The Columns

The difficult truth about hospitality technology is the massive chasm between what an operation actually needs and what a vendor is desperate to sell you. I was catching up with…

A 4 AM stirring courtesy of transpacific jetlag is usually an exercise in quiet misery. But this morning, it handed me a rare privilege: standing at the doors of my…

The “pay-to-play” model has finally reached its logical, if entirely unappetizing, conclusion in hospitality. We’re being pushed, shoved really, toward a world where the fully prepaid stay is the default…

I recently wrote about preparing for AI that hotels should build the infrastructure to prepare for it. There is a layer to this that I think will become increasingly important: ontology.…

Ah, the excuses. The frantic gate announcements, the vague app notifications, the shrugs from airline staff who’ve clearly been coached to blame everything on the sky. Last week, as the…

Last year, after the summer holidays, I wrote about overtourism and why it is a dumb word, solving the wrong problem. When destinations become crowded, the quick response is usually some version…

I’ve touched on this subject before, but the sheer velocity of recent developments demands we return to the table. We are witnessing something truly remarkable: technology finally catching up with…

AI language models are changing how we interact with systems and technology. The point and click model is evolving for the first time in 30 years. This means the battle…

The term “value add” has always fascinated me, mostly because of the sheer mental gymnastics hoteliers perform to justify it. We throw “value add” around like it’s some revolutionary marketing…

There is a lot of thinking going into predicting what AI will look like in our industry. I think that is mostly futile. Ten years ago, very few people would…