Innovation

💰 English Lakes Hotels Resorts and Venues now accepts Bitcoin payments for booking rooms and services at locations like Low Wood Bay Resort and Spa. The shift aims to attract the global Bitcoin user market, leveraging CoinCorner's digital currency exchange system. This strategic move aims to grow international bookings and build a Bitcoin treasury. Director Ben Berry notes benefits like avoiding bank fees and mitigating price volatility for international customers, enhancing payment speed and convenience.

🚀 OpenAI's launch of Apps inside ChatGPT revolutionizes travel interaction, integrating platforms like Expedia and Booking.com. Travelers can directly book hotels, such as finding options in Vienna with EV charging, through conversational AI. This shift towards frictionless, context-aware personalization could diminish hotels' direct relationships unless they integrate. The entities controlling guest data will dominate loyalty and upselling. Onsai empowers hotels with AI-driven experiences, ensuring they maintain brand control amidst this transformative shift in hospitality.

✈️ Travel Ads, powered by Smart+, are TikTok's catalog-based solutions for travel advertisers, promoting hotels, flights, and destinations. TikTok supports three travel catalog types: Flights, Hotels, and Destination (beta). Creative formats include Single Video, Catalog Video, and Catalog Carousel. These ads utilize TikTok's travel intent model to target high-intent audiences, enhancing engagement and performance.

📈 In September 2025, Apaleo launched the MCP server, becoming the first property management platform to connect AI agents with hotel systems, unveiled at The Annual Hospitality Conference in Manchester. MCP simplifies hotel operations by allowing AI agents to handle tasks in hours instead of weeks. This advancement moves hotels from automation to autonomy. Apaleo's new Agent Factory lets hotels co-design AI agents. MCP empowers independent hotels, enabling rapid innovation and competitive equality.

📈 AI agents are revolutionizing hotel tech by bridging gaps with MCP (Model Context Protocol), eliminating the need for costly integrations. Sam Weston from Hotel Speak explains how MCP enables AI to directly understand hotel data, leading to smarter collaboration. This innovation supports the Agent Factory initiative that helps design AI solutions. The focus is shifting from new apps to seamless human-AI collaboration in hospitality tech.

📈 In revenue management, AI excels in operational tasks, raising the debate of in-house vs. outsourced strategic management. In-house teams align AI with hotel vision but are costly, while outsourcing offers expertise but risks cultural disconnect. For marketing, in-house teams ensure authenticity, while outsourcing provides specialist skills. Hotel Business Intelligence systems are essential for data management, with a unified commercial team structure recommended to maximize AI's potential, emphasizing collaboration and data ownership.

💻 Oct 7, 2025, OpenAI launched an app ecosystem for ChatGPT, integrating third-party apps like Expedia and Booking.com for seamless travel planning. Users can search, plan, and book trips directly in-chat, without extra app downloads. The app ecosystem includes partners like Spotify and Zillow. The platform uses a new Apps SDK and Model Context Protocol. Monetization strategies remain unclear, but features like Instant Checkout suggest future payment options.

💼 Oct 7, 2025, Amex GBT and SAP Concur announced a strategic alliance to create an AI-powered platform named *Complete*. The platform will unify travel booking, expense management, and payments, offering personalization through data from millions of trips. *Complete* will launch in late 2025, with new features released quarterly in 2026. While simplifying corporate travel, it could restrict flexibility for users preferring open systems. Egencia clients will benefit from direct integration with Concur Expense.

🏨 Oct 7, 2025, Accor Plus CEO Emilie Couton highlights the future of hotel loyalty with the ALL Accor+ Explorer subscription. This model offers instant rewards over points, in a market projected to surpass US$2 trillion by 2034. Accor Plus’ 450,000 members spend 2.3 times more and stay five times longer. The future focuses on AI personalization and community, transforming loyalty into a lifestyle platform.