Innovation

For years, hospitality marketers built their digital strategies around a familiar assumption: when someone wanted to book a hotel, they opened Google, searched for a destination, compared a handful of properties, and made a decision. That journey still exists, but it’s no longer the only path, or even the most common one. Today’s travelers discover hotels through a growing mix of digital channels. They might save a destination from an Instagram Reel, watch neighborhood tours on TikTok, ask ChatGPT for recommendations, compare ratings on Google Maps, read reviews across multiple platforms, and browse a hotel’s website before finally making a reservation. The booking may still happen on the hotel’s website or an OTA, but the decision has already been shaped by dozens of interactions along the way. For hotel owners, operators, and marketers, this shift requires a broader view of digital marketing . Success is no longer measured solely by where your property ranks on Google. It’s about creating a consistent, trustworthy presence wherever travelers are gathering information. The Guest Journey Has Become Multi-Platform Imagine a couple planning a long weekend in Charleston. Their search may begin with a TikTok video showcasing hidden rooftop bars or a creator highlighting the city’s walkable historic district. Later that evening, one of them asks ChatGPT, “What are the best boutique hotels in Charleston within walking distance of King Street?” The AI suggests several options and explains what makes each property unique. The next day, they open Google Maps to see exactly where those hotels are located. They compare guest ratings, browse recent photos, and scan reviews mentioning service, parking, and noise levels . Only after narrowing their options do they visit the hotels’ websites to compare rooms, amenities, and direct booking offers before making a reservation. Business travelers often follow a similar path, just with different priorities. Someone attending a conference in Chicago may ask an AI assistant for hotels within walking distance of the convention center, verify locations on Google Maps, read reviews about Wi-Fi reliability and workspace comfort, then visit the hotel’s website before booking. Neither traveler started with a traditional Google search, yet Google still played an important role. The difference is that Google has become one touchpoint among many instead of the starting point for every booking journey. Every Digital Touchpoint Builds Confidence A common misconception is that a hotel’s website is the primary factor influencing booking decisions. In reality, most travelers have already formed an opinion before they ever arrive there. Consider what a prospective guest encounters while researching your property. Your Google Business Profile displays your location, hours, amenities, photos, and recent reviews. Instagram provides a glimpse into your guest experience through professionally captured content and user-generated posts . Review sites offer unfiltered feedback from previous guests. Local publications and destination blogs may mention your restaurant, rooftop bar, spa, or nearby attractions. Each interaction answers a different question. A traveler might visit your Instagram account to see whether your property feels modern and inviting. They may rely

Want your ads to show up in AI Mode? Google says that this is possible through AI Max and Performance Max . Currently, they’re testing a new generation of ad formats powered by Gemini. At Google Marketing Live 2026, it was announced that AI Max and Performance Max are powering ads shown through AI Mode. Ads in AI Mode Enhancements: Sponsored Ads – can show what the product is and how it relates to whatever the user searched using Gemini. Direct Offers – brands can offer discounts, local coupons, & custom deals. Shopping Ads – typical shopping ads, but it shows a description of the product based on what the user searches for. Business Agent for Leads (only available for education, automatic, and real estate industries) – users can ask questions inside of an ad, which can lead to a conversation with an agent, and will help fill out forms for better lead generation. AI Brief – can give AI Brief a creative guideline with natural language, can include guardrails, and can review/edit ad before launch to help with ad copies. Is this the new automated future of Google Ads for hotels? Let’s discuss the reality of these “hands-off” AI Max ads, specifically for individually branded hotels like an AC Hotel somewhere in Minneapolis, or one of Hilton Garden Inn Hotels in Dallas. The Reality of AI Max: While it’s recommended by Google to adopt AI Max for Search campaigns, we have not seen this as a benefit for individually branded hotels. Why? Because by enabling AI Max, you’re allowing Google to take the wheel on search term matching and asset optimization . Google says that the benefit of using search term matching is that it “ expands on existing targeted keywords using broad match and keywordless technology to find more relevant and high-performing search queries — queries and conversions that you’d otherwise miss. Google AI will learn from your current keywords, creatives and URLs to help you show up on more relevant searches .” But for individually branded hotels, the risk of using broad match and keywordless technology can attract irrelevant searches such as “hotel,” or “1 800 marriott” or “marriott central reservation.” Even when trying to dig deeper into the upgraded Keyword Report, there are no further details on these expanded keywords through AI Max because all efforts are lumped into a “Total: AI expanded matches.” Same with final URL expansion as seen above, where performance is lumped into a “Total: AI Max landing page matches.” While final URL expansion can be a benefit for soft-branded hotels directing to a vanity site and independent hotels, Google requires text customization to be turned on to ensure that the ad copy matches the landing page. For individual branded hotels, this can be an issue since “ Google automatically sends users to the landing page from your domain that is predicted to perform best and serves relevant ad copy customized to user intent .” This again poses a problem for the

For many independent hotels, 2026 has reinforced that demand continues to be far less predictable. As heatwaves, global events, and fuel prices persist throughout the year, guests are booking closer to arrival, shortening their stays, and changing plans at a moment’s notice. These shifts have operational implications for hotels. A busy week can suddenly soften, while quieter periods are filled by last-minute bookings . For hotel owners, revenue managers and reservations teams, forecasting is now less about following familiar seasonal curves and more about responding to changing market conditions on the fly. When Every Week Requires a Different Plan For hotel teams, unpredictable demand is both a commercial and operational challenge. A group cancellation on Monday morning can leave a significant gap in weekend occupancy. Suddenly, the commercial team is creating a new package, adjusting rates, updating the website and promoting availability to recover lost revenue. At the same time, the day-to-day operation of the hotel continues. Rooms still need to be turned around, maintenance projects can't be postponed, arrivals and departures keep reception busy, and reservations teams are answering a steady stream of questions about room types, dining options, parking, transfers and local experiences. Then the unexpected happens. A rail strike prompts guests to ask about alternative transport. A heatwave drives last-minute demand for coastal stays. A local event creates an unexpected booking spike. Plans change, priorities shift and teams are expected to respond almost immediately. The challenge, however, is that much of the hotel’s response to changing guest demands still relies on manual work. According to the 2026 Hotel Operations Index published on HospitalityNet , 91% of hotel operators still rely on manual reporting, while more than a quarter spend over 11 hours every week reconciling data across disconnected systems. That time translates directly into higher labour costs, slower decision-making and delayed responses to revenue opportunities. The Commercial Cost of Inefficient Operations When a guest is ready to book but has doubts about their stay, every interaction matters - especially if it’s a last-minute inquiry following some equally unforeseen cancellations. If finding information or completing a reservation becomes difficult, many guests will simply continue their search or complete their booking through an OTA or another competitor that responds faster and makes it as easy as possible to book. That decision comes at a significant commercial cost for hotels. Beyond commission fees, OTA bookings often generate lower net revenue. Analysis across Guestcentric's hotel portfolio shows that 30 to 50% of Booking.com reservations are cancelled before check-in, with tentative bookings experiencing cancellation rates of up to 60%. On top of this, hotels typically see an 18 to 30% reduction in net income once commissions, overrides and participation in programmes such as Booking's Genius are factored in. Perhaps most importantly, bookings made through OTAs limit a hotel's direct access to guest data, making it harder to promote additional services and strengthen the direct relationship with the guests. 3 Ways to Increase Hotel Revenue Without Increasing Operational Stress Here are 3 areas

📈 In 2025, global travel and tourism contributed $11.6 trillion, 9.8% of GDP, supporting 366 million jobs. UN Tourism reported 1.52 billion international arrivals, a 4% increase. The World Economic Forum's 2025 report highlights 39% of skills changing by 2030, 170 million new jobs, and 92 million roles displaced. Effective hospitality leadership combines empathy and technology, prioritizing human skills like judgment and communication amid increasing automation and data reliance.

As part of this episode recorded at Hoteliers' Voice Stratford-Upon-Avon edition of the roundtable roadshow, Declan Bloomer, Head of Systems and Support, Celtic Collection shares his experience of digital transformation and how they went about it to identify the right people and right technology. Celtic Collection discuss new technologies, cloud migration, and the role of digital strategy in achieving operational success. Also featuring: Harpreet Saluja, owner of Kings Court Hotel shares his experience of taking over the property as we dive into determining investment priorities, building out a tech change and deciphering today’s market challenges ORACLE, David Hayward, with a 20-year industry perspective, explores where the Independent hotel market is today, and how hotels can realise the value of new technologies and drive their digital transformation. HOSPA, Amanda Brown, Head of Membership explains the benefits of being part of a UK industry membership organisation Shakespeare’s England, Sian Smith provides quick low-down on regional travel and tourism marketing campaigns. Focus on Hospitality, Alessandra Leoni explains underpinning all operations, revenue, commercial and guest experience - how to ensure the infrastructure and support delivers and remains consistent with tech moving fast and remaining future ready

Last week two of the industry's most trusted names — OpenAI and Hugging Face — found themselves on either side of a security incident that had nothing to do with a hacker in a hoodie. During an internal evaluation of advanced cyber capabilities, a combination of OpenAI models, run with reduced safety refusals in order to measure how far they could go, chained together vulnerabilities in OpenAI's own research environment and reached into Hugging Face's production infrastructure. OpenAI's security team caught the anomaly. Hugging Face's team detected and contained the intrusion on their side. The two companies compared notes and disclosed what happened, to their credit, in public. No customer sat down and asked a model to do this. No malicious actor wrote the exploit. The system, given a goal and a permissive environment, found its own route to it. That is the detail worth sitting with, and it is precisely the argument at the center of my colleague Khaled Koubaa's new book, Who Is in Charge? Why AI Must Remain Under Human Control: the question is not whether AI systems can act autonomously. Increasingly, they can. The question is whether the humans around them retain meaningful authority over the conditions, permissions, and boundaries within which that autonomy operates. Why This Is a Hospitality Story, Not Just a Tech One Hospitality and travel have spent the last two years bolting agentic capability onto systems that were never designed to be adversarial tested. Property management systems now hand off to AI concierges. Revenue management engines negotiate rate parity with OTA algorithms in real time. Guest-facing chat agents have write access to booking records, loyalty ledgers, and increasingly, payment tokens. IoT estates — I have personally overseen deployments running well into five figures of connected devices across a single property — sit behind integration layers that were procured on functionality, not containment. Every one of these is, structurally, the same shape as the OpenAI–Hugging Face incident: a capable system, a permissive environment, and a goal it can pursue further than anyone anticipated. The difference is that Hugging Face had a security team watching for anomalous behavior in real time. Ask yourself, honestly, whether your property's PMS vendor, your channel manager, or your AI concierge platform can say the same. Human oversight cannot be a final review after an incident. It has to be built into the architecture — access controls, containment, audit trails, monitoring, and a human with actual authority to intervene. Four Questions Every Owner-Operator Should Be Asking Not of your IT department. Of every vendor with a system that can act on guest data, inventory, or revenue without a human clicking "approve" first. Scope of action — What can this system actually do on its own, and where does its permission end? If the honest answer is "we're not entirely sure," that is your answer. Containment — If the system behaves in a way nobody intended, what stops it reaching beyond the property, the PMS, or the guest record it

📈 Gary Patel’s hotel in Searcy, Arkansas, operated under Choice brands since 2008, relaunched as Magnolia on April 1, 2026. Despite 579 reviews and a 4.4 rating over 18 years, the Google page, controlled by Choice, marked the hotel as permanently closed. Patel’s new listing has 29 reviews. Franchise agreements often dictate Google profile ownership. By 2030, over 1,200 franchise agreements will expire, impacting hotel page ownership in 28% of independent conversions.

📈 Ownership groups and asset managers demand accurate hotel forecasting due to rising costs. The STR Projection Tool by Newport Hospitality Group aids in planning the fiscal year, using data from CoStar and STR. It offers comparisons with previous years, improving decision-making and revenue strategy for properties. Enhanced sections provide year-over-year comparisons, aiding stakeholders. Newport Hospitality Group, based in Williamsburg, VA, manages hotels of various brands across the U.S., with Tim Hayes leading financial analysis.

This article was written by Lodging Magazine. Click here to read the original article Photo Credit: Cloudbeds Insights SAN DIEGO, California—Cloudbeds introduced Cloudbeds Insights, a new reporting and data intelligence product…

💻 AI's role in hotel industry operations is evolving. Referral traffic to hotel websites via AI platforms surged by over 50%. Instead of rethinking systems entirely, AI is used to automate existing workflows, like guest upgrades, improving efficiency. Anthony Capuano's Cannes appearance highlights hotels' interest in ad revenue, inspired by Amazon. Visa Destinations launched in 10 cities, integrating hotels. TikTok GO's success in China showcases potential e-commerce growth. AI's incremental changes are reshaping hospitality tech.