Adriana Lee

💻 Mews is cutting 15% of its approximately 1,350 staff, marking its most significant restructuring since the pandemic. CEO Richard Valtr cites AI advancements as the reason for making certain roles obsolete. Valtr emphasizes the need to adapt to industry shifts by enabling employees to handle more tasks with AI, moving away from the traditional team-specialist model.

💳 Apple is expanding hotel room key functionalities in Apple Wallet, with Walt Disney World as the launch partner this fall. The enhanced features, announced during the WWDC in early June, are part of iOS 27. This update allows guests to use their iPhone or Apple Watch not only to unlock rooms but also to start the check-out process and access hotel services. These improvements aim to make digital keys a default part of travelers' experiences.

📈 U.S. travel sites saw a 194% increase in traffic from AI sources in May, based on Adobe's analysis of over 8 million visits. Visitors from AI sources spent 70% longer per visit, bounced 41% less often, and showed 21% more engagement compared to non-AI sources. Adobe's research highlights the effectiveness of AI in driving more engaged traffic, though a challenge remains in ensuring AI systems can adequately read and surface travel brands' sites.

💻 Oracle launched Opera Cloud Assistant on Tuesday, integrating AI into hotel management software. The AI tools enhance front desk, revenue, and configuration tasks. Importantly, these tools are available at no additional cost to customers. Hotel staff benefit from reduced interruptions, as the system allows them to quickly find solutions to report generation or guest issues without managerial assistance. This advancement showcases Oracle's commitment to improving operational efficiency in the hospitality sector.

💻 On Tuesday at HITEC, Amadeus will unveil AI Commerce and Amadeus Max, enhancing hotel bookings via AI channels. AI Commerce aims to streamline bookings through AI assistants, while Amadeus Max allows hotel staff to access revenue and demand data using plain English. Peter Waters noted Amadeus is Google's sole B2B technical partner in hospitality for the Universal Commerce Protocol, aiming to revolutionize how hotels are found, booked, and paid for by AI agents.

📅 Travelport launched TripServices on Thursday, a cloud-native API platform, to integrate flights, hotels, and extras into one system. It aims to reduce complexity for agencies and startups by incorporating it into its own system. Machine learning models rank content for relevance and help manage changes, disruptions, and cancellations. Fahim Khan, the SVP of Product, discussed this at the Skift Data + AI Summit in early June, highlighting 18 months of expanding servicing tools.

💻 Aven Hospitality launched a new booking engine on Wednesday, designed to keep travelers on a hotel’s website through checkout by eliminating redirects. The engine, rebuilt from scratch, aims to reduce abandonment. This marks Aven's second major product release since being acquired by TPG.

💻 Richard Valtr, founder of Mews, spoke on Wednesday at the Skift Data and AI Summit about the travel industry's focus on AI. He emphasized that hotels should not just use AI to cut costs but to increase revenue. By leveraging technology, front desk staff could focus on selling experiences and fostering loyalty instead of administrative tasks. Valtr highlighted the need for a shift in hotel technology from traditional software categories to more innovative applications.

💻 June 3, NYC: Skift Data + AI Summit. Kiruba Shankar used AI to search for an airline ticket on the Etihad Airways website, yielding 881,076 fare options. Travel searches are costly as they check live data, affecting the look-to-book (L2B) ratio if not converted into bookings. AI can conduct numerous searches quickly, challenging the economics of traditional travel search methods.