Innovation

For many hoteliers, the idea of switching property management systems (Hotel PMSs) can feel daunting. It's not like they don't understand the pitfalls of using outdated technology. Yes, they do. They also want to digitise their operations with modern solutions. So what exactly holds them back? For most of them, it's the fear of operational disruption from the perceived delay in implementing the new solution. And their apprehension makes sense as a Hotel PMS touches every corner of hotel operations - reservations, payments, housekeeping, reporting, and integrations. Replacing such a core system can feel like rewiring the heart of the business while it's still beating. According to a recent study by Hotel Tech Report, about 24% of hoteliers cite data‑migration complexity and 26% cite staff‑training difficulties as the biggest barriers to switching to a new Hotel PMS. And both these aspects lead to their fear of operational disruption, including downtime, booking errors, front‑desk confusion, etc. The Hotelogix perspective At Hotelogix, we believe in empowering hotels to unlock new efficiencies, boost sales, enhance revenue, drive growth and elevate guest experiences. But first things first - for hotels, switching to our solution, we must make the whole process seamless. And for this, we have a well-thought-out, tried-and-tested client onboarding roadmap in place. This structured approach transforms what could feel like a complex transition into a guided, collaborative process, laying the foundation for a smooth rollout, empowered staff, and long-term success. Setting the stage: The onboarding journey begins by assigning both an implementation manager and an account manager. Understanding client's requirements: The sales team organises a kick-off call that includes the client, the implementation manager, and the account manager. During this call, they discuss the project's scope, the client's existing solution, the challenges they are facing, their reasons for upgrading to Hotelogix, their goals with the new system, and any third-party solution integrations they require. This call is crucial to understanding the client's expectations. Configuration and setup: The implementation team begins configuring property‑specific parameters, room types, rate plans, tax IDs, and the solution's core modules, including reservations, front desk, housekeeping, folios, night audit, reporting, local compliance, and user roles/permissions. It also includes migrating data from the existing solution and integration with third-party solutions. Training: Remember, how many hoteliers believe that getting staff trained on a new solution is one of the biggest concerns? To address this issue, we offer in-depth training to the hotel's staff, including the front desk, housekeeping, and other departments. Additionally, we have this 'Train the trainer' programme, in which we make sure that a senior team member from the client side is properly trained enough to guide their teams in understanding the workflow to execute tasks faster. It significantly expedites the onboarding process for new staff members and shortens their learning curve. And yes, we also offer refresher training sessions as per the client's requirements. Go-live: Now it's time for the property to go live. But yes, before that, we run a final through check and verify the setup

Infor is one of the bigger enterprise software companies, and its hospitality arm makes the core systems a lot of hotels run on: the property management system, the revenue management system, the point of sale, and more. We started by asking how Infor uses AI internally, and David Poprawka , an innovation strategist at Infor , said it's a different beast to coordinate at Infor's size, with corporate and global restrictions front of mind. Internally they're using Claude to model use cases for agentic AI, which led straight to what they came to HITEC to show: an orchestration and intelligence layer they call Infor Portico Hospitality AI. The name does a lot of work, and David clearly enjoys it. A portico is a threshold, the entrance into something larger, and that's the whole pitch: a doorway clients step through, out of the chaos on the other side, where they're bombarded with AI and can't tell what's useful from what's noise. Past that threshold sits a workspace where Infor and the client make sense of agentic AI in their own context. He was careful about what it is and isn't: not another chatbot, not a single agent, but an agentic platform that sits above the core systems you already have, POS, PMS, RMS, and connects through both open API and MCP. Build the workspace, not the app David kept pressing a distinction: between building a fixed product and building a place to build. Most vendors, he said, ship a generic concierge app and then try to bend it to fit each hotel, which works for five or 10 use cases and falls apart at scale. Infor went the other way. They spent the last couple of years building the orchestration layer itself, a space where a hotel designs the agents that fit its own operation, whether it does that with Infor's help or by itself. And because Infor Portico Hospitality AI sits above the core systems and reaches them through API and MCP, it can run on top of other vendors' systems too, not just Infor's. You do it through conversation. A chatbot works with you to figure out your use cases: a concierge agent, or something for sales and events, or an agent that drafts function sheets, or one that helps a large convention centre qualify the 2,000 leads it can field at once. David didn't want to spend time on the replace-humans debate, not because he dismisses it, but because he takes it as obvious that nobody's aiming for that, so saying it out loud adds nothing. Infor Portico Hospitality AI gives clients a creative workspace to build the agents that make sense for their specific question, at the time they have it. The agent they built during the storm For a concrete example, David reached for something they had built the day before, on the spot. Storms and heavy rain across the south-east US were delaying and cancelling flights during the show. The idea came from a colleague,