Innovation

Since the 1970s, hotels have been accumulating software acronyms like PMS, CRS, RMS. Each new wave of technology was launched with a sales pitch and the sincere conviction that it…

This article was written by Lodging Magazine. Click here to read the original article ANAHEIM, California—CAMO Hospitality announced the closing of its $4 million seed funding round to accelerate its…

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Innspire , a leading provider of digital guest engagement and hospitality technology solutions, announced its integration with Toast Point of Sale (POS). As a Toast integration partner, Innspire will help enable hotels and resorts to offer seamless mobile food-and-beverage ordering to enhance the guest experience. Innspire's solution was purpose-built for hospitality environments, supporting a wide range of hotel dining experiences including in-room dining, poolside food and beverage service, lobby lounges, rooftop venues, beach service, and other on-property outlets. Through Innspire, Hotels can extend service well beyond traditional restaurant spaces without increasing operational complexity. Because the ordering experience is fully branded, hotels maintain ownership of the guest relationship throughout the dining experience while providing guests with the flexibility to order whenever and wherever they choose. Whether relaxing by the pool, enjoying their guestroom, or gathering in public spaces, travelers can quickly place orders without waiting in line or calling hotel staff. Toast is a cloud-based, all-in-one digital technology platform purpose-built for the entire hospitality community. Through the Toast Partner Ecosystem , Innspire joins a network comprised of over 200 technology partners who deliver specialized technology and services to help business operators increase sales, engage guests, and keep employees happy. Hotels are looking for technology that works together seamlessly behind the scenes. We're pleased to welcome Innspire to the Toast Partner Ecosystem to help hotels connect Toast POS with the digital experiences guests use every day. The integration reduces manual steps for staff while ensuring orders move quickly and accurately from the guest's device to the kitchen. Rick Hertan, Director of Hotels at Toast The integration connects Innspire's hospitality platform with Toast POS, allowing guests to browse menus, view daily specials, and place orders directly from a hotel's branded mobile app, web-based ordering experience, QR codes located throughout the property, or Innspire's in-room tablets. Orders are transmitted directly into Toast POS, creating a more efficient workflow for hotel F&B operations while delivering a convenient experience for guests. The Toast POS integration further expands Innspire's growing ecosystem of hospitality technology integrations, allowing hotels to connect guest-facing digital experiences with the operational systems that power day-to-day service delivery. Innspire’s integration with Toast is designed to be a natural extension of Innspire's comprehensive digital guest journey platform. Guests can access dining services, mobile check-in, digital room keys, messaging, concierge services, and other hotel experiences through a consistent branded interface. For hotel operators, the result is a unified guest engagement platform that improves operational efficiency while encouraging greater utilization of on-property amenities. Today's guests expect the same convenience from hotel dining that they enjoy in their everyday digital experiences. Our integration with Toast enables hotels to meet those expectations while creating new opportunities to increase F&B revenue. By making ordering simple and accessible from anywhere on the property, hotels can enhance guest satisfaction while streamlining service for their operations teams. Anne Frye, President of Innspire For more information about Innspire's hospitality technology platform, visit www.innspire.com .

Hotels have spent years thinking about how travelers find them on Google, compare them on an OTA, browse their website, and eventually make a reservation. There is a new participant in that process. It is not human. Deloitte’s 2026 Summer Travel Survey found that 43% of U.S. travelers with household incomes of $100,000 or more now use generative AI in trip planning. That same income group is expected to represent 55% of the traveling public this summer. Travelers still use traditional channels: Google, Expedia, Booking.com , hotel websites, and the rest of the familiar options. Increasingly, though, AI is intervening between the traveler and those channels. In some cases, those channels are putting AI between the traveler and the booking process themselves. Travelers are asking ChatGPT where to stay. They are using AI to build itineraries. Agents can now browse websites and perform tasks on a user’s behalf. The logical next step is for those agents to complete more of the transaction. I see this evolution happening on three fronts. 1. AI Is Becoming A Hotel Discovery Channel This is where we are now. A traveler planning a weekend in New York does not need to search Google for “best boutique hotels in SoHo,” open several results, and build a shortlist. They can ask an AI: “I’m taking my wife to New York for our anniversary. We want a boutique hotel in or near SoHo, somewhere quiet enough to sleep but within walking distance of restaurants and shopping. We’d like to stay under $600 a night. What would you recommend?” I did a version of this for my wife and I’s 20th anniversary trip to France. We leaned heavily on ChatGPT to plan the details of a ten-day trip to Paris, including three hotels, nearly a dozen dinner reservations, and tourist attraction planning. We supplied preferences, constraints, and context that would have previously required several searches and filters. The AI interpreted those requirements and returned a shortlist. More importantly for hospitality groups, those recommendations now produce real website traffic. Adobe Analytics reported that traffic from AI sources to U.S. travel sites increased 194% year over year in May 2026. Adobe’s analysis covered more than 8 million visits to U.S. travel sites. AI referrals remain much smaller than traditional search but if they hold onto year over year tripling, you may not want to ignore them too much. Hotels should start asking a question they have not traditionally had to ask: If a traveler asks an AI for a hotel like mine, does the AI understand enough about my property to recommend it? 2. The AI May Do The Browsing, Too Discovery is only the first change. The second is the move from AI answering questions to AI performing work. Expedia Group’s 2026 research found that 40% of surveyed travelers use AI to help build itineraries. Another 53% said they were comfortable letting AI suggest travel options. Instead of only asking an AI to recommend a hotel or outline a trip

Venue leaders are planners by nature. They build budgets years in advance, manage long-term capital plans, book events well into the future, and make technology decisions they expect to live…

The hotel industry has good reasons to move toward mobile-first experiences. Digital keys can reduce dependence on front-desk transactions, integrate room access into existing hotel apps, and give guests another way to access their rooms without carrying a traditional key card. But the growing adoption of digital keys does not necessarily make physical key cards obsolete. The reason is simple: hotel access is not a one-user, one-device problem. A hotel room is shared, guests arrive in different circumstances, and the process of accessing a room involves more than the technology used to unlock the door. 1. The Sharing Problem: A Room Does Not Equal One User One of the basic assumptions behind mobile credentials is that access is associated with an individual guest and an individual device. Hotel rooms, however, are frequently shared. Couples, families, colleagues, and groups may all need independent access to the same room or suite. A parent may want to give a child access without giving them control of a phone or hotel account. An elderly family member may not have the relevant app installed. Even between two technically capable users, sharing a digital credential can require additional authorization, account setup, device compatibility, connectivity, and other steps that do not exist with a physical card. This is an important distinction between the digital and physical models. If two guests need access, the front desk can simply issue two cards. There is no need to establish a digital relationship between two accounts or devices. Digital systems can certainly provide shared access, but the more people involved, the more dependencies the process introduces. When shared digital access does not work as expected, the operational solution is often to issue a physical card anyway. This makes the physical key card more than a backup for technical failure. It addresses a structural characteristic of hotel stays: the person who books a room and the people who use the room are not necessarily the same person. 2. The Friction Transfer: Digital Does Not Always Mean Frictionless Digital technology is often described as a way to remove friction from the guest journey. In practice, however, it can also redistribute that friction from the hotel to the guest. Depending on the system, using a digital key may involve downloading an app, creating an account, logging in, activating the credential, enabling Bluetooth, maintaining sufficient battery power, ensuring connectivity, or dealing with compatibility and software updates. The timing is particularly important. Many of the potential friction points of a digital key appear at arrival, when guests may already be tired from travel and least interested in troubleshooting technology. A physical card transfers most of the work to the hotel before the guest leaves the front desk. In this sense, the value of a physical key card removes technology from a moment when technology may not be necessary. 3. The Trust Anchor: Access Is Also a Physical Transfer When a receptionist hands a guest a key card, the hotel is physically completing the transition from hotel-controlled

🎾 Howard Brody, a renowned physicist, discovered that looser strings give tennis rackets more power, contrary to popular belief. Larger racket heads bring the percussion center closer to the middle, simplifying the game for recreational players. Brody authored "Tennis Science for Tennis Players" and co-authored "The Physics and Technology of Tennis." He advised the US Tennis Association and was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, not as a player or coach, but as an educator.

What can a tour operator actually do with AI right now — not in five years, not in theory, but today?

This article was written by New Dog PR. Click here to read the original article Back in the day, when we were still saying ‘online travel agents’ and not OTAs,…

This article was written by Lodging Magazine. Click here to read the original article SEOUL, South Korea—Yanolja announced the global rollout of an AI concierge solution developed by its hospitality…