Innovation

📱 The Elser Hotel & Residences in Downtown Miami partners with Innspire to launch The Elser App, enhancing guest experience with AI-powered tech. Guests benefit from mobile check-in, digital key access, and personalized services. The Elser upgrades security with Salto access control, AI surveillance, GPS-enabled radios, drones, and AEDs. Led by Pedro Galvez, these measures ensure luxury accommodation safety. Future expansions include “F&B Anywhere” for in-room dining.

📱 Air India relaunches its mobile app, prioritizing in-house digital infrastructure for greater speed and control. Key features include a proprietary payment platform for rapid UPI integration, generative AI enhancements like eZ Booking in multiple languages, AI.g virtual agent, and AEYE Vision. The app offers offline access to core tools and direct disruption assistance. Future plans involve a "one-stop" travel platform aligned with IATA's "One Order" standard, integrating flights, hotels, and ground transport.

📖 Hotels are facing a new challenge as AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude are increasingly being used by guests to choose accommodations. Many hotels remain unaware of what these AI platforms are saying about them, affecting their visibility and bookings. OTAs are investing heavily in AI visibility, while most hotels lack a robust strategy. Wayfinder, integrated into Cendyn CMS, offers hotels insights into AI-generated content, allowing them to measure and optimize their AI presence for better visibility and demand.

Guests are no longer starting every journey on search engines. They’re asking ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity where to stay, what hotels to consider, and which properties best match their needs. But there’s a problem with this. Most hotels have no idea what AI is saying about them. Imagine stepping onto the field without knowing the rules, a sense of the opposition’s tactics, or whether your team has even been selected to play. That’s where many hotel marketers are going to find themselves all too soon.. The game’s changed. Now it’s time to learn how to play. Stop guessing what AI is saying about your hotel AI assistants are already influencing travel decisions long before a guest reaches a booking page. They’re recommending hotels. Comparing properties. Answering questions about amenities, policies, rates, and locations. Sometimes they get it right. Sometimes they don’t. A guest may ask an AI assistant for the best family-friendly resort nearby. Another may ask for a boutique hotel with a spa and late checkout. If your property doesn’t appear, or worse, appears with inaccurate information, you’ve lost ground before the booking journey has properly begun. You can’t defend what you can’t see. Visibility is the new battleground Marketers have been measuring search rankings, website traffic, and conversion rates for as long as these things have existed. AI discovery introduces a new challenge: visibility inside AI-generated answers. It’s no longer enough to know how your website performs in search results. You need to know whether AI platforms understand your content, trust your information, and recommend your property when travelers ask. At the same time, OTAs are investing heavily in AI visibility. OTAs understand that if AI assistants become the new front door to travel discovery, being the first trusted citation within recommendations matters. Every inaccurate answer, every missed recommendation, and every instance where an OTA appears instead of your hotel creates another opportunity for intermediaries to capture demand that could have been yours. You need a game plan Many hotels are approaching AI visibility reactively. They hear about GEO, monitor a few prompts, and hope for the best. But hope isn’t a strategy. Just as marketers learned to manage SEO over the past two decades, AI visibility now requires measurement, monitoring, and continuous optimization. That’s where Wayfinder changes the game. Newly built into Cendyn CMS, Wayfinder gives hotels something they’ve never had before: visibility into what AI assistants are actually saying about their properties. Now hotels can understand how they appear across leading AI platforms, where competitors or OTAs are gaining visibility, and when AI-generated answers drift from official property information. Instead of guessing, hotels have a new lens to gain a clear view of the field. The new rules of AI discovery So what do hotels need in order to manage their AI presence? These are the key rules of hotel AI discovery that Wayfinder is tackling. Stop flying blind. Measure how AI platforms talk about your property and where you appear in AI-driven discovery against

Running a hotel should be getting easier. New investments in technology promise greater efficiency, but the wrong implementation strategy often creates new operational headaches instead of solving existing ones. As hotels rely on an expanding mix of systems, from property management to payments and guest messaging, the limitations of all-in-one platforms have become harder to ignore. More operators are shifting toward best-in-class solutions that automate work instead of recreating manual processes behind the scenes. That shift depends on one thing: systems that share data seamlessly, support future integrations, and work together as a unified operation. Here are three technology challenges having the greatest impact on hotel operations today: Rising Guest Expectations, Shrinking Teams: Why Integration Is the Answer Guest expectations continue to rise, yet many hotels are operating with lean teams and persistent staffing shortages. Delivering convenient, personalized service without adding headcount requires technology that genuinely reduces operational work. Mobile and kiosk check-in let guests skip the front desk, while mobile upgrades and amenity ordering put personalized service at their fingertips. AI-powered guest messaging handles routine requests such as arrival instructions, amenity requests, late checkouts, and basic troubleshooting automatically, escalating conversations only when human judgment is needed. Together, these tools help lean teams deliver faster, more personalized service. Their impact, however, depends on integration. A kiosk without real-time room status or integrated payments simply moves the line to another point in the lobby. A messaging platform that cannot trigger housekeeping or maintenance creates another manual task instead of resolving the request. That is why seamless integration with the PMS and other core systems is essential. When guest-facing technology is connected, requests automatically become actions. Rooms update instantly, work orders are created, and staff can focus on delivering hospitality instead of coordinating disconnected systems. Many hotels have invested in digital guest experiences, yet guests still wait for staff to complete the final step. If your hotel has the technology but service is still bottlenecked by staff availability, the issue may not be the tools themselves. It is how well they work together. Locked-In Ecosystems: Why Open, Webhook-Enabled APIs Win Hotel leaders are increasingly prioritizing flexibility and control, benefits often delivered through specialized systems. A recent study from the NYU School of Professional Studies Jonathan M. Tisch Center of Hospitality found that among respondents planning to change their tech stack, 30 percent of users of all-in-one systems intend to move to best-in-class solutions, compared with 14 percent of users of best-in-class solutions moving in the opposite direction. The same study found that 38 percent cited integrations as a top daily operational pain point. The takeaway is clear: integration strategy matters as much as product functionality. An open, well-documented API is the starting point. Webhooks make those integrations practical by syncing data between systems in real time instead of relying on scheduled updates. Strong implementation support and ongoing maintenance are equally important because integrations require continuous attention as platforms evolve. Hoteliers should also be wary of walled app marketplaces. They may appear convenient

This article was written by Lodging Magazine. Click here to read the original article Bed bugs remain a widespread issue in the hotel industry, as many properties still struggle with infestations, especially…

A guest sat down with an AI assistant last week and asked for a quiet boutique hotel near the water, good for a long weekend, not touristy. The assistant answered in four sentences. It named a property, described its vibe, and set an expectation for what staying there would feel like. The hotel never saw that conversation happen. It had no chance to correct it, add context, or make its case. By the time that guest opens the hotel's own website, the story is already written. This is happening across the industry in real time, at a scale most marketing teams haven't caught up to. Travelers are increasingly asking AI tools to do the work a brochure, a homepage, or a Google search result used to do: describe the property, set expectations, and make the call on whether it's worth booking. The brand's own words are no longer the first draft of that story. They're a footnote to it. That's a real shift, and it's worth sitting with, because it changes where the pressure sits. For years, a hospitality brand had room to recover from a so-so first impression. A great front desk interaction, a well-timed upgrade, a genuinely warm stay, any of these could repair a shaky start. Guests forgave a clunky website if the property shined in person. That safety net gets thinner when AI sets the expectation before the guest ever arrives. If the AI's description oversells the property, or undersells it, or just gets it wrong, the guest's first real data point isn't your marketing. It's the gap between what they were told and what they found. And that gap gets written down, in a review, in a follow-up conversation, in the next AI summary that pulls from it. Here's the part that should get more attention than it does: AI tools aren't making this up. They're summarizing what's already out there. Reviews. Listings on booking platforms. Local press. Forum threads. Old copy that never got updated. If a property's own voice is thin or inconsistent across these sources, the AI fills the gap with whatever's loudest, which is often a competitor's description, a dated aggregator listing, or a single bad review that happened to be well-written. So, the fix isn't a technical one. There's no plugin for this. It's a brand discipline question, and it's one every hospitality brand can actually answer for itself with three honest questions. First: if a guest asked an AI to describe your property in one paragraph, would you recognize it? Would it sound like you, or like a generic version of your category? If your own team can't say confidently what that paragraph would include, that's the first sign the story is being told by someone else. Second: where would the AI go to check its answer? Almost certainly your reviews, your third-party listings, and whatever press exists. Have you read what's there recently, all of it, not just the highlights? If there's a pattern in the complaints or

Stephanie Smith recently joined The AI Reality Check Series with Revenue Hub to discuss how AI is influencing hotel digital marketing and how hotels can leverage it effectively, especially if they’re not already performing well digitally. Key Insights Hotels want to know if they appear in AI tools like ChatGPT, but it’s important to remember that evaluating AI presence involves testing prompts and understanding the conversational, nuanced nature of LLM (Large Language Model) search, which differs from traditional keyword Google searches. AI results vary greatly with the same queries, making measurement complex, but queries are rarely the same. Foundational Hotel Digital Marketing is Key Good website content, proper schema, and authoritative, accurate information are essential before any AI-specific efforts. That’s why we always emphasize that Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) builds on traditional SEO but also aligns with how AI interprets content. LLMs prioritize social content and citations differently than Google, which focuses on backlinks. 4 Common Hotel Gaps Many hotels lack foundational digital elements, which include: High-quality website content: But, be careful not to create content for the sake of content. Ensure the content is still relevant to targeted buyers and segments as well as LLMs. Recent and positive reviews : Reviews impact AI’s “memory” of the hotel, with older negative reviews still affecting perception. Active social media engagement: LLMs definitely learn and index social media, including influencers. Accurate 3rd party presence : AI amplifies inaccuracies from outdated information spread across multiple platforms. Persona-Focused Content Hotels must create content targeting specific traveler personas (business traveler, family, pet owner) rather than broad segments, as persona-driven content aligns with AI’s specialized recommendations. Additionally, evergreen content like targeted press releases can help train AI tools on hotel offerings. Backlinks and Citations Creating content on your website alone won’t cut it. Just because you put more content on your site, doesn’t necessarily mean the LLMs will cite that content. You still need backlinks and citations to validate your site as a trusted source. AI Visibility vs. Distribution Hotel discoverability is more critical than real-time distribution integration at this time. Connecting your ARI via apps in platforms like ChatGPT is currently nuanced and limited in impact on distribution, so strong brand presence and foundational marketing remain crucial. Changing Customer Journey AI tools now handle much of discovery and shortlisting, shifting search dynamics, since travelers widely research via AI but often still return to Google for booking, increasing branded searches. There are still a lot of zero clicks in LLMs (as with Google), so GA4 doesn’t capture all the data. The GA4 Tracking Changes Google Analytics has recently changed how LLM traffic gets measured, but we are seeing revenue attributed. Check out our full GA4 blog for hotels. Advice for Hotel Marketers Don’t expect immediate, measurable ROI from AI marketing efforts. Avoid overreliance on MetaSearch ads due to false ROAS perceptions, consider testing ChatGPT ads. Don’t assume AI connection tools via MCP improve visibility or discoverability.

You can order take out, a taxi, or a week's worth of groceries with one tap. So why does booking a hotel room still feel like filling in a tax return? That's the question that pulled Frédéric Robles out of a decade in corporate law to build Namastay, a booking engine built around one idea: make paying for a hotel as easy as paying for anything else. Namastay is now live in more than 400 hotels across 42 countries, plugged into systems including Mews. Frédéric joined Matt Welle on the latest Matt Talks Hospitality to discuss why most hotels sit between 5-15% of direct booking share. Airlines solved this problem a generation ago, with many carriers seeing a direct booking share of up to 90%. So why does hospitality still need convincing that the website is a serious sales channel, not a nice-to-have option alongside OTAs? The power of digital wallets A hotel guest hands over their card details at booking. Then again at check-in. And then sometimes again at check-out. Compare that with retail, where Apple Pay and Google Pay have made checkout a formality rather than an event. Namastay's entire premise is that the gap between those two experiences is where direct bookings go to die. The data backs it up. Frédéric told Matt that hotels using digital wallets for checkout have seen mobile bookings more than double, with wallet payments making up as much as half of all mobile transactions on some properties. Guests who start a payment with Apple Pay are also more likely to complete it than guests who start typing in a 16-digit card number – and wallet users tend to spend more per booking. None of this is really about mobile UX – it's about trust. A guest who feels safe finishing a purchase finishes it. Someone who has to hunt for a card, retype an email address and wonder if the site redirect is legitimate, doesn't. The redirect nobody talks about Most booking engines still bounce the guest off the hotel's site onto a separate booking domain the moment they click "book now". Namastay keeps the whole flow inside an iframe on the hotel's own site. That means no redirect, no new URL and one set of cookies. This small technical decision has a big result. Google reads a fast bounce to another domain as a sign the visitor wasn't interested. Keep the guest on-site through checkout and the search engine optimization benefit compounds alongside the conversion benefit. A cleaner checkout does two jobs at once. Where Mews fits Frédéric and his team built the first third-party booking engine integration with Mews Payments, including Apple Pay support. A guest's card goes through 3D Secure once at booking and can be reused securely for every later charge, meaning front desk teams no longer make repeated requests for payment. For anyone who has watched a check-in queue back up while a receptionist reprints a payment slip, that's real impact. Where else can hoteliers make

Eight of the strongest young men in America, each pulling as hard as he could. And the boat would not move the way it should. In 1936, nine young men from the University of Washington won Olympic gold in Berlin. Sons of loggers, farmers and shipyard workers, raised in the Great Depression, hauling timber by day and rowing late into the night. Every crew they raced back East had more money, better boats and deeper pedigree. But first they had to fix their own boat. Eight strong men, each a fraction out of time with the man in front of him. Strength to spare, and no rhythm at all. Rowers have a name for the moment it clicks, and George Pocock, the English boat builder who shaped their shells and much of their thinking, spent a lifetime chasing it. They call it swing. When a boat finds its swing it feels almost effortless, and it becomes almost impossible to beat. Most crews never find it. By Berlin they had it. They drew the worst lane, the roughest water and the strongest crosswind, while Germany and Italy took the sheltered ones. Their stroke oar Don Hume, who sets the rhythm for the whole boat, was in bed with a spiking fever on the morning of the race. The coach wanted to replace him. His crewmates refused. Give us his rhythm, they said, and we will pull him down the course ourselves. They got his rhythm. In the last 500 metres the boat found its swing and came from third to first, winning gold by six tenths of a second. In the film of their story, an elderly Joe Rantz is asked by his grandson what it was like to row an eight-man crew. He answers: “Eight? We were never eight.” I have told this story in townhalls for years, because unity is the most underrated performance lever a business has. What I did not see until I built PHAL is how exactly that boat describes our own industry. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. We have spent decades perfecting the parts. We have been rowing as eight for decades Walk into almost any hotel group and you find brilliant people pulling with everything they have, every one of them quietly rowing to a slightly different beat. Finance closes the month and tells you what already happened. Commercial forecasts demand in one system while HR staffs to another. Operations runs on a third. Guest sentiment sits in a fourth. The data is all there. What is missing is the thing that turns eight strong strokes into one. For 25 years across 4 continents, I have watched us ask one person to be that timing. The General Manager, the Regional Head, the CEO. We hand them the coxswain's seat and ask them to read the water. The best do it beautifully. But a leader with a hundred decisions a day can only do so much, so the swing comes