Innovation

Kansas City, MO – Travel remains a priority for Americans this summer, but they’re becoming more thoughtful about where they go and how they spend. The latest findings from MMGY ‘s 2026 Portrait of American Travelers ™ reveal that as rising costs reshape travel decisions, consumers aren’t abandoning vacations – they’re becoming more selective about which destinations earn their time, attention and dollars. Travel demand remains remarkably resilient, but the competition for travelers has fundamentally changed. People aren’t simply deciding whether to take a vacation. They’re deciding which destination deserves their limited time and discretionary income. For destination marketers, that means success will increasingly belong to brands that clearly demonstrate their value, differentiate their experiences and lean into a more data-driven, personalized approach to communication in an evolving landscape that is driven by AI. Craig Compagnone, President of MMGY Global Based on a survey of more than 4,300 U.S. adults, Portrait of American Travelers ™ remains the travel industry’s longest-running and most-trusted examination of leisure travel behavior in America. Among the most notable findings in the “Summer Edition” of the report: Travelers are being more discerning with their decisions. While nearly half of Americans (49%) plan to take a leisure trip within the next three months, expected trips (3.5) and travel spending ($5,570) in the next 12 months have softened since earlier this year, reflecting a more deliberate approach to destination selection rather than a pullback in travel. Increased use of AI in planning is driving more informed choices. More than half of active leisure travelers (52%) have used AI to help plan a trip, up 10 percentage points year over year, with ChatGPT (57%) and Gemini (42%) emerging as the most widely used travel planning tools. Destination choice is becoming more competitive. Orlando was one of the few major destinations to gain interest year over year (+3 percentage points). Cities such as Palm Springs (-3), Raleigh/Durham (-5) and St. Petersburg/Clearwater (-3) all saw declines in consideration as travelers are seeking a broader set of opportunities. Value is increasingly defined by experience, with events and sports often leading the way. More than half of travelers (55%) are interested in travel that is tied to a major event, including 29% who would consider Route 66 Centennial celebrations and 29% interested in America’s 250th anniversary events. The influence of sports on tourism continues to grow, with 27% of travelers interested in attending a sporting event while on vacation. The findings suggest destinations face a new challenge: convincing travelers not just to take a vacation but to choose them over an increasingly competitive field of alternatives. As consumers raise their expectations, success will depend on creating a more personalized narrative, communicating authentic experiences and demonstrating clear value to visiting that extends well beyond price. The 2026 Portrait of American Travelers ™ “Summer Edition” is now available for purchase or as part of an all-access subscription to EurekA!, MMGY’s searchable research platform. To explore more, visit mmgyintel.com . About Portrait of American Travelers ™

Start with who's calm. Everyone in distribution is bracing for the agent — the assistant that plans the trip, picks the hotel, and books it while the traveler watches. Everyone except the people who sell you wholesale. Felix Shpilman runs Emerging Travel Group, the B2B wholesaler behind RateHawk, and asked about AI he sounds like a man watching weather he's seen before. Travelers use it to brainstorm, he says. They still triangulate whatever the machine tells them before they act. Useful for ideas. Not yet trusted with the card. A wholesaler would say that. He gets paid when the room moves, whatever names it — the machine included. He's also right. He was never selling the recommendation. Go back to March, when the company everyone expected to break the OTA's grip did the opposite. OpenAI pulled ChatGPT back from completing the purchase and said it would concentrate on discovery, handing the actual booking to someone else's checkout. The model kept the sentence where it names a hotel. It gave away the transaction. For a hotel, that was the loss — the recommendation was the one thing the AI era seemed ready to hand you on merit. For a wholesaler, it's a non-event. He never owned the recommendation. He owns the rail the booking rides down after the choice is made. Take the naming away from him and you've taken nothing; the room still routes through his pipe to whatever checkout closes the sale. So the agent is just the next buyer. You already know this pipe, because the piece running beside this one walks you through it: the connection that bundles wholesale supply and hands it to whoever has a checkout and wants hotels behind it. A card issuer. An airline's rewards site. The buyer changed from the tour operator you could picture to a portal you can't. Now watch the line move once more. An AI agent is a checkout too — the newest one, sitting one step earlier than the rest, at the moment the trip gets decided. It doesn't cut the wholesaler out. It plugs into him. Tour operator, bank app, model. Same rail, three buyers, and only the face at the front keeps changing. {{cta id="20"}} Which is why his calm is your problem. The agent looked like the exception — the channel that might finally pick your resort for fitting the guest instead of buying the spot. But the pipe underneath doesn't care whether you're chosen. It needs you connected, not preferred. Feed a room into it and the room sells no matter who the model names: the wholesaler gets paid on the volume, the checkout keeps the guest, and being the best-matched hotel earns you the same masked reservation as being the cheapest one. Everyone promised the machine would cut out the middleman. It found a different address instead. It's parked outside your property. The man who sells your rooms wholesale isn't worried about the agent, and he's right not to be — the

London & Singapore - 16 July 2026 - Winnow, the global Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered food waste measurement company, today announced the acquisition of Lumitics, one of Asia-Pacific’s leading food waste technology companies with deployments across more than 20 countries in the region and Middle East. The acquisition brings together two of the leading AI food waste technology players serving the hospitality sector, combining Winnow’s global AI platform and international customer base with Lumitics’ regional presence, product innovation and deep hospitality relationships across Asia-Pacific. The move strengthens Winnow’s ability to support leading hospitality groups across one of the world’s most strategically important growth regions (source: WTTC ). Founded in 2013, Winnow's AI platform is trusted by some of the world's leading foodservice and hospitality operators - including IKEA, Hilton, and Accor - and today helps kitchens across almost 100 countries collectively save over $100 million in food waste every year. Winnow operates from offices in London, Chicago, Dubai, Singapore and Cluj-Napoca. Lumitics was founded in 2017, backed by Nicholas and Jonathon Cocks of Velocity Ventures (a hospitality technology venture capital firm) and impact angel investors including Franck Courmont and PropertyGuru founder Steve Melhuish. It was one of the early companies in Asia to commercialise AI, computer vision and data analytics for commercial kitchen food waste management. Over the past nine years, the company has grown into a leading regional food waste technology player, with deployments across a customer base that includes major hospitality groups such as Accor, Hyatt, Marriott and Four Seasons. Its technology has helped hotel kitchens improve kitchen efficiency and embed food waste reduction into day-to-day operations. With Winnow's acquisition, Lumitics’ customers will gain access to Winnow VisionAI - including expanded plate waste tracking and advanced capabilities such as "Throw & Go". VisionAI with “Throw & Go” uses AI to automatically identify and weigh food waste as it's discarded, with no scanning or manual input required. Service will continue without interruption; customers will retain access to their existing data and will be supported through a phased transition to Winnow’s AI platform and hardware in the coming months. For Winnow’s existing customers, the acquisition expands the company’s ability to support global hospitality operations across Asia-Pacific with stronger local teams, enhanced service delivery, and deeper regional expertise. It also brings more kitchens into the Winnow community across Asia-Pacific, creating greater opportunities for customers to share best practices, benchmark progress, and accelerate food waste reduction together. "Asia-Pacific is one of the most critical frontiers in the fight against food waste, and Lumitics has built a strong regional platform through its customer relationships, technical know-how and deployment experience” said Marc Zornes, Co-founder and CEO of Winnow. "Together, we're accelerating our mission to prevent $1 billion in food waste - and this brings us a significant step closer." “When we started Lumitics in Singapore in 2017, our belief was simple: kitchens could not reduce what they could not see,” said Rayner Loi, Co-founder and CEO of Lumitics. “Since then, our team has had

This article was written by Lodging Magazine. Click here to read the original article AMSTERDAM—Mews announced three new features designed to help hotels capture revenue: Recurring Payments, the expansion of…

This article was written by Lodging Magazine. Click here to read the original article SAN DIEGO, California—The AI Hospitality Alliance (AIHA) announced that it has assembled eight workstream committees to…

Monday is a technology-heavy start to the week, anchored by a Hospitality Net original that put the people who buy hotel technology and the people who build it in one room. The themes it surfaced, cost versus experience, who owns the data, and how hard it still is to integrate, run through much of the day's other coverage. There is deal news too, from Riyadh to Cairo to Greater China. Inside the room where PMS chiefs and hotel CIOs spoke freely Hospitality Net's Big PMS Debate did something the industry rarely manages. For ninety minutes at HITEC in San Antonio, technology leaders from Radisson, citizenM, Mandarin Oriental, Wyndham, Aimbridge and Choice sat with the chief executives and founders of Oracle, Mews, Shiji, Infor, Apaleo and HotelKey, with no stage, no sales pitch and no audience. The session ran under the Chatham House Rule and was hosted and moderated by Floor Bleeker, so the views belong to a room rather than to any one name. The clearest finding was a gap in what each side optimises for. The hotel groups are chasing cost, while the PMS vendors are building for guest experience. A live poll captured it. Asked where AI focus really sits today, the room scored cost saving on labour highest at 4.4 and guest experience lower at 3.6, even after everyone had agreed that guest experience is what sets hospitality apart. The reason came back to who pays, since owners fund the technology and approve what shows a saving, so experience projects get dressed up as cost projects to get signed off. One supplier's warning stuck: "If cost saving is your starting point, you will get AI wrong." Two structural problems ran underneath the whole session. On integration, the room agreed the technical barrier has mostly fallen and the real blocker is now commercial, with per-transaction fees and a stack of intermediaries where good ideas from startups quietly die. On data, nobody could say for certain who owns the guest record, and the room kept returning to a rough rule that whoever signs the contract owns the data and everything after that is an argument. Asked whether the PMS will be more or less central in five years, the group split almost evenly, with a slight lean towards less central and a shared sense that it should be rebuilt around the guest rather than the room. Your rooms are being resold, and you are losing the guest A sharp opinion piece, The room's the same, you wouldn't recognize who's buying it now , describes how wholesale contracts increasingly route hotel rooms through bank rewards portals and airline loyalty sites. The rate discount is visible, but what goes with it often is not. The hotel loses the guest data, the direct relationship and the next booking, while a third party owns the moment of sale. It is the commercial version of the data question the PMS debate could not settle. Whoever controls the transaction controls the record, and hotels keep

💻 Josh Graham, Cloudbeds' head of market development, argues that traditional Property Management Systems (PMS) are outdated. He suggests that unified data models are essential and highlights Cloudbeds' integrated platform approach. At HITEC, he proposed staging a funeral for traditional PMS. With over 350 PMS systems globally, many are fragmented due to localization needs. Cloudbeds' AI, Signals, focuses on revenue intelligence, connecting marketing and revenue systems. Graham believes AI rewards context, making it the perfect time for independent hotels.

I’ve been in this business for more than 30 years. When you’ve spent that much time working with hotels, you develop a pretty good sense of what customers value. I’ve answered support calls, helped troubleshoot installations, worked, and watched our industry evolve through just about every imaginable technology shift. But there’s a difference between assuming you know what customers think and actually asking them. That’s why we started sending a simple survey after every installation. We wanted honest feedback. The good. The bad. The frustrating. If something wasn’t working, I wanted to know about it. If we could improve, I wanted to hear that too. The responses reinforced something that’s been at the heart of TTI since day one. It isn’t just our technology that hotels remember. It’s how we show up when they need us. The Numbers Tell One Story Across more than 80 responses from hotel managers, IT directors, and general managers representing brands such as Marriott, IHG, and independent hotels, the results were incredibly encouraging. More than 90% rated TTI 5 out of 5 stars for likelihood to recommend** Nearly every respondent said our equipment met their needs Customer support was consistently our highest-rated category across every brand, property size, and region I’m grateful for those numbers. But what meant the most to me were the comments. The Comments Told Me We Haven’t Lost What Matters Technology changes constantly. Hardware changes. Software changes. Hotel expectations change. One thing shouldn’t change: how you treat people. Again and again, hotel teams talked less about the equipment and more about the experience of working with our people. On the installation process “Hands down, one of the easiest Public Space PC installs I’ve ever done. The system worked right off the bat without a hitch. Thank you for that!” — IT Manager, Marriott property “I was surprised at how smooth the installation was and how easy everything was. The end result is exactly what we needed.” — General Manager, Holiday Inn Express “Sales, service, shipping, and install were all a breeze. 10/10 recommend.” — GM, Holiday Inn franchise “Installation of new scanners went smoothly and work well.” — GM, International property On our support team “Working with TTI was incredibly smooth and effortless. Everyone I interacted with was highly professional and efficient throughout the entire process. I couldn’t have asked for more. It was truly exceptional.” — Director of Operations, Holiday Inn Express franchise “Very fast replies, installation was quick and without issues, and so far, the solution is working as intended.” — IT Manager, Marriott property (Europe) “Your team is consistently professional and friendly. The dynamics between the different departments translate to a very smooth and enjoyable experience for your customer.” — Regional Manager, independent hotel group “I have already recommended TTI to another hotel that will need to upgrade their business center within the next year.” — Hotel Manager, Holiday Inn franchise “Everything with mobile printing has been great, thank you!” — Hotel Manager, boutique hotel On switching to

Introduction: The Invisible Cost of System Disconnects In the modern digital hotel landscape, operational success relies entirely on data speed. A customer browsing an accommodation option on the other side…

This article was written by Lodging Magazine. Click here to read the original article As hotter summers make outdoor dining more challenging, hotels are looking for ways to keep patios,…