Innovation

The $10M acquisition by Google of the data of a bankrupt airline (Spirit) to train its AI models is widely commented on. Here are my two cents: 👉 …

Three AI infrastructure stories converge today at the point where strategy meets procurement. IHG's Kim Smith gives the most candid account yet of what a major chain is actually learning from conversational search in production. hospitality.today names the date for ChatGPT Ads' European expansion and the agency-only access model that will frustrate most hotels trying to act on it. And Pertlink identifies the infrastructure acquisition that will determine what AI actually costs to run over the next several years, in a way that most hotel technology buyers are not yet tracking. From Search Box to Travel Advisor: IHG's Kim Smith on the Next Phase of AI Booking IHG's SVP of Digital Direct Channels Kim Smith describes what the Google-powered conversational search beta on IHG.com is already revealing: guests using natural language queries are expressing intent at a level of specificity that traditional search filters never captured, and the hotel content that surfaces in those results is determined by structured attributes rather than keyword density. Smith's personalization roadmap covers how IHG plans to use member data to move from generic AI responses to individually tailored hotel recommendations, and she names the single most actionable content decision hotels can make right now: restructure property descriptions around use cases and traveler contexts rather than features and amenities. The interview is the most operationally grounded AI booking conversation HN has published this month, and it connects directly to Tuesday's Coalition Technologies guide on AI agent optimization. Both pieces reach the same conclusion from different angles: the content restructuring required for AI discovery is a different task from SEO, and most hotels haven't started it. Read the interview → ChatGPT Ads Launch Across 31 European Countries Next Week, but Hotels Can't Buy Them Directly Yet hospitality.today and reconline AG report that OpenAI will launch ChatGPT Ads across 31 European countries next week, extending the beta that Cogwheel Marketing documented for the U.S. market last week. The catch for hotels is structural: direct self-serve access is not available at launch, meaning hotel advertisers must go through agency partners to purchase placements, and the ads appear below AI responses without influencing the recommendation logic. The piece frames the agency requirement as a short-term barrier that will fall once self-serve opens, but the current setup means hotels that want to test the format immediately need an agency relationship in place. The European launch puts ChatGPT Ads in front of one of the most valuable travel source markets in the world at the start of Q4 planning season, and arrives the same week that travel agencies posted 11.8% year-on-year booking growth. The timing is pointed: the channel that currently requires human intermediaries to access is launching in the market where human intermediaries are growing fastest. Read the analysis → Stripe's $7B OpenRouter Acquisition Creates Tollbooths on the AI Token Highway Pertlink identifies Stripe's reported $7 billion acquisition of OpenRouter, combined with its earlier Metronome purchase, as the infrastructure move that will make AI model routing costs structurally opaque for

MIAMI, FL & DENVER, COLO. – Actabl and Reeco today announced an innovative partnership that connects Actabl's ProfitSword forecasting platform with Reeco's AI-powered procure-to-pay platform. The integration brings ProfitSword forecast data into Reeco’s financial controls, enabling hotel teams to automatically evaluate purchasing activity against current forecasts. More than a technical integration, the partnership reflects a shared vision for the future of hospitality technology: financial intelligence, automation, and AI-powered operational capabilities should come together at the point of decision. Technology should not simply report what has already happened. It should help hotel teams anticipate pressure, act earlier, and continuously improve performance. Hotel operators are navigating rising costs and continued pressure on margins. Yet financial planning and purchasing often remain disconnected, with purchasing teams relying on historical reports or static budgets while finance teams evaluate performance after spending occurs. Through the integration, ProfitSword forecast data becomes part of Reeco’s financial controls. Reeco automatically checks purchasing activity against the applicable forecast and can flag potential overruns or trigger an approval flow before a purchase order is created. Forecast-based controls can also be applied when invoices are synchronized. Rather than sending data to another report or dashboard, Actabl provides the forecast intelligence while Reeco turns it into action through automated controls across purchasing and accounts payable. Reeco complements this forecast-based automation with AI that generates purchasing recommendations based on purchasing history, inventory levels, and operational patterns; identifies pricing anomalies; and automates invoice coding. Together, these capabilities connect financial planning with day-to-day hotel operations. For hotel owners, operators, and management companies, the partnership demonstrates a more connected approach to hotel operations, one in which financial planning actively informs day-to-day spending decisions. The result is greater visibility and control before purchases are finalized, supporting improved operating efficiency, tighter cost management, and stronger gross operating profit. Beyond the technology connection, Actabl and Reeco will work together to support adoption and customer success among mutual customers. Hotels don't have a reporting problem. They have a decision-making problem. Together with Actabl, we’re turning forecast intelligence into action and showing what the next generation of hospitality technology can look like: connected, proactive, and designed to help operators maintain control and protect margins. Henrik Shimony, co-founder and CEO of Reeco Partnerships are most impactful when they solve real challenges for our mutual customers. This partnership reflects our shared belief that financial intelligence should not stop at the report. Together, we're enabling a more connected and innovative hospitality technology ecosystem. Steven Moore, CEO of Actabl The integration is live and available to mutual customers using both ProfitSword and Reeco.

Every day, hotel commercial teams face the same challenge. Revenue managers are reviewing forecasts. Marketers are checking campaign performance. Commercial leaders are tracking market shifts. General managers are looking for opportunities to drive growth. Everyone has data. Yet many teams still start the day asking what the commercial priorities should be. The issue isn’t a lack of data. It’s understanding what matters, what doesn’t, and what action to take next. Hospitality is becoming more complex and fast-paced. We must all do more with less time. So what we do must make an impact. Actionable intelligence will shift the focus from reporting information to recommending action. And it’s the next evolution of hotel technology. Hotels don't need more data, they need direction Over the last decade, hospitality technology has become exceptionally good at collecting information. Revenue systems, CRM platforms, market intelligence tools, website analytics, business intelligence platforms, and now AI visibility reporting. They all generate huge volumes of insight. Most hotels already have valuable data sitting within their existing technology stack. The problem is that commercial teams are often forced to interpret multiple reports and dashboards before they can make decisions. What they don't always have is a clear understanding of where the biggest opportunity sits right now. Too much valuable time is spent trying to identify opportunities, rather than enacting them. It's like standing in front of your hotel’s breakfast buffet with hundreds of options, trying to decide what to eat. Having more choice doesn't necessarily make the decision easier. Actionable intelligence is the bridge between information and execution. Data tells hotels what's happening. Actionable intelligence identifies what deserves attention and prioritization. Why this matters now The hospitality industry is becoming increasingly complex. Commercial teams are managing more channels, more competitors, more guest expectations, and more information than ever before. AI is accelerating the pace of change. New opportunities materialize overnight. Market conditions zigzag. Guest behavior evolves in real time. The pressure to react is increasing. In this environment, the ability to separate signal from noise becomes a competitive advantage. Actionable intelligence helps teams focus on priorities that will have the greatest commercial impact. The value of this carries just as much potential for a boutique hotel as it does for a property portfolio, or an investor. Whoever you are, better prioritization leads to more impactful actions, momentum, and profitability. AI is creating a leapfrog opportunity for hotels Many hotels are stuck with legacy systems, mixed with some newer technologies, unsure how to progress. The journey towards so-called digital maturity can feel overwhelming. But AI is changing the narrative. AI doesn’t have to replace systems. It can help hotels extract more value from the technology they already have. It can connect information across platforms, identify patterns that humans might miss, surface hidden opportunities, and recommend actions based on commercial goals. AI-enabled actionable intelligence is a leapfrog moment for the industry. We've seen similar transformations before. Some markets skipped landline infrastructure entirely and moved straight to mobile technology. Today, hotels have

Cross-selling is often discussed as a revenue opportunity for hotels. However, after my recent conversation with Pablo Torres , I kept returning to a more fundamental question. How well do we actually know the guest before we try to sell them something? Pablo has spent 25 years in hospitality, including hotel operations, revenue management, and consulting. During our conversation on the Shiji Insights Podcast, we explored what an effective hotel cross-selling strategy really requires. Technology is certainly part of the answer. Yet technology cannot compensate for fragmented data, weak processes, or poorly timed interactions. Instead, the opportunity starts with understanding the guest and using what the hotel already knows. For me, that distinction matters. Cross-selling works best when the guest experiences it as better hospitality, not as another sales message. Takeaways Beyond room revenue. Hotels should understand how guests spend across the whole property, not only what they pay for accommodation. Start the conversation earlier. Relevant pre-arrival communication gives hotels more opportunities to support the guest journey. Make existing data usable. Millions of data points have little value when they remain fragmented or inaccessible to employees. Use automation selectively. Self-service can handle transactional interactions while freeing employees to focus on guests seeking human assistance. Qualify before recommending. Effective cross-selling begins with understanding what the guest actually wants. Looking beyond revenue from the room One of Pablo’s opening questions immediately reframed our conversation: why do hotels concentrate revenue management on the space containing the bed? A hotel contains far more than guestrooms. Depending on the property, it can include restaurants, bars, spas, gardens, golf courses, meeting spaces, and other facilities. Each represents part of the guest experience. Many also represent revenue opportunities. Yet Pablo’s point was that hotels often understand room revenue far better than ancillary spend. They can track occupancy and ADR closely. However, they may struggle to answer a more basic question: what is the total value of this guest across the property? That distinction becomes important as the industry talks more about total revenue management. It also changes how we think about cross-selling. The objective is not simply to persuade somebody to spend more. Instead, hotels need to create relevant reasons for guests to use more of the property. A restaurant is a good example. Pablo recalled how city hotel restaurants were historically places that many guests avoided. Today, there is no reason a hotel restaurant cannot attract both travelers and the local community. That changes the revenue opportunity. More importantly, it changes the hotel’s role during the guest’s stay. A hotel cross-selling strategy should start before arrival Another point I found interesting was timing. Hotels sometimes wait until guests arrive before beginning a meaningful conversation with them. However, the guest journey began much earlier. An OTA, booking engine, or tour operator may have been communicating with that person for months. During that period, guests research destinations and decide what they want to do. The hotel has an opportunity to become part of that conversation. However, timing alone

💻 In a week of cybersecurity woes, a consultant faced the fourth identical incident in recent months—employees are tricked into installing remote-access software by phone impersonators. Despite advancements, social engineering remains a key threat, reminiscent of ancient tactics. In 2026, attackers simply pose as “Expedia support” to gain access. While thousands of euros are spent on cybersecurity tools, the real vulnerability is human error. No updates yet for this "malware"—human susceptibility.

8 in 10 Australians (80%) say familiar breakfast sounds help them feel calm while travelling 87% of travellers rely on something to help them fall asleep when away from home The world's first Breakfast Pillow by Holiday Inn Express transforms Australians' most comforting breakfast sounds into breakfast-inspired white noise tracks The Breakfast Pillow is part of the brand’s continued mission to help guests sleep better, wake easier and never miss brekkie again Holiday Inn Express by IHG in Australia has launched the world's first Breakfast Pillow for a limited time, inviting travellers to drift off to the soothing sounds of a free hot breakfast through four brekkie-inspired sleep tracks. Designed to help guests rest better, wake easier and start the day ready for whatever's next, the custom-designed and built pillow features hidden speakers that transform comforting breakfast sounds into a unique sleep experience. Building on the success of last year's Breakfast Alarm Clock , Holiday Inn Express is once again putting breakfast at the heart of the guest experience. Available to trial through a new stay package at all Holiday Inn Express hotels across Australia and New Zealand, the Breakfast Pillow will give guests a playful new way to switch off at night before waking up to enjoy the real thing. Guests can choose from four breakfast white noise tracks, each inspired by the breakfast sounds Australians ranked as the most comforting while travelling. Created from sounds recorded during a real Holiday Inn Express breakfast service, the tracks feature coffee brewing, the sound of sizzling bacon, fresh juice being poured and the ambience of everyday breakfast buffet chatter – each transformed into calming white noise to help guests relax, unwind and drift off. The Breakfast Pillow also features customisable buttons for guests to adjust the sound and select their preferred length of play. The idea was inspired by new research commissioned by the brand, which found nearly three-quarters of Australians (72%) find breakfast sounds comforting or relaxing while travelling, while 80% say familiar breakfast sounds help them feel calm away from home. The findings come as Australians increasingly rely on familiar comforts to switch off when they're away, with 87% relying on something to help them fall asleep in hotels and more than a quarter (26%) turning to background noise to drift off. And, with one in five (20%) admitting they're already thinking about breakfast before they've even fallen asleep, brekkie became a fitting sleep soundtrack. Dean Jones, Vice President of Commercial, East Asia & Pacific at IHG Hotels & Resorts, said the Breakfast Pillow was born from a simple question: if breakfast can help guests wake up happier, could it also help them fall asleep? Last year we helped guests wake up to the smell of breakfast. This year we started wondering whether breakfast could actually help them fall asleep, too. Holiday Inn Express has always believed a great day starts with a great night's sleep, so creating a pillow inspired by our free hot breakfast felt like a

London, UK – New data from SiteMinder, the world’s leading hotel commerce platform, shows that Birmingham hotels have secured 62.5% more room nights during the week of the European Athletics Championships, due to take place from 10 to 16 August, when compared to the same week last year. This increase in total room nights reflects both a rise in bookings and longer stays in line with the week-long event, with the average length of stay set to jump from 1.38 nights last year to 1.67 nights this year. Rates at Birmingham hotels have also moved with the demand, with the average daily rate for the week standing at £201.76 — up 60.1% on the £126.03 recorded for the equivalent week last year. The anticipated influx of arrivals will not come as news to the city’s hotels, with guests having booked their stays an average of 169.45 days prior, compared with 58.37 days last year. SiteMinder’s VP of ecosystem and strategic partnerships, James Bishop, says: “This is a great example of the enduring importance of major events for hotels. As Birmingham hoteliers are seeing, events like the European Athletics Championships not only drive increased bookings, but generate higher quality demand, with guests booking further ahead and staying longer. The takeaway for UK hoteliers is that a date in the calendar is only the starting point. It’s the properties that can see how demand is building around that date, and respond as it does by adjusting rates, opening the right channels and tailoring packages, at speed, that will capture the most value.” SiteMinder’s data compares forward bookings for 9 to 16 August 2026, processed through its hotel commerce platform, with the equivalent period in 2025. SiteMinder’s platform processes more than 135 million reservations each year.

IHG’s launch of AI-powered conversational search on IHG.com and the IHG One Rewards app marks a significant step in the hotel group’s push to reshape how guests discover and book stays. Rather than relying on destinations, dates and filters alone, travelers can now describe what they want in natural language and receive recommendations based on IHG’s hotel data, availability, pricing and guest preferences. We spoke with Kim Smith, Senior Vice President, Digital & Direct Channels at IHG Hotels & Resorts, about what prompted the move, what the company hopes to learn from the beta, how hotels need to prepare for AI-driven discovery, and where conversational search could ultimately lead. What change in traveler behavior convinced IHG that conversational search had become necessary, and why was this the right moment to launch it? The rise of conversational and AI-assisted travel planning was an important signal for us. We're seeing more guests move beyond traditional keyword searches and describe what they're actually trying to accomplish. Instead of searching for "hotel in Paris," they're asking things like, "Where should I stay in Paris for a long weekend with my family?" or "What IHG hotel is best for a business trip near Times Square?" At the same time, more travelers are using AI tools to research destinations, compare options, and narrow down choices before they ever visit a travel or hotel website. We didn’t want to limit guests into traditional search boxes and believed that bringing that conversational experience directly into IHG.com and the IHG One Rewards app was the right course. We also have the content, hotel data, and loyalty ecosystem in place to deliver something genuinely useful to our guests. What originally instigated the project, and which internal teams and external technology partners were involved? Did IHG work directly with OpenAI, or through another technology provider? As consumer search behavior started shifting toward AI-powered and conversational experiences, we saw an opportunity to simplify one of the hardest parts of travel: turning inspiration into a booking. The project brought together IHG teams across digital, engineering, data, loyalty, product, and hotel content. We also partnered with Google to bring this experience to life. This effort is part of a broader strategy to strengthen how guests discover IHG hotels, whether they're searching on our own channels or through emerging AI-powered platforms. We continue to work closely with a range of technology partners as we test, learn, and evolve the experience. Is IHG’s conversational search primarily a new interface for finding hotels, or the first step towards a fundamentally different booking journey? Today, conversational search is a more intuitive way for guests to discover hotels, but we believe it's also an early step toward a fundamentally different booking journey. Today, guests can ask questions like, "I'm going to New York City November 27-30 and have 80,000 points. Which hotels are best for Black Friday shopping?" and quickly receive relevant recommendations. Over time, we see opportunities to make those recommendations more personal by combining what we know

Driving the news. On August 18 OpenAI said ChatGPT Ads will start running across Europe next week. Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and Austria are named, along with 22 further European countries. The test began in the United States in February, reached Canada, Australia and New Zealand in March, and went live in the UK, Mexico, Brazil, Japan and South Korea on August 11. A hotelier in Munich or Amsterdam cannot open an account and start bidding. In OpenAI's words: "Advertisers will initially be able to access ChatGPT Ads through the OpenAI Ads Solutions team, agency partners, and technology partners. Self-service access through Ads Manager will follow later this summer." What that door looks like once it opens. The American version is the preview. OpenAI opened a self-serve Ads Manager there on May 5, added cost-per-click bidding, and said advertisers "are only charged based on a click outcome" — a platform built for "companies of all sizes, from SMBs and startups to global brands." Cogwheel Marketing, a hotel marketing agency, published results from its own American campaigns on August 11: click-through between 1.6% and 1.9%, at $3 to $3.50 a click, with a working floor around $25 a day. Those are one agency's campaigns in one market, and no European cost data exists yet. The ad itself is small. One square image, a headline capped at 50 characters that truncates on screen after 24, and 100 characters of description that truncate after 48. Who will actually see it. OpenAI: ads "will be shown only to users on the Free and Go plans." No ads run on Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise or Education. And free users can switch ads off altogether in exchange for fewer messages a day. So the reachable audience is the free tier minus everyone who opted out, plus Go. Read that against your rate card. The guest paying for a better assistant every month, and the corporate traveler whose employer bought a Business plan, are the two people most likely to take the suite and the two guaranteed never to see you. The catch. No European operator has cost data to work from. The only hotel figures anywhere come from one agency's American campaigns, in a market six months ahead of this one. OpenAI's stated timing for European self-serve is "later this summer" and nothing firmer than that. And whatever it turns out to cost, the ceiling on who can see it is already fixed. What it means for hotels. The ad does not sit in the recommendation. OpenAI's documentation says ads "appear below ChatGPT responses," that they are "always clearly labeled as sponsored and visually separated from the organic answer," and — plainly — that "ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives." Advertisers supply "context hints" describing the conversations they want to appear beside, and OpenAI notes those "are not exact-match keywords and do not guarantee delivery in specific conversations." {{cta id="20"}} We argued earlier this year that the AI recommendation