Innovation

🛏 Hotel Items’ e-commerce manager Camilo Sosa recommends 200–300-thread-count hotel sheets, prioritizing weave, fabric and fit over inflated counts. Percale feels cool and crisp; sateen feels silky. Cotton-polyester blends offer durability, while 100% cotton provides breathability. Hotels should stock at least three linen sets per room; many target four during busy seasons. Hotel Items, a family-owned supplier founded in 1986 near Miami, Florida, also offers 90 GSM microfiber sheets with 12-inch-deep fitted options.

🏨 Mews announced its Preferred Hotels & Resorts Alliance Partner affiliation in New York on November 9, 2026. Member properties across the Americas and EMEA gain preferential pricing on its AI hospitality platform, connecting reservations, payments and operations to reduce manual work. Preferred represents 650+ properties across 80 countries; more than 15 already use Mews. Mews serves 15,000 customers in 85 countries.

✈ Amadeus CFO Carol Borg said on November 6, during the company’s Q3 2026 earnings call, that Meta’s Muse partnership with Duffel reinforces the global distribution system model. Muse uses Duffel to access flight inventory, giving Duffel—not Amadeus—the direct relationship. Borg argued that AI platforms will rely on aggregators rather than build booking systems themselves, as competitors pursue similar roles in airline distribution, hotel bookings and payments.

🤖 AltexSoft’s 2026 survey examines agentic AI in travel commerce, covering capabilities, limitations, protocols and MCP servers. Authors Olga Pereverzieva and Liudmyla Semyvolos explore how suppliers, online travel agencies and travel management companies use AI agents, with industry examples. The survey covers hotel connectivity, destinations, tours and activities, featuring insights from 4 experts: Alan Young, Ola Zetterlöf, Praveen Kumar and Sean P. Carapella. No adoption statistics are provided.

🛒 Personal AI assistants reportedly went from no working one-click options in September to five named offerings two months later, including Meta’s Muse and OpenAI Dots. Shopping agents can compare prices across hundreds of websites, making accurate, structured product data critical. Brands should update prices, availability, specifications and buyer-focused attributes across retailers, align teams around shared data, and track product-level AI recommendations. The author says this work is underway with dozens of the world’s largest brands.

🏨 Kasa founder and CEO Roman Pedan explains how Powered by Kasa lets other hotel companies use its AI-native operating system in Part 3 of a Hospitality Daily series. He discusses his August 14, 2026, Fortune article on AI’s “barbell effect”: making the biggest companies bigger and the smallest more powerful. Earlier installments cover hosting and Kasa’s technology, following conversations with host Josiah in April 2024.

🏨 Enseo launched its Managed Services portal at The Hospitality Show, combining real-time technology monitoring, operational analytics and guest engagement data. Built on its SITE platform, which uses a 3-D model of each hotel, the portal tracks in-room entertainment, WiFi, support activity, billing and revenue trends across individual properties and portfolios. It helps hoteliers identify recurring issues, use historical data to guide decisions and find opportunities to improve guest experiences and financial performance.