Innovation

🛫 Sam Altman and Tyler Cowen discussed AI's role in travel, highlighting its impact on hotel bookings. AI agents, driven by Large Language Models, automate booking, reducing friction. Hotels must adopt modern, API-ready systems for visibility. Trust, not ads, will guide AI recommendations. SEO shifts to structured data for AI interpretation. A McKinsey study notes the average traveler visits 38 sites before booking. AI can merge planning and booking into a single step, emphasizing the need for accurate, structured hotel data.

🏠 Chambéry, France – 17 December 2025: Nomad Stays launched StayDirect, empowering property owners by sending high-intent nomad traffic directly to their booking systems. This feature maintains owners' control over bookings and compliance while expanding options for digital nomads. StayDirect works with various accommodations, enhancing visibility and flexibility without imposing new systems. Nomad Stays currently offers properties in over 80 countries, catering to the remote work travel market.

💻 Stayntouch, a leader in cloud hotel PMS, announced enhancements to its Gen-2 platform, boosting performance by 30-35% and reducing update resolution times by 50%. New AI-driven tools improve system stability and reporting speed on AWS EKS clusters. Security remains strong with PCI Level 1 certification. With a 97% client retention rate, these upgrades enhance operational efficiency and guest service, ensuring hotel management stays ahead with reliable and quick service.

💻 Over 68% of travelers prefer OTAs, but AI is changing this. One in three travelers now use AI travel assistants like ChatGPT for bookings. Despite OTAs' dominance, 21% of hotel databases have masked emails, hindering direct marketing. Automated post-stay campaigns boast a 53.2% open rate, generating $18K in direct revenue for TPG properties. Triumph Hotels cut OTA reliance by 20% via pre-arrival engagement. Mobile bookings now account for one-third of global reservations.

📈 Leaders from CPG brands, ingredient companies, and food-tech startups discussed predictive AI in food innovation at FutureFWD. By 2030, AI will predict demand, shape ingredients, and speed up product development. Using AI Palette’s intelligence, the panel explored AI’s role in identifying trends, enhancing formulations, and targeting product launches, highlighting how data-driven decisions will shape future diets and help brands reduce risk, innovate rapidly, and meet evolving consumer preferences.

🗺️ CodeGen is the first enterprise travel platform to offer all operations via Model Context Protocols (MCPs). Initially created for an airline client, MCPs now facilitate seamless integration with systems like Amadeus PSS, enhancing real-time flight access. This innovation cuts integration time and costs, allowing travel agencies easy access to airline inventory without complex NDC integrations. MCP servers for TravelBox streamline connectivity and enhance workflow, reducing development time and costs for users.

💻 Dec 17, 2025, The Future Laboratory reports that for 2026, hotels must enhance guest experiences by aligning people, systems, and sensory design. Successful integration of digital infrastructure with human services enhances recognition and empathy. Prioritizing connection, reducing technological complexity, and valuing genuine storytelling over luxury are key. Cross-department collaboration in hotels is essential for delivering consistent guest experiences. Investing in empathetic and connected systems now equips hotels for evolving guest expectations.

💻 In a quest to revolutionize the web, a new model is transforming each URL into an interpretable endpoint by layering intelligence on the existing web. Using structured data like Schema.org and JSON-LD, each webpage becomes an API, making the web readable and executable by AI. The Model Context Protocol (MCP) connects AI understanding with business systems. Agentic Hospitality, led by Brad Brewer, implements this model to enhance guest experiences, with support from Google Cloud and Brewer Digital.

📲 DoorDash is piloting "Zesty," an AI-powered app for personalized restaurant discovery, in San Francisco and New York City. Available on iOS, it allows users to search with specific prompts, such as "cozy pasta spots on the Lower East Side under $100" and integrates data from DoorDash, Google Maps, and TikTok. Announced by founder Andy Fang, Zesty is part of DoorDash's September suite of innovations, including delivery robots and smart scales.