Innovation

🌐 Ubico, part of World2Meet (W2M), is partnering with Acai Travel to integrate AI into its travel management services. Initially rolled out in Ubico's Microsoft Dynamics-based CRM, the AI-powered Agentic API aims to enhance support efficiency. This partnership, starting in 2026, supports Ubico's strategy of reducing traditional workflows and improving scalable, human-centric service delivery. The initiative is part of a broader group-wide strategy to incorporate AI across W2M's corporate, leisure, and wholesale operations.

🚀 In December 2025, at the Navitaire Customer Conference in Las Vegas, Vueling discussed technological advances. Vueling, partnering with Navitaire, focuses on AI, quantum computing, and a mobile-first strategy. They've developed innovative solutions like an AI-powered search tool and facial recognition boarding at Barcelona Airport. Vueling's goal is seamless customer experiences with real-time event sharing and personalized offers. Navitaire supports this through Stratos and New Skies, aiming for a technology-driven, interconnected future.

💻 CEOs are leveraging AI to boost productivity, as noted in CIO magazine. Gartner predicts 75% of IT tasks will be AI-assisted within five years, urging companies to find new IT value through market expansion and product innovation. Challenges include process change, complexity, and governance, emphasizing the need for careful role analysis and control mechanisms. With agentic AI's rise, enterprise architecture must adapt to ensure technology investments yield expected returns.

📰 IHG acquired Ruby Hotels for €110.5 million in February 2025, involving €109.9 million upfront and a €600,000 deferred payment. Ruby operates 20 hotels (3,483 rooms) across Europe with 10 more (2,235 rooms) planned. IHG targets over 120 hotels in 10 years and faces potential payments up to €181 million by 2035 depending on room growth. By year-end 2025, Ruby aims for US development readiness, with full integration into IHG by March 2026.

💻 High staff turnover is a costly issue in hospitality, often seen as an HR problem. Pertlink's AI Playbook Series, focusing on Workforce Stability, offers assistive AI tools to reduce turnover and maintain service consistency. The plan includes over a dozen AI prompt cards for managers and a phased adoption roadmap, emphasizing ethical use and human judgment. Pertlink, operating since October 23, 2000, from Hong Kong, aids the hospitality sector in leveraging technology effectively.

💻 In a VentureBeat podcast, Booking.com's AI product development lead, Pranav Pathak, discussed how Booking.com utilizes a hybrid AI approach to enhance their services. Their strategy, combining small travel-specific models with larger LLMs, has doubled accuracy in key tasks. They report a 2X improvement in topic detection and a 1.5 to 1.7X increase in agent bandwidth. Focused on personalization, they balance specialized and general agents, aiming for efficient, non-invasive recommendations.

💻 LodgIQ launched AI Wizard, the first fully operational Generative AI platform for hotel revenue management, on December 2025, in Silicon Valley, CA. This platform leverages a multi-model AI architecture to provide natural language insights into revenue opportunities, replacing static dashboards. Key features include "Ask the Wizard," "Daily Glimpse," and "Opportunity Radar," which identifies revenue upsides like a $6,823 opportunity on specific dates. AI Wizard is available immediately, with an additional module, "Get Your Life Back," in development.

💻 LodgIQ launched AI Wizard, the first Generative AI for hotel revenue management. This platform, powered by a multi-model AI architecture, provides context-aware answers to complex hotel data queries. Key modules include "Ask the Wizard" for natural language queries, "Daily Glimpse" for daily performance briefings, and "Opportunity Radar" for future demand analysis, identifying exact revenue upsides, like $6,823 on a specific date. A fourth module, "Get Your Life Back," is in development to further automate tasks.