Enseo convened a gathering with senior commercial leaders from hotel ownership, asset management, technology, shared accommodations and leading brands to discuss the present and future of innovation in the luxury guest experience.
Held at the new “Central Perk” coffee shop in midtown Manhattan, discussion participants included:
- Kat Barrett, Extell Hospitality Services
- Anubha Choudrie, Sonesta
- Kim Dixon, Hyatt
- Antony Fragoso, L+R Hotels
- Peter Kressaty, LWHA Hotels
- Kelly McGuire, Kasa
- Igor Morosowski, Four Seasons
- Jess Kramer, tech investor & founder
- Alex Pensyl, Curacity
- Trip Schenck, Colicchio Consulting
- Brian Gurley, Enseo
- David Goldstone, Enseo
- Karen Wright, Enseo
- Michael Frenkel, Travel Conversations LLC
Starting from a Strong Baseline
Participants agreed that amidst all segments of the hotel industry, luxury remains firmly in the strongest position.
“We’re in luxury Shangri-La right now,” said LHWAs Peter Kressaty, pointing to strong numbers generated by LHWA’s research firm, LARC. According to LARC, “2026 saw the addition of 23 percent more luxury rooms. As a segment, we were able to raise rates 22 percent for 2025 and 2026.”
The group attributed the strong performance to the ability of hotel companies to leverage operating efficiencies on the back of ever-stronger loyalty and spending trends among affluent consumers.
At the same time, there can be a gap between the complete in-room guest experiences that the most discerning travelers want—and what even the most sophisticated operators can deliver.
“Guests want total seamlessness, delivered the way they get it at home,” said one of the participants. “At home, you know where everything is, how to log in and where apps are. Today, it’s hard to provide that completely seamless experience. When guests turn on the system [in the guestroom], they are sometimes shocked. It can be difficult to navigate. Guests struggle and are intimidated by QR codes and login processes.”
The group agreed that in the end, meeting and exceeding guest demands depends upon resilient, flexible systems that power the in-room experience. And while the group acknowledged there is plenty of fragmentation in delivery systems, there is also progress being made.
David Goldstone, president of Enseo, said the company’s new SITE monitoring product allows hotel operators to “see every TV and set top box in guestroom in real time. If HBO goes out in room 201, the hotel can see if it’s just your room or the whole hotel. It’s all done through tech available today, and hotels love the real-time analytics.”
That means hotels can resolve problems more quickly and easily, which should translate into higher guest satisfaction with the in-room operating system.
SITE is part of a bigger reformulation and rebranding taking place at Enseo that has made headlines in recent weeks.
The Role of Technology: Challenges and Opportunities
Still, the road ahead will have bumps.
Kressaty said, “It’s all about testing, debugging and training. Luxury should never be complicated. And right now, most staff are not trained on how to troubleshoot tech issues. So we fight with operators, and make progress—slowly. It is a constant struggle.”
That raises the question of tech integrations, especially with the hotel’s property management systems, some of which are admittedly outdated, and are slow to provide data to help power the innovation of in-room service delivery technology.
Roundtable participant Kelly McGuire, chief operating officer at shared accommodations platform Kasa, said sometimes the fastest way to achieve optimal results is through a complete technology overhaul. “Kasa built our own PMS and booking engine. We built our own codebase engine and more. If I were to join the company today, I would have said ‘no way this could be done,’ but building our own PMS has unlocked so many capabilities.”
Still in the tech game, the name of the game is always data—data that is critical to understanding a guest’s wants and needs, yet still today, remains fragmented and difficult to pin down.
Anthony Fragoso, vice president at London-based L + R Hotels, said, ““The name of my game (as an Asset Manager) is efficiency, but unfortunately in most cases we don’t own the guest data. Between franchise + operator agreements, and privacy regulations in the US, we don’t control the guest data to put it in the cloud. This puts the burden on the brands to take big leaps in technology investment.”
Fragoso added, “At some point in the near future, they should be able to know and be actionable on guest preferences, whether I stay at a Ritz Carlton or a Courtyard. Unfortunately for independents, the scale is limited and asset level budgets don’t typically allow for such heavy investment in technology. We are working towards that taking more control of this with our centralized Iconic Hotels management platform in the UK where we have more control over our commercial platform given our scale in Europe.”
Optimism Reigns
So challenges remain. They continue to stem from the fragmented and difficult to navigate value chain of actors involved in owning, operating and servicing hotels and their guests—and the legacy of technical debt that results.
Yet when asked how they thought the future of luxury service would play out, every participant in the discussion said they approached it with outright optimism, not even cautious optimism.
“AI is making so many things possible,” said Kressaty.
Continued investment into AI is likely to lead to advances, and collaborations, that hotel operators never thought possible.
Enseo’s CEO Brian Gurley, not originally from the hotel industry, agreed and hit on what may be the central point: “Many players need to come together and work together, because there are deep challenges but also many opportunities. There is every incentive for the owners, operators and guests to find themselves in a virtuous cycle of innovation that clears the way for an even better luxury experience for guests in the future.”