Innovation

🏨 Patrick van der Wardt checked into a major hotel in Cartagena, Colombia, in 2026 and was asked to write his card details on paper. Hotels lose around $47,538 annually due to payment inefficiencies. With 80 rooms at a $159 ADR, losses arise from bad-card no-shows, chargebacks, and booking issues. 55% of U.S. card fraud occurs in hotels. Improving payment systems can reduce losses and increase revenue by adopting digital payments, optimizing currency exchanges, and automating processes.

💻 Jun 16, 2026, IHG's eight-year tech overhaul shows profitability in franchisee margins. CEO Elie Maalouf highlights a new reservation system, AI revenue management, and Google Cloud integration. IHG's strategy involves personalized offers and precise room pricing for over 160 million loyalty members across 7,000 hotels, rather than reducing fees. Maalouf didn't quantify RevPAR premiums, leaving franchisees questioning the tangible benefits. The challenge remains to prove this value at the property level.

📈 Jun 15, 2026, Cendyn launched Wayfinder, a tool evaluating hotels’ presence in AI answers, generating a "GEO health score." CEO Michael Bennett, in office since late 2025, warns smaller properties, especially in Europe, could lose direct business. Independent testing showed score variability: 14.6% on one AI platform and 2.0% on another. GEO monitoring, a new metric not yet accurate, assesses AI visibility, with competitors like Operto and LuxDirect already active in this space.

📱 Jun 16, 2026, Skift's Data + AI Summit: Expedia's Shilpa Ranganathan discussed the failure of their 2024 chatbot, Romie, due to ungrounded responses not linked to real inventory. Trust was lost quickly, requiring a year to repair by improving data infrastructure rather than AI models. Creating reliable AI chatbots is costly, involving coherent data integration from PMS, CRM, and booking engines. The organizational structure, rather than technology, is key to success.

💸 Gemini leads major AI chat interfaces in agentic commerce readiness with UCP protocol. Microsoft's Copilot also adopts UCP. Perplexity introduced shopping features but ended them in May. ChatGPT had ACP protocol and Instant Checkout but stopped in March, now at level 2. Anthropic's Claude shows no activity. Google's upcoming shopping carts place it at level 4. ReFiBuy's levels range from basic web search (level 1) to auto-buying (level 5).

💸 Revenue Analytics launched Climber RMS in North America, targeting independent and boutique hotels, family-owned hotel groups, and regional chains. Climber offers dynamic 24/7 automated pricing and has shown up to a 30% revenue increase for users. It includes auto-pilot pricing updates, 24x daily rate publishing, in-depth reporting, and manageable price rules. Jaclyn Long and Alex Harrington highlighted its potential to empower hoteliers without adding manual workload. Climber extends enterprise-grade revenue science to all hoteliers.

🏨 PPHE Group is leveraging technology to streamline hotel operations, focusing on automation to enhance the guest and employee experience. With Jawad Sabir at the helm, they’ve centralized data across systems, enabling AI capabilities to handle 60% of 50,000 monthly emails. The global trend shows 52% of travelers abandon bookings due to poor digital experiences. Emphasizing human interaction, AI handles routine tasks, with complex issues escalated to staff, aiming for seamless service.