appearing as booking destinations for U.S. users. Clicking "View" redirects users off-platform to complete the reservation. Clicking "Explore More" keeps them inside TikTok's own hotel listing pages. The feature is not being promoted and is clearly still in development, but the infrastructure is live and being tested against real user behavior. The commercial logic is straightforward. TikTok's own data shows 66% of users cite it as their most helpful source of travel inspiration, and users are 2.6 times more likely to book an experience after searching for it on the app. TikTokShop has already proven the platform can run a full conversion funnel from inspiration to purchase without users leaving. Hotel metasearch is the same model applied to travel. TikTok is sourcing hotel data from OTA metadata feeds rather than scraping hotel sites directly, meaning hotels currently have limited ability to manage their own listings. The article notes that TikTok hotel listings may also emerge as a secondary signal for generative engine optimization, though AI generally still prioritizes authoritative primary sources. Read the analysis → Ascott Builds Agentic Commerce Infrastructure with Accenture, Amadeus, and EHL Ascott announced three simultaneous strategic partnerships designed to position the company for a travel ecosystem where AI agents handle planning and booking on behalf of guests. With Accenture, Ascott is redesigning its foundational digital architecture to support machine-mediated interactions, piloting MCP frameworks, LLM-enabled applications, and unified commerce concepts. The goal is for its AI concierge Cubby, which has handled more than 900,000 guest enquiries since 2023, to evolve from travel companion to

The only thing more valuable than having someone’s attention is getting them to do something with it, and TikTok has mastered both. The wild success of TikTokShop has proven that TikTok has the ability to lead its users through a traditional marketing funnel, without ever leaving the app. From inspiration to research, and all the way through to conversion, in a matter of minutes. Their users bought the suitcase that went viral, now what? 66% of users say TikTok is their most helpful source of travel inspiration, and TikTok reports that their users are 2.6 times more likely to book an experience after searching for it on their app. TikTok wants to cash in, and it is partnering with OTAs to quickly capitalize on this. TikTok is Beta-Testing its Metasearch Capabilities As an average, chronically-online millennial, I’ll admit to spending a lot of time on TikTok. I’ve seen hotel metasearch appear on my FYP (For You Page) only twice in the last month. This is new. It is not being promoted (yet). TikTok is still figuring it out. How Does it Work? As users swipe through videos on TikTok, a card appears in place of the next video. This card displays a hotel photo, the hotel name, and several options (with rates) to book the hotel. If the user clicks “View,” they are redirected from TikTok to an OTA to book. Expedia, Booking.com , and Trip.com are appearing for users in the US. If the user clicks “Not Interested,” then TikTok records this as negative feedback as part of the beta test. If the user clicks “Explore More,” then they stay in the app and are brought to TikTok’s version of a hotel listing. TikTok hotel listings can be independently navigated to when a user searches for hotels in a certain destination and selects the “places” tab. This metasearch feature is different from TikTok’s Travel Ads product, which are traditional video or carousel ads with targeted audiences and “Book Now” CTAs that drive to a website of the advertiser’s choosing. Where Does TikTok Get Hotel Information? TikTok is not scraping hotel sites directly, it is aggregating data from upstream POI providers to populate the information in hotel listings; most likely via the OTA metadata that is already feeding TikTok real-time rates and availability, TripAdvisor reviews, and more. TikTok utilizes UGC for reviews from their users, some photos, and paying their TikTokGo creators to generate hotel-specific content. Will TikTok Hotel Listings Help Me with GEO? AI generally prioritizes primary, structured, and authoritative travel data sources (hotel websites), which allows it to make more reliable recommendations than citing a downstream POI or social media listings. AI could crawl TikTok data as a secondary signal, looking for social popularity, lifestyle context, or sentiment signals. Learn more about SEO vs. GEO strategies. How Do I Manage My TikTok Hotel Listing and Respond to Reviews? We’ve made several attempts to ask TikTok this question, stay tuned! If your hotel is enrolled in Cogwheel Marketing account

Report sets out the Group's next chapter, with its first double materiality assessment, three new Impact Pathways, and a commitment to scaling sustainability with the same discipline as the business itself SINGAPORE - Banyan Group ("Banyan Tree Holdings Limited" or the "Group", SGX: B58), an independent global hospitality company, has released its 2025 Sustainability Report , From One Vision to 100 Possibilities . The report marks the Group's 20th year of sustainability reporting and a milestone year in which it reached its 100th property, with a symbolic homecoming to Singapore. For over three decades, the Group's founding ethos of Embracing the Environment, Empowering People has been integral to how Banyan Group operates and creates value. From the restoration of an abandoned tin mine in Phuket more than three decades ago, the Group has grown into a global portfolio of 13 brands, 100 hotels and resorts, over 140 spas and galleries, and 29 branded residences across 24 countries, welcoming 4.7 million guests from 212 countries in 2025 alone. The significance of reaching 100 properties lies not in the number itself but in what it represents, how a founding vision has taken shape across diverse destinations and the ecosystems and communities that sustain them. Long-term business success is inseparable from the wellbeing of the destinations in which we operate, and as Banyan Group expands, sustainability must scale with the same discipline and accountability as the business itself. Sustainability is not peripheral to business performance. It is part of how long-term value is protected and created. Ho Kwon Ping, Founder and Executive Chairman, Banyan Group Collective Impact In 2025, the Group completed its first double materiality assessment, sharpening how sustainability is defined and managed across the business. The exercise examined both the impact of operations on the environment and society, and the financial risks and opportunities these issues carry. Accordingly, the 2025 Sustainability Report is structured around clearly defined material topics, marking a shift from programme-led initiatives to an enterprise-wide approach embedded in core strategy and decision-making. The Group's approach to sustainable development is rooted in care, dignity and lasting partnerships with the communities in which it operates. Its proprietary Brand for Good framework unites the Group's brands under a shared commitment to protect the planet and uplift people, in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. This commitment is carried further through the Banyan Global Foundation , the Group's philanthropic and impact arm, which designs, funds and governs social and environmental programmes that extend beyond core hotel operations. Through the Green Imperative Fund and Greater Good Grants , the Foundation translates Group-level commitments into grassroots action delivered in partnership with communities, social enterprises and local organisations. Every property exists within a living social and ecological system shaped by its landscape, culture and people. Our role extends beyond responsible operations to ensuring that tourism contributes meaningfully to community wellbeing, cultural heritage and the long-term resilience of the places we share. Many collaborations have stood the test of time, reflecting our belief that

Every hotel is sitting on a mountain of data. Revenue data in the PMS. Marketing data in the ad platforms. Guest data in the CRM. Channel data somewhere else entirely. The result is a commercial team that is data-rich on paper and insight-poor in practice — unable to answer the questions ownership is asking, unable to see the revenue they are leaving on the table, and unable to act on intelligence that is technically right there but practically invisible. Multiply that across a portfolio and a management company starts looking less like a strategic partner and more like a team that is always catching up. But siloed hotel data doesn't just slow teams down. It erodes owner confidence, distorts commercial decisions, and quietly destroys profit. Dave Goulden spent most of his career watching this happen across travel, retail, and ad tech. He doesn't think it's a people problem or a process problem. He thinks it's a technology problem. Ladera is his answer. Founded in 2023 and headquartered in Redwood City, California, Ladera unifies a hotel's data across every system and lets users ask questions in plain English. The platform functions as three number crunching geniuses working continuously across a portfolio: a data analyst reading every connected system, a hotel strategist framing insights and anticipating ownership's next question, and a data scientist modeling true channel profitability and guest value. No added headcount required. No report to wait for. Goulden's team includes Chief Revenue Officer Joe Seither, with over three decades bringing new technology products to market, and Chief Technology Officer Alexey Solovtsov, who has spent 15 years building secure enterprise data platforms. The company is backed by the Founders Network and Minerva funds. We spoke with Goulden about the ownership pressure bearing down on hotel management companies, why generic AI keeps failing in hospitality, and the moment he knew the product had crossed a threshold he hadn't expected to reach so soon. What inspired you to build Ladera.ai , and what did you want to do differently from the start? Honestly, it was frustration. I've spent 30 years watching smart people make multi-million-dollar decisions based on gut feel because getting the actual data would take three weeks and an analyst they don't have. That's insane. We're not building analytics software. We're giving every person on a hotel's commercial team their own brilliant analyst who knows their business, works 24/7, and never says 'I'll get back to you next week.' The bottleneck isn't data anymore — it's access to intelligence. We just eliminated it. And here's what gets me excited: this is just the beginning. Right now, Ladera makes recommendations. Soon, it'll do your bidding, adjusting budgets, executing campaigns,and rate adjustments. We're building the superagent for commercial teams. Intelligence today. Execution tomorrow. There's a lot of noise around AI right now. Where do you think it genuinely helps industries like hospitality, and where do you think it risks making things worse or more confusing? Everyone's putting chatbots on their website and calling

LONDON - The era of marketing budgets as a speculative risk is over. Today, roomangel announces the launch of hive RaaS (Results as a Service), a commercial delivery model built for existing hive subscribers that achieves absolute risk transfer by shifting the financial burden of demand generation from the hotel to the agentic intelligence layer. The Architectural Logic The core of the roomangel philosophy is hive , the AI intelligence layer that sits above the existing tech stack. It is not a replacement tool; it is a "System of Systems" that harmonises isolated data from PMS, RMS, and BI tools into a single, authoritative truth. When hive functions as a hotel’s all-seeing performance brain, the transition to RaaS is the logical next step. Once the intelligence layer identifies precisely where demand is missing, it should possess the autonomy to capture it. hive RaaS is a results-only commercial delivery model designed exclusively as an add-on for existing hive subscribers. The Failure of Legacy Models Hotels are currently restricted by three structural constraints. Marketing budgets are frequently committed without any guarantee of return. External agencies are typically compensated for effort and activity rather than actualised outcomes, creating a misalignment of incentives. Furthermore, "long-tail," high-intent demand often remains uncaptured because it is too fragmented for manual management. The industry has inherited fragmentation. hive RaaS is the engineered solution. The Logic of Parallel Execution hive RaaS operates on a six-step parallel execution model designed for precision and zero operational friction: Hotel-Defined Rules: The hotel sets commission thresholds based on occupancy directly within the hive platform. Funded Activity: hive pays for 100% of the advertising and media spend. Isolated Performance: Campaigns run in fully isolated ad accounts. This ensures zero interference with existing brand marketing or agency activity. Long-Tail Activation: hive targets the aggregate search demand that traditional agencies ignore due to complexity. Transparent Attribution: Incremental bookings are delivered and visible within the hotel's own analytics environment. Results-Only Reconciliation: Fees are calculated only on confirmed results. If hive delivers no bookings, the hotel pays nothing. Commitment to Logic hive RaaS is not a replacement for existing marketing stacks. It captures the demand that manual processes cannot reach without the hotel assuming financial risk. This is a shift from speculative spend to guaranteed outcomes. It is a commitment to logic over legacy.

HIGHLIGHTS Dolce by Wyndham is expanding its U.S. footprint with three new hotels in Miami Beach; Palm Springs, Calif.; and New York's Hudson Valley. The new properties showcase design-forward stays rooted in their surroundings, with distinctive character, elevated amenities and thoughtfully curated experiences that reflect each destination. The openings reinforce Wyndham's broader strategy to scale its upscale and lifestyle portfolio in top national and regional travel markets while driving long-term value for owners. PARSIPPANY – Wyndham Hotels & Resorts is expanding its Dolce by Wyndham footprint in the U.S. with three new openings in Miami Beach; Palm Springs, Calif.; and the Hudson Valley (Tarrytown, N.Y.)—bringing the upscale, design-driven brand to some of the country’s most sought-after national and regional travel destinations. As demand grows for stays that seamlessly blend place, design, and culture Dolce is entering markets that naturally deliver on all three. With a curated mix of boutique-style properties and group-friendly hotels, the brand continues to evolve and grow its portfolio, tailoring each new offering to the rhythms and expectations of today’s modern traveler. “At the heart of the Dolce brand are hotels rooted in their destinations, with experiences shaped by place, design and how people want to travel today. As the brand further expands, we’re growing in high-demand destinations that leave a lasting impression, building a portfolio of properties that deliver thoughtful, consistent, high-quality stays that not only wow guests but help drive long-term value for owners.” Leo Danese, Vice President, Upscale and Lifestyle Brands, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts Distinctive Destinations, Designed to Inspire From vibrant coastal escapes to serene desert retreats and historic Hudson Valley settings, Dolce’s newest openings highlight the brand’s commitment to delivering unique, design-forward stays in sought-after destinations. Dolce by Wyndham Miami Beach Located in the heart of South Beach, the 90-room boutique hotel offers a design-forward retreat just steps from the ocean, the Miami Beach Convention Center and Lincoln Road. Guest rooms feature private balconies, plush bedding and light-filled interiors, blending Mediterranean warmth with modern comfort—all complemented by curated works from internationally acclaimed photographer Greg Lotus throughout the property. Designed for both relaxation and energy, the hotel features inviting social spaces, elevated dining and seamless access to Miami’s renowned beaches, nightlife and cultural attractions. Whether guests are in town for a weekend escape, a convention or a longer stay, the property delivers a vibrant, highly connected experience rooted in its surroundings. V Capri Palm Springs, a Dolce by Wyndham Set against the backdrop of the San Jacinto Mountains, V Capri Palm Springs, a Dolce by Wyndham, offers a retro-chic desert escape designed for both relaxation and connection. Just minutes from downtown and the Palm Springs International Airport, the hotel features more than 140 guest rooms and suites with private patios or balconies, many with mountain or pool views. The property blends mid-century inspiration with modern comforts, highlighted by resort-style pools, cabanas and an adults-only poolside bar. Guests can enjoy creative dining at GiGi’s, along with a range of additional amenities including a 24/7