Innovation

🚧 Nearly 940,000 hospitality jobs will be lost between 2016 and 2025 due to automation. Currently, 34% of travel companies invest over half their tech budget on AI, with projections of 69% in the next 18 months. AI is transforming the industry by replacing various roles with chatbots, self-service kiosks, automated kitchens, predictive maintenance, and dynamic pricing. Workers face a future needing new skills pertaining to AI-assisted customer experience, AI-driven revenue strategies, and service augmentation. The question remains if AI will enhance hospitality or merely reduce costs.

🍴 The 2025 National Restaurant Association Restaurant, Hotel-Motel Show® will take place from May 17–20 and showcase the Kitchen Innovations (KI) Award winners, exhibiting groundbreaking foodservice equipment and technology. The Show attracts a diverse foodservice industry audience, including equipment dealers, operators, and educators. KI Award recipients range from Alto-Shaam's Origin™ convection ovens to American Metalcraft's BuffetBoost™ Warming Block and Atosa USA's Chillstream™ Undercounter Frozen Food Dispenser. Innovations address streamlining workflows, improving sustainability, and enhancing consistency, with features such as high-velocity airflow cooking, wireless heating, fresh brew tea dispensing, and automated egg cooking. Additional highlighted products include Carter-Hoffmann's CHrisper Station, Charter House Innovations' RoboFry X4, and Ecolab's integrated Digital Kitchen App. The event will also feature discussions and networking opportunities focused on the impact of cutting-edge kitchen equipment on foodservice operations.

😋 At MURTEC 2025, leaders from Jollibee Foods Corp., City Barbecue, and Blaze Pizza discussed enhancing guest experience through personalization. Jollibee focuses on individual guest engagement, while City Barbecue, with 80% loyalty transactions online but only 4% in drive-thrus, partnered with Flybuy Networks for Bluetooth check-ins. Blaze Pizza introduced kiosks and QR codes for in-store order flexibility. City Barbecue leverages a Customer Data Platform for targeted marketing based on first-time guest preferences, realizing a 60% retention rate when new guests join loyalty programs, compared to 20% without membership. Jollibee uses data tokenization for comprehensive customer profiles.

🏕 UK-based travel tech provider intuitive partners with Florida villa supplier Ocean Beds. Ocean Beds, leading in Florida villa vacations, offers over 3,500 properties in Orlando and Gulf Coast. The partnership enhances booking capabilities through intuitive's reservation platform and website, and expands iVectorOne's global network. Ocean Beds now allows more partners direct API connections, aiming for seamless booking experiences and innovation in the villa rental market.

✈ Air France-KLM becomes the fourth client for Amadeus's Nevio, joining British Airways, Finnair, and Saudia. Stephan Hirmer leads the delivery management for the transition to Nevio, which aims to resolve disconnects between PSS and DCS systems. Nevio simplifies Offer and Order Management, and the Delivery Management Champions group has produced a white paper outlining future delivery improvements. AI is highlighted as an enabler for retail transformation in the industry. The adoption by Air France-KLM is anticipated to create momentum among other carriers for modern retailing.

🍜 At Pecking House, Manhattan, Chef Eric Huang offers the Irish-Chinese Spice Bag, made with fries, chicken nuggets, onions, peppers, and a peppercorn spice blend for $14. The combo gained popularity on TikTok and is considered for permanent addition to the menu. Pecking House, opened in Brooklyn in September 2022 and a Manhattan location in 2024, serves a southern fried chicken and Chinese takeout fusion. The restaurant also offers fried chicken with various sauces starting from $9, vegetarian options, and globally influenced sandwiches at $14 each.

🏨 STAAH partners with Praveg Hotels & Resorts, focusing on eight properties in Daman & Diu and Ahmedabad. Praveg, a BSE-listed company since 2018 with a hospitality portfolio, uses STAAH's MAX Channel Manager, SwiftBook, and other solutions for operational efficiency and revenue growth. Shoaib Ali, STAAH's National Sales Head, anticipates Praveg's expansion, while Dr. Zalak Patel credits STAAH for increased bookings and revenues. STAAH recently joined Access Management Group, enhancing their global business management software presence.

🦾 Jack Smyth, Jellyfish's AI Chief Solutions Officer, anticipates an internet built for AI agents, impacting marketing strategies. AI-driven tools like OpenAI’s Operator and Instacart’s retail agents are reshaping the shopping journey, streamlining consumer choices based on preferences. AI models from internet giants will curate brand perceptions by processing online data, while marketers must understand their brand's position in AI's latent space—a conceptual mapping affecting AI-driven recommendations. Differentiation remains crucial but harder to maintain with AI's copyable tactics.

💻 OpenAI's AI agent "Operator" was made available to UK users last month, joining other AI agents like Anthropic's Claude and offerings from Perplexity and Google. These agents perform tasks in a web browser with some degree of autonomy. Operator, still in "research preview," recently made an error by spending $31 on a dozen eggs. OpenAI describes Operator as a research preview and requires a ChatGPT Pro account at $200 a month. AI agents are expected to reshape workflows and the internet, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman predicting they could join the workforce this year. GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke discusses increasing autonomy in AI agents and their potential, such as GitHub's Project Padawan. Concerns about AI agents' autonomy include potential risks, urging the need for guardrails in technology. AI agents' proliferation could lead to internet restructuring and the redesign of interfaces with AI agents in mind.