Here are the articles hoteliers have read the most over the past few months. It is not driven by algorithms or recency. It reflects the topics that genuinely captured industry attention. If you want a quick pulse on what your peers are focusing on, this is the place to start.
RobosizeME Cuts Loyalty Point Update Times From Three to Four Days to Under 24 Hours For Global Hotel Program
Automation initiative accelerates loyalty processing for one of the world’s largest hotel loyalty programs ahead of HITEC 2026 Wilmington, Delaware, June 10, 2026 – RobosizeME, a leading provider of AI-enabled workflow automation solutions tailored to hotel groups, today announced the expansion of its work with one of the world’s largest hotel loyalty programs. The initiative has significantly accelerated loyalty point processing times, reducing the wait for members to see updated points in their accounts from three to four…
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Google I/O, it changes OTA positions
Some of my takeaways from Google I/Os announcements last week. It is totally clear that travel search and inspiration is going to completely change in coming years. I can’t imagine a world where this doesn’t totally shift. And OTAs are going to be challenged in the process. The biggest change I think is that travel research starts becoming assembled. What I mean is: inspiration, comparison, itinerary planning, reminders, (possibly even booking), travel delays and small decisions all start getting pulled into one flow. Agents…
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What AI is telling travelers about your hotel tonight. And you have no idea
By Tony Loeb, cofounder of 10 minutes hotels Fifteen years ago, hoteliers didn’t see OTAs coming. Not because they were naive, but because the shift was gradual. By the time the warning signs were obvious, a big chunk of control was already gone. Something similar is unfolding right now. But this time, it’s not about distribution. It’s about how your hotel is described, understood and recommended by artificial intelligence. To dig into this, I recently sat down on the 10 minutes hotels podcast with Nicki…
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Why Changing Your PMS Is Less About Technology and More About Letting Go
Changing a PMS is one of the most disruptive decisions a hotel can make. It touches every department, every workflow, and often exposes how much of daily operations rely on habit rather than design. At Sunborn London, the trigger was not innovation for its own sake, but constraint. “We always felt that what’s stopping us from growing was the system,” says General Manager Francisco Ventura. That framing matters. PMS changes are rarely driven by opportunity first. They are driven by accumulated friction. The selection process…
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RMS and GoCardless Partner to Help Hospitality Operators Cut Payment Costs
London, 14th April 2026 – RMS, a leading global hospitality platform for hotels, motels, serviced apartments, short-term rentals and campgrounds, has announced a new integration with global bank payment provider GoCardless, to help hospitality operators tackle rising payment costs and margin pressures. With card processing fees commonly sitting between 1.5% and 3%, and often higher for some online or manually entered transactions, payments remain a significant and often overlooked cost for hospitality…
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The Hidden Reality of Hotel General Managers
It is a deceptively simple question, and one that rarely gets a satisfying answer. From the outside, the role appears composed, almost theatrical. A well-dressed figure moving through the lobby, greeting guests by name, stepping into meetings, resolving issues before they surface. Everything looks smooth, deliberate, under control. But that surface hides a reality that is far more complex, fragmented, and, at times, chaotic. To move beyond the clichés, we gathered dozens upon dozens of firsthand accounts from General Managers…
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ATLANTIC Hotels Expands Strategic Partnership with IDeaS Ahead of New Flagship Frankfurt Property Opening
Long-standing technology partnership expands as group deploys advanced revenue management in a highly competitive German market FRANKFURT– 26 March, 2026 – IDeaS, a SAS company and the world’s leading provider of AI-powered hospitality revenue management software, today announced that ATLANTIC Hotels is expanding its partnership with the company to support the launch of its newest flagship property, ATLANTIC Hotel Frankfurt/Main, scheduled to open in summer 2026. As competition intensifies in Germany’s urban hotel markets…
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eviivo launches Device Manager to centralise smart lock and access control for short-term rentals and hotels
LONDON, 23 April, 2026 — eviivo, the all-in-one property management system (PMS) provider for short-term rentals and hotels, has launched Device Manager, a new module within eviivo Suite that centralises smart lock and property access management into the same platform as bookings, payments and distribution. Device Manager supports hundreds of smart lock models from major manufacturers, giving operators a single place to connect hardware, automate access codes and monitor lock status across…
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Independent accommodations accelerate AI use in a more demanding 2026 market
LONDON, 23 March, 2026 – Ahead of Independent Accommodation Day on 24 March, industry data suggests independent accommodation providers are increasingly turning to practical AI tools to improve efficiency and stay competitive in a more demanding market. The shift comes as PwC’s latest hotels forecast says the UK hotel sector enters 2026 with “a sense of resilience and renewed confidence,” supported by strong international demand, event-led travel and a steady recovery in domestic leisure. PwC…
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Operto launches GEO Consultant, the industry’s first free AI visibility tool for hotels
New tool gives hotels direct visibility into how they appear across generative AI platforms such as ChatGPT and Gemini, with recommendations to improve discoverability Vancouver, Canada, 23 March 2026 – Operto today announces the launch of its GEO Consultant, the hotel industry’s first free AI visibility tool designed to help hotels understand how their properties appear in generative AI platforms. Until now, hotels looking to understand how they appear in AI-driven travel recommendations have relied on general…
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eviivo partners with DirectBooker, enabling independent hotels to get found and booked on ChatGPT and Claude
LONDON, 7 MAY 2026 – eviivo, the all-in-one property management system (PMS) for independent hotels and accommodation providers, has become the first PMS partner of DirectBooker, giving thousands of independent hotels a new route to visibility and making them directly bookable on AI platforms, including ChatGPT and Claude. The integration connects hotels using eviivo to DirectBooker’s AI discovery infrastructure, enabling official hotel information, including direct rates, real-time availability and rich…
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Hotel Brands are Aggregators
We tend to think of hotel brands as, well, brands. Distinct identities. Lifestyle positioning. Design, tone of voice, target audience. But as I’ve repeatedly called them, they’re labels. Traffic data shows the real power is at the holding company level. And that is where traffic, distribution, and ultimately control start to concentrate. Take the top six hotel groups. Together they capture roughly 84 percent of all organic traffic across 36 major players. And here is where it gets interesting. Outside of industry…
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Key Data appoints Dustin Downing as President to lead next phase of growth and product innovation
Santa Rosa Beach, Fla., 8 April 2026 — Short-term rental analytics company, Key Data, has appointed Dustin Downing as President, marking a significant step in the company’s next phase of growth as it expands its product capabilities and strengthens its position as the data backbone of the short-term rental industry. Downing joins Key Data with nearly two decades of experience building and scaling technology platforms across data-driven industries, with a strong foundation in travel and hospitality. His appointment reflects…
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The Five Subconscious Signals in Hotel Experiences
One of the advantages of working closely with hotel operators is occasionally getting a glimpse into how they think. Not the polished version that appears in presentations or on websites. The real operational thinking that happens behind the scenes. The habits, observations, and frameworks that experienced operators use every day to identify problems before they become complaints. During a recent campaign with Paris-based hotel management company EnSuite Gestion, we had the opportunity to preview some of the methods their…
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Hospitality tech drew over $1 billion in the last year, with PMS and AI-led platforms capturing biggest share
LONDON, 13 April 2026 — Hospitality technology startups raised more than $1 billion across 40 companies between April 2025 and March 2026, with property management systems (PMS) and AI-led platforms attracting the largest share of investment, according to the “Abode Worldwide’s Hospitality Tech Investment Index 2026.” These findings point to a market where investor confidence is centred on the core systems hospitality operators use to run their businesses, especially platforms that centralise operations, improve automation,…
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Conduit launches AI operational platform with agents purpose-built for hospitality
SAN FRANCISCO, 4 June 2026 — Conduit, the AI coordination layer for hospitality operations, unveiled the next evolution of its platform, expanding its core automated guest messaging capabilities into an operational AI platform with a suite of pre-configured agents for guest support, sales, cleaning and owner communication. Already used by hospitality operators to automate guest communication at scale, Conduit now enables hotels, serviced apartments, and short-term rental operators to deploy ready-to-operate agents…
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Fewer than 3% of STR searches result in bookings, new data reveals
Upcoming Hospitable and IntelliHost report suggests guests are browsing more listings, comparing more options, and taking longer to commit to stays SAN FRANCISCO, 12 MAY 2026 – New data from short-term rental software provider Hospitable and short-term renal analytics platform IntelliHost suggests hosts and property managers are facing a growing conversion challenge as travelers compare more listings before following through with bookings. The report suggests the challenge for hosts is no longer…
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SOCIETIES Magazine’s 6th Edition
The May–August 2026 issue examines how intention, atmosphere, AI, design and cultural relevance are reshaping premium guest experiences PARIS, France, June 15, 2026 – Influence Society, a leading digital marketing agency serving high-end hospitality brands, today announced the release of SOCIETIES Magazine for May-August 2026. The new issue explores what the magazine defines as “The New Language of Luxury”, a shift away from excess and toward intention, emotional depth, craftsmanship, atmosphere and experiences that remain…
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Airline Shrugged
It’s an extraordinary thing, the modern airline business. A masterclass in the institutionalized shrug. I recently flew to Europe, shelling out for a business class service on a major international carrier. One stop, same airline, bags tagged from start to finish with those bright, supposedly meaningful “Priority” stickers. You know the ones—the digital promise of “first on, first off.” I managed to physically navigate one of the world’s largest terminals, moving from one gate to the next in twenty…
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Hallucinated Bookings: Travel’s New Bug
Some time ago, together with my friend Daniel Doppler, I wrote about AI hallucinations in the travel industry. Back then, we suggested that sooner or later we would reach a rather peculiar stage: a tourism ecosystem populated by what I call “hallucinated bookings.” The mechanism is simple. Generative models pull information from scattered, incomplete, and often contradictory sources. Then they do what LLMs do best: fill in the gaps using linguistic probability. If that sounds like science fiction, consider what happened…
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RMS Integrates with GuestRevu to Automate Guest Feedback
London, 25 March 2026 – RMS, a leading global hospitality platform for hotels, motels, serviced apartments, short-term rentals and campgrounds, has announced a new integration with guest feedback and reputation management platform GuestRevu. The integration enables hospitality operators to automatically collect guest feedback throughout the guest journey and transform responses into AI-enhanced insights designed to improve service delivery and operational decision-making in real-time. Through the…
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Dumb and Dumber
I was listening to a podcast the other day—Stephen Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO—hosting one of the foundational father figures of the AI movement. The conversation took a turn that was both fascinating and deeply unsettling. He suggested that, as a species, we are currently getting a measurable percentage dumber every single day. Why? Because the sheer pace of technical development and the encroaching shadow of the Singularity are essentially offloading the heavy lifting of human existence. It made me pause. If technology is…
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Branding is never done
Let’s talk about a company that has been around for over a century. They are, by almost every metric, the most recognizable brand on the planet. Every country knows them. Every demographic uses them. They are the undisputed leader of their industry. Last year, they spent $5 billion on advertising and brand building. More than almost any other company in the world. If you’re already Number One. If the entire world already knows your name. Why on earth are you still one of the top three spenders in global advertising? The…
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eviivo Suite Named “Hotel PMS Platform of the Year” in 2026 TravelTech Breakthrough Awards
Award recognizes eviivo’s all-in-one property management system for helping hoteliers simplify operations, grow revenue and improve guest experience. LONDON, May 6, 2026 – eviivo, the all-in-one property management system (PMS) for hotels, short-term rentals, and other accommodation businesses, has been named “Hotel PMS Platform of the Year” in the 4th annual TravelTech Breakthrough Awards, an award program for the most innovative hospitality technology products. The recognition comes as…
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Operto launches ‘Predatory OTA’ skill within Marketing AI Agent to help hotels combat brand search hijacking
New capability detects third-party affiliates targeting hotel brand searches and helps recover direct booking demand Vancouver, Canada, 27 April 2026 – Operto today announces the launch of a new ‘Predatory OTA’ skill within its Marketing AI Agent, designed to help hotels identify and reduce lost direct bookings caused by third-party brand hijacking in search. The new capability enables the Marketing Agent to detect when affiliate sites bid on hotel brand names, mimic official listings, and divert guests before…
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Every Revenue System is Just Someone Else’s Spreadsheet
Opinion article based on Martin Soler’s linkedin post. There is a common denominator among the elite tier of hospitality professionals, a shared trait that borders on the supernatural: I have never met a dumb revenue manager. These are people who can look at a digital wall of data and see the matrix, spotting a three-room-night trend in a secondary market before the local tourism board has even finished their coffee. But this high intelligence comes with a very specific, recurring side effect—the “Magic…
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Sunborn London Implements New PMS System to Enhance Operational Efficiency, Completing Switch in Under One Year
📈 At Sunborn London, the PMS change process began in mid-2024, with a contract signed in early 2025 and implementation by May 2025. The change aimed to reduce operational fragmentation and improve efficiency, saving 4-5 staff hours daily by reducing check-in time by 2 minutes per guest. Automation, such as integrated payments and mobile housekeeping, enhanced workflows. The shift emphasized training and abandoning legacy processes, reducing inefficiencies and increasing guest engagement. Ventura highlights the…
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RMS Partners with Pride of Britain Hotels to Strengthen UK Luxury Hotel Offering
LONDON, 28 April 2026 – RMS, a leading global hospitality technology platform, has announced a new partnership with Pride of Britain Hotels (PoB Hotels), a curated collection of over 50 of the UK’s finest independent luxury properties. The partnership reflects a shared commitment to supporting independent hotels as they navigate rising guest expectations, operational complexity and increasing competition, while staying true to the individuality that defines them. As luxury travellers prioritise more personalised,…
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Every Robot was Kung-Fu Fighting!
Come recent news out of Shenzhen this week had me double-checking the calendar to ensure I hadn’t slipped into a Real Steel fever dream. But it’s 2026, and China has officially launched the world’s first commercial humanoid combat league. We’re talking full-blown martial arts—spinning kicks and aerial rotations—all for a 10-kilogram gold belt worth nearly $1.5 million. It’s peak spectacle, part Bloodsport, part high-stakes laboratory. While the crowd cheers for the knockout, the real play here is the “stress…
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A seat at the table
I’ve just arrived at a fresh, modern hotel in the States. On first glance, it’s a win. The room is bright, the design is well-calculated, and it actually features a proper working desk—a rarity now that so many brands think we’d prefer to huddle in a noisy lobby like digital nomads in a bus station. This desk was even raised, a thoughtful touch clearly intended to keep the unmade bed out of the frame during the ubiquitous video call. Then came the morning. I sat down to actually do some work, only to discover a fundamental,…
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Intentional
It’s a curious thing, staying in a property that seems to have missed the memo on the industry’s collective race toward the bottom. I’m currently hunkered down in a hotel that is staring a brutal market condition right in the face, yet instead of retreating into the hollow safety of “frictionless” automation, they’ve doubled down on the one thing that actually matters: intent. I haven’t seen this level of customer engagement, service connectivity, and genuine hospitality in this country for quite some time.…
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Enterprise AI Is Scaling Fast Hotels Are Still Catching Up
The most honest way to describe where enterprise AI stands today is this: it is no longer experimental, but it is not yet simple. What is emerging is not a clean transition, but a messy, deeply operational shift that touches everything from budgeting to org structure to infrastructure. In a recent series of conversations with IT and AI leaders across banking, media, retail, healthcare, consulting, tech, and sports, Aaron Levie CEO of Box.com captured this transition with great clarity. His observations read less like hype and…
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Square Peg. Round Hole.
You often hear people in this industry talking about technology as if we’re just trying to jam a square peg into a square hole. It’s a comforting, albeit lazy, metaphor. The idea is that if you find the “right” widget for the specific gap in your operation, the puzzle is solved and you can get back to the business of beds and bread rolls. But after thirty years in the trenches of hospitality technology, I can tell you that we aren’t dealing with square pegs, and we certainly aren’t working in square…
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IDeaS and Hotel Insider Announce Rate Shopping Integration Partnership
Competitive rate intelligence with deep local expertise integrated into revenue workflows to support faster, more confident commercial decisions ATHENS —29 April 2026— IDeaS, a SAS company and the world’s leading provider of AI-powered hospitality revenue management software, today announced a technology integration partnership with Hotel Insider, a trusted provider of competitive rate shopping insights known for its deep market intelligence and widely used by hotels across Greek and Mediterranean leisure markets. The…
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Pass the Keys expands into Chester and the Wirral with a new holiday-let property management franchise
Chester, 27 April, 2026 — Pass the Keys has launched a new Chester and the Wirral franchise, expanding its professional short-term rental management services in the region and marking a significant investment in the local holiday let market. The new operation is led by Sarah Cadwaladr, an experienced franchise operator and hospitality professional with more than a decade of business management experience. Cadwaladr joins Pass the Keys following a decade running a separate franchise, successfully growing a…
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Hotels Risk Losing Bookings as Travelers Shift to AI Search
HOUSTON, TX, 23 April, 2026 – Hotels risk losing visibility and potential bookings as traveler search behavior shifts beyond traditional search engines to AI platforms, according to Access Hospitality, the hospitality technology division of The Access Group. Travelers are no longer relying on traditional search engines alone to discover and compare places to stay. Deloitte’s 2026 Travel Industry Outlook cited nearly a quarter of travelers using Gen AI tools for trip planning in late 2025 – thrice as…
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The Way We Were
In my mind I am hearing Barbara Streisand sing that classic lament. “What’s to painful to remember, We simply choose to forget”. I’m standing in a hotel lobby—after dragging my own bag through the revolving door—pondering that age-old industry cliché: “Your home away from home.” It’s a lovely sentiment, isn’t it? It conjures images of comfort, ease, and a place where your burdens are lifted. But looking around the modern hotel landscape, I have to ask: have we evicted the “home” and just left the…
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Hotels Lose Up to 2% of OTA Revenue Monthly. RobosizeME’s New Automation Addresses That Leakage
Enhanced OTA VCC reconciliation automation, now available on RobosizeME’s new website, enables hotel groups to identify and recover lost revenue daily. Wilmington, Delaware – RobosizeME, a leading provider of AI-enabled workflow automation solutions tailored to hotels groups, has launched an enhanced version of its widely adopted automation, Reconciliation of OTA Virtual Credit Card Balances, designed to help hotels identify and recover revenue lost through discrepancies in OTA VCC payments. With industry data indicating that…
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Entertaining marketing
Most hospitality marketing still operates on a simple assumption. If the product is good and the message is clear, demand will follow. Entertain or Die 3.0 challenges that assumption head-on. This report argues that attention, not clarity, is now the primary constraint. And attention is no longer earned through information. It is earned through entertainment. Here are five key takeaways that matter directly for hotel brands and hotel tech companies. 1. Most marketing is not just ineffective. It is invisible. The report…
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No, Luxury Is Not Dying
At a conference this week a familiar narrative making the rounds again. Luxury is dying. People do not want things anymore. They want experiences, purpose, sustainability. It sounds good. It feels right. It is also, at least in its strongest form, not supported by what people actually do when money is on the table. If the shift were as dramatic as some claim, we would not see waitlists stretching months or years for high-end watches. We would not see handbags priced at 40,000 euros quietly disappear from inventory. We would…
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eviivo integrates Mr & Mrs Smith to support curated distribution for boutique and luxury hotels
LONDON, 20 May, 2026 – eviivo, the all-in-one property management system (PMS) for independent hotels and vacation rentals, has added a channel integration with Mr & Mrs Smith, enabling properties in the curated travel club’s collection to manage availability, rates and reservations directly through eviivo. The integration allows eligible Mr & Mrs Smith properties using eviivo’s Channel Manager and property management platform to synchronise rates and availability in real time, with bookings…
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Journey selected as preferred digital provider for The Leading Hotels of the World
CHELTENHAM, 7 May, 2026 – Journey, the market leader in hotel retailing and the hospitality industry’s first unified Hospitality Performance Platform, has been appointed by The Leading Hotels of the World (LHW) as a preferred provider of digital marketing, website, and gift voucher solutions within its Leading Strategic Sourcing (LSS) program. LHW is the largest collection of independent luxury hotels, with over 425 properties in over 80 countries. Through its LSS program, run in collaboration with DayBlink…
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The PMS Wars and AI
I read The PMS Era Is Ending a few days ago and it raised good points, especially around how slow PMS innovation has been historically, I believe this problem alone has been one of the biggest issues in hotel tech innovation over the last three decades. But, I do not think the PMS era is ending. One of the recurring problems in technology is that everyone tends to see the industry from the center of their own world. Distribution people believe distribution is the heart of hotel tech. Marketing agencies see the fight against…
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Two typical marketing errors
There is a pattern I keep seeing in founder and executive teams: Marketing gets switched on, budget gets deployed, a campaign goes live, invoices come in and the anxiety kicks in. Is this our ICP? Why are we paying this much per click? Can you prove that the leads come from marketing? We need to pause this until analyzed. It seems rational but it often kills growth before it has even started. There are two first-principles of marketing concepts in marketing that are consistently misunderstood, even by experienced managers. 1.…
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Sadio Mané’s Next Transfer Could Help Solve Overtourism
When successful athletes invest in hospitality, the pattern is usually predictable. Luxury villas in Dubai, boutique resorts in Miami, branded residences on the Mediterranean coast. The logic is straightforward: invest where tourism demand already exists, where the customer base is proven, and where luxury real estate has a long track record of delivering returns. That is what makes Sadio Mané’s latest project so interesting. The former Liverpool and Bayern Munich star has acquired the former Hôtel des Finances in Bourges, a…
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Meta’s New AI Agent Could Turn WhatsApp Into the Hospitality Industry’s Next Booking Channel
For years, the hospitality industry has been experimenting with conversational commerce. Chatbots have appeared on hotel websites, AI concierges have been added to mobile apps, and startups have raised millions promising to let guests book rooms through messaging platforms. The vision has always been compelling: instead of navigating websites, comparing room types, and filling out booking forms, travelers would simply have a conversation. At Meta’s Conversations conference in London, that vision moved significantly closer to…
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Influence Society Launches AI Studio to Scale Premium Content Production for Luxury Hospitality Brands
New AI-powered creative hub blends generative technology with luxury brand standards to accelerate marketing output without compromising quality PARIS, 27 April, 2026 – Influence Society, a leading digital marketing agency serving high-end hospitality brands, has announced the launch of its AI Studio, a next-generation creative hub designed to help luxury hospitality brands produce high-quality marketing content at scale. Positioned as a strategic complement to traditional photo and video shoots, AI Studio combines generative…
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Shiji sets new benchmark with 100+ hotel PMS rollout for a single group completed in two months
Complex multi-property rollout demonstrates Shiji’s capability to execute high-volume PMS deployments without operational disruption Berlin, Germany, May 21, 2026 – Shiji, the global leader in hospitality technology, today announced the successful completion of a 100+ property management system (PMS) rollout across in a two-month record. The project demonstrates the strength and maturity of Shiji’s cloud-based Daylight PMS as an enterprise solution capable of supporting complex, multi-property environments and…
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RobosizeME Unveils Its Automation Center, Bringing Performance Tracking and ROI Forecasting to Hotel Groups
New Automation Center gives operators a single interface to monitor live workflow activity, access run histories, and model cost savings before deployment Wilmington, Delaware, May 5, 2026 – RobosizeME, a leading provider of AI-enabled workflow automation solutions tailored to the global hotel industry, is making its Automation Center available, a platform designed to give hotel operators full visibility into the performance and impact of their automated workflows. Combining real-time monitoring with pre-deployment ROI…
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