Like many industries, the hospitality industry is watching the arrival and growth of artificial intelligence (AI) with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. The seemingly unlimited possibilities for personalization of services is tempered by the fear of losing the human touch that is so important to hospitality. And concerns about AI taking away “human jobs” lurk in an industry already beset by chronic staff shortages.
One thing is certain, however: AI is here and it’s here to stay. The only really incorrect way to deal with this new mix of technology and humanity would be to mimic an ostrich and bury one’s head in the sand.
“AI is not only going to be everywhere, it’s going to become so ubiquitous it's going to actually disappear—it will just be assumed to inherently be a part of every technology we interact with,” said Terry Donnelly, chief revenue officer, Hotel Communications Network. “That’s why hoteliers need to be moving intentionally towards integrating AI into all of their business processes, technology and service stacks, and thinking through how they can use AI to enhance and improve the guest experience.”
Donnelly said AI has the potential to fully personalize every interaction based on the prior relationship of the hotel with the guest, bringing prompts and scripts to the screen of every service person to indicate the status of the guest they are serving and providing opportunities for the hotel to deeply personalize the guest experience.
To begin building a solid base upon which AI can flourish, Donnelly suggested tasking key executives with trying the commercially available AI tools such as Gemini and ChatGPT to enhance their daily tasks. This will help them understand the impact AI can have on simple queries such as market research, memo writing, financial analysis and other time-consuming tasks. This tends to generate acceptance and understanding of the potential of AI, and helps defray any concerns about its impact.
Once that basic understanding takes root in the organization, conceptual discussions around agentic AI (that is, AI that has the ability to act independently and autonomously without constant human oversight), its integration into marketing and finance processes and planning for actual use cases can be grounded in a practical understanding of the technology.
“Are there roles in the organization that will be impacted by AI? Of course there will be, as there has been with every major shift in technology from the fax machine to mobile devices,” Donnelly said. “But the opportunity to be of even greater service and to provide a consistent level of diligence and professionalism in caring for guests has never been more achievable. The utilization of AI should really be looked at as a natural evolution of the ability to enhance your customer experience to levels you could never have achieved without it.”
Enhancing the Human Connection
Agnelo Fernandes, CEO of Cote Hospitality, said hotels can adopt AI to enhance—not replace—the human connection that defines hospitality. His point of view is that AI should automate the “time-suck” tasks so teams can focus on service and creativity, paired with human oversight to protect brand voice and guest trust.
According to Fernandes, AI can help decision-making by pairing engagement and data with human experience.
There are also potentially significant financial benefits. In the first quarter of 2025, Cote adopted an AI-first approach (structured data, conversational content and technical search engine optimization) that helped deliver a 10.4 percent increase in total revenue (year-over-year), +9.7 percent in bookings and +89 percent in impressions—plus major gains in high-intent discovery and visibility in AI search experiences like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews.
“We’re moving from static segmentation based on past behavior to more of a predictive piece because understanding guests’ intent is not about just history, it's anticipation of what the guests may want,” Fernandes said.
Fernandes added that this type of personalization isn’t just for VIP guests. “We can personalize the experience for everyone,” he said. “Our learning models are now able to flag a particular returning guest who usually has a certain behavioral pattern and then tailor an itinerary that is relevant and compelling even before he or she arrives.”
Fernandes does not see AI as a threat to hospitality, but as part of a better service that develops a seamless guest journey and creates a stronger relationship and a bond with the guest.
“We've got something that at our fingertips that we can use to simplify the repetitive work and focus on the human connection,” he noted.
There’s no real reason to hesitate or wait to implement AI personalization, and Fernandes offers a tip to hoteliers: start with one clear use case.
“Don’t try to do everything with AI at once,” he said. “In our case, we started with executive decision making because we're a small to mid-size company, and so we don't necessarily have the big structure some of the chains do. I felt that the connection between our corporate offices and our property teams would be a way to bond at every level.”
Connecting the Right Data
Many hoteliers believe the impact of AI will be significant or even transformative, but many still have questions, such as “Which solutions drive the most benefit?” “How can automation increase personalization?” and “What impact will AI have on my teams?”
“True personalization isn’t about collecting more data,” said Tim Kinsella, SVP of global strategy, Canary Technologies. “It’s about connecting the right data across every guest interaction. It’s also channel-agnostic: whether a traveler is chatting on your website, texting the front desk or calling with a question, they should receive the same accurate, warm and on-brand response.”
According to Kinsella, that consistency starts with AI built specifically for hospitality. Generic AI tools may struggle with the nuances of hotel service. Hospitality-specific AI platforms learn the details of each property and brand, so every guest interaction reflects your unique standard of service.
Equally important is using AI that benefits your team by reducing their repetitive administrative workload, Kinsella noted. “When AI automates repetitive requests, such as, “Do you have a pool?” or “What time is breakfast?” your staff gets more time to focus on interactions that define great hospitality.
Kinsella pointed out that this seamless integration also opens new revenue opportunities. For example, when a guest asks “What time is checkout?” hospitality-specific AI does more than answer—it offers late checkout, luggage storage or other relevant add-ons. These contextual recommendations feel like part of the conversation, adding incremental income without feeling like a sales pitch.
“For hoteliers, all of this amounts to personalized interactions that unburden staff and increase revenue,” Kinsella said. “As travelers increasingly expect seamless, individualized experiences, AI helps hoteliers meet these demands in a scalable way. Those who prioritize this today are best equipped to deliver the future’s most impactful kind of hospitality: the kind where human connections are powered by intelligent technology.”
A Strong Foundation
Brad Brewer, founder and chief AI officer, Agentic Hospitality, said that every successful AI deployment in hospitality begins with clean availability, rates and inventory (ARI) markup, unified content and a stable endpoint strategy that gives machines the same clarity hoteliers provide to guests.
“Hotel rich cards, Schema.org ARI markup, model context protocol endpoints and a dedicated travel operating system give hotels one operating truth,” Brewer said. “Without that foundation, every AI initiative becomes another silo or a disconnected pilot. But when hoteliers standardize their data and expose it through machine-readable endpoints, the rest of the AI stack falls into place.”
Brewer added that AI should remove friction, not humanity. The goal is not to automate hospitality; the goal is to automate the work that keeps staff from delivering hospitality.
“When AI powers ARI accuracy, itinerary logic, cancellations, stay extensions, housekeeping signals and room status updates, the guest receives faster service and the staff gets more time for real connection,” he said. “Personalized offers powered by loyalty rules, MCP session context and SAR scoring give every guest a sense of recognition. That is something a front desk cannot deliver at scale without help.”
Common stumbling blocks to increasing AI personalization that hoteliers should recognize and avoid, Brewer cautioned, include:
- Trying to personalize without a clean data layer. “You cannot personalize chaos,” he said.
- Relying on closed distribution feeds while ignoring the open web. “The majority of hotel information lives on pages the hotel never structured,” Brewer noted.
- Treating AI as a tool instead of an operating model. “AI is not a chat widget,” Brewer said. “It requires aligned ARI, room attributes, loyalty rules, cancellation policies and metadata.”
- Underestimating the importance of machine-readable standards. “When ARI and content do not match, personalization cannot work,” Brewer said.
Going the Disney Way
Kevin Kelly, chief experience officer of LIveSmart.ai and author of the book, The Disney Way for the Digital Age, said despite the ongoing concern in the hospitality space that that AI is going to make the guest experience less human, he sees the opposite happening.
“AI helps us deliver Disney-level customer service because it scales,” he said. “What you can do for one room you can do for a thousand rooms.”
Kelly pointed out that AI can do very simple things such as having guests’ favorite type of music playing in the room when they arrive, make personal dining recommendations and also drive spending in the hotel by raising awareness of the property’s amenities.
There are costs to implementing AI, but according to Kelly many functions implemented in hospitality are subscription based, so they're not as costly as they used to be.
“Alexa hardware, for example, can be anywhere from one hundred to two hundred dollars per room, but it does replace things such as the Bluetooth speaker, an alarm clock, and in some cases, the phone,” Kelly pointed out. “So, if there's hardware involved there can be a cost, but there are many ‘bring your own device solutions,’ where you scan a QR code at almost no cost, and the subscription costs are really nominal and in line with all the other platforms that it takes to run a hotel.”
Kelly concluded by noting that innovation and technology often walk hand-in-hand, but they’re two different things.
“Innovation isn't about technology, it’s about a great idea,” he said. “AI allow us to think bigger and implement faster. I think like Walt Disney said, ‘If you can dream it, you can do it.’ And now AI makes dreaming and doing more accessible to many—especially those with good ideas and great imaginations.”
Safe, Practical and Profitable
Michael Coscetta, president of Mews, notes that the real question for general managers and hotel staff is not “should we use AI?” but “how do we introduce AI in a way that is safe, practical and profitable?
Recognizing that change takes time, Coscetta advised that a staged approach to adopting AI works best. His recommended steps:
- Get your data into one place. Agentic AI needs a clear picture of your hotel to act intelligently. “In practice, this means bringing operational, revenue and guest data together in a single, modern platform, rather than scattered across disconnected tools,” Coscetta said.
- Introduce AI that supports decisions, not runs the show. Pricing recommendation tools, assistive chat for teams and simple task automation are low-risk ways to free up staff without losing control. “You still make the call, AI simply does the heavy lifting in the background,” Coscetta said.
- Start closing the loop on specific workflows, while keeping human checks. For example, an operations co-pilot might build the housekeeping plan automatically, then a supervisor reviews and publishes it. A revenue co-pilot might optimize pricing on its own, while sending a daily summary so the strategy can be adjusted accordingly.
The end game, according to Coscetta, is cross-functional agents that coordinate revenue, operations and guest experience with minimal manual intervention.
“To get there safely, build in guardrails from day one,” he said. “Start in ‘recommendation only’ mode, use approval gates for high impact changes and monitor performance continuously. Hotels that take this phased, disciplined route will be ready when truly autonomous agents arrive.”
This article was originally published in the January edition of Hotel Management magazine. Subscribe here.