Innovation

```html 📷 ``` Hotels can revamp their visuals using AI, eliminating the need for new photoshoots. AI tools transform existing images according to seasons or events, such as Christmas or Valentine's Day. The AI-generated content is used for marketing across social media, email, and more, offering a fast, budget-friendly, and consistent branding solution. Examples demonstrate AI's capability to adapt hotel imagery for Christmas, Valentine's Day, birthdays, Halloween, and Easter, showcasing the technology's flexibility and efficiency in content creation.

📝 Google's AI advancements are reshaping travel planning; important developments include AI-powered itinerary planning, conversational search refinement using Gemini, and hotel price tracking that alerts users to deals. These updates could make it challenging for hotels to stand out organically and may lead to a focus on competitive pricing. Clockwork Marketing's Pete Stevens advises that hotels create detailed, human-centric content, optimize for visual and technical SEO, and clearly articulate unique selling points to improve discoverability. Engaging with reviews and user-generated content, as well as external PR, are also crucial for hotels to remain competitive in AI-influenced search results.

🔔 Hotels often choose to build their own tech solutions with standard, non-industry-specific tools like Power BI or Tableau, believing it's cost-effective. However, integrating various hotel systems proves complex, leading to increased internal costs, and such DIY projects commonly fail to provide actionable insights. Custom BI solutions or utilizing generic tools for hotel-specific needs result in high maintenance, security risks, and staggering Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for smaller hotel groups (less than 200 hotels). Specialized, industry-specific solutions like Demand Calendar offer faster insights, continuous innovation, and handle hotel-native logic, outperforming generic BI tools. Demand Calendar simplifies complex data for various hotel departments, improving decision-making and performance. Adapting to best-practice industry solutions is more strategic than pursuing custom tech builds. Investing in specialized tech partners allows hotels to focus on hospitality and commercial strategy.

🏨 Cloudbeds, a leading hospitality management software provider, has formed a strategic partnership with STAAH, a hotel distribution technology leader, to offer integrated channel management tools to hoteliers for optimized operations and revenue generation. The collaboration enables real-time data sync, centralized inventory, enhanced reporting, and better guest experiences. Cloudbeds, founded in 2012, serves properties in over 150 countries and has received multiple awards, including recognition in Deloitte's Technology Fast 500 in 2023.

🍦 Wendy's is launching Frosty Fusions next week. In Q1, Wendy's app engagement metrics soared, with a digital sales mix over 20%. The brand introduced gamification to its mobile app, enhancing customer engagement. Wendy's also pilots technology to improve order accuracy with sandwich label printers and smart delivery scales, significantly improving performance in participating restaurants. Upcoming promotions include 100 Days of Summer, Frosty swirls, and a Takis collaboration. CFO Ken Cook emphasizes focus on controllable factors amidst an uncertain economic environment.

💰 Hotiday, an Italian traveltech start-up founded in 2022, announces a €5.5 million capital raise led by P101 SGR, with participation from 40Jemz and Italian and international business angels. The funding will help expand its European portfolio, enter new markets, strengthen presence, enhance hotelier services, establish premium partnerships, and grow the team. Hotiday experienced a 500% revenue growth compared to 2023, operates across over 90 destinations, partners with 65+ hospitality businesses, and introduced a decentralized hotel model with a proprietary algorithm. This investment marks P101 SGR's twelfth through Programma 103, backed by the EU's InvestEU Fund and CDP Venture Capital SGR via the Digital Transition Fund – PNRR.

💾 Hospitable launched a dynamic pricing tool for hosts and property managers, becoming the first PMS with built-in dynamic pricing at no extra cost. The tool previews 30 days of pricing trends, with 24 months of insights accessible upon activation. All customers can explore the full 24-month preview for the first month post-launch. The release follows an industry report revealing 57.2% of hosts struggle with occupancy goals and 28.9% with pricing. Hospitable's dynamic pricing is available on their Host, Professional, or Mogul plans. The full industry report will be released this week.

🏨 Sabre has integrated Iberia's New Distribution Capability (NDC) offers into its Global Distribution System (GDS), enhancing travel retailing. Iberia's Commercial Strategy and Distribution Director, Celia Muñoz Espín, sees this as a milestone in their distribution strategy, allowing global access to their NDC products and fares. Sabre's Senior Vice President Kathy Morgan highlights the goal of making NDC work at scale for seamless agency integration, offering personalized airline content. This partnership strengthens Sabre's platform by providing more choice and value across the travel ecosystem.

🏨 In Dubai at the Arabian Travel Market 2025, Riyadh Air and Verteil Technologies announced a strategic partnership, making Verteil the launch NDC aggregator for Riyadh Air's NDC content. Riyadh Air aims to revolutionize airline connectivity and innovation. Verteil will provide scalable NDC solutions for real-time availability, fare options, services, and instant ticketing to global travel sellers via its Verteil Direct Connect platform, enhancing transparency and personalisation.