Hello,

There’s a lot of stuff I say that has been said before. Probably most of it. I try to write with my own experiences and viewpoints. This week let’s discuss how hotel tech needs to grow up.

PS: If you haven’t filled out my survey, I’d love to have your reader feedback.

Best, Martin

Pragmatik marketing agency turns hospitality SaaS
companies into highly visible market leaders.
Find out more ➛

Opinion

Hotel Tech is still trying to build a better Mousetrap

150 years ago, the saying was that if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door. Since then we have entered an age of “mousetrap” abundance. So even the if your product is the best, nobody will ever know. The hotel tech chart more than doubled in size just the last decade. App store submissions increased by 84% with the advent of AI. Good tech isn’t the problem anymore.

In parallel, we (and the customers) are drowning in information: emails, LinkedIn, messaging apps, newsletters ad infinitum. We probably consume more information in a day than previous generations consumed in weeks, and that’s not taking account the AI slop that is coming in like a mudslide.

Customers can’t realistically shop for the best hotel tech anymore. Yes, they’re going through the process of RFPs etc. They have to. But they’re looking for the solution that will reduce effort and risk. The “don’t make me think” solution.

The stats and global advertising has now reached its highest share of GDP ever recorded, let’s just realize what that means for a moment. In the age of self-marketing and information, more money is spent on advertising than ever before, more than in the Mad Men era. Yes, we can say the cost per click went up or ad prices are going up. I think it means customer attention has become one of the scarcest resources.

In hotel tech (and probably a lot of B2B SaaS) a lot of vendors are still competing as if product quality and innovation are the primary differentiators, it isn’t. I find the McDonalds story very relevant here. In the battle between the best burgers and the most distributed burgers, the latter won. And history is full of those stories.

I speak to a lot of product people, founders, CEOs, they’re busy adding (and investing into) more features, more dashboards, more AI capabilities. Yes they should, products must improve. But if you look at which SaaS companies win and which loose the winners are the ones that are strong in marketing. I once published my research on that and 44% of their costs to sales and marketing, versus 31% to product.

This has been said time and time again. I’m not making some big revelation here. But I’m surprised at how few actually believe it or at least do it. Look at hotel tech, who is winning today? Is it the ones with the best product or the ones with the best marketing. Be honest.

It is easy to brush off the winners as “they’re just selling hot air” maybe they are, but in the end they’ve got the market share and they can add features. Those still tweaking the product might have the features but no customers.

Attention is the bottleneck. There are only so many seconds a day that people pay attention to something else than what they are working on. This is the most important thing you need to understand from this. And that’s why advertising has now reached the highest share of GDP in history.

Take a good look at how many seconds or minutes a day you allocate to what is happening in your industry. Look at how limited that time is. Now figure out who is showing up and who isn’t? If you’re not showing up, you don’t exist.

Obviously one can say that I’m touting my own horn here. I am. But mostly because that’s where my experience is. I can’t comment on the importance of github or document code.

Brand or Independent?

It really depends on how much effort you’re willing to put into it. Yes independent gives more freedom and you can try out lots of ideas. If you work hard you will save a lot. If you’re looking for a comfortable and scalable plan, then you’re most likely the brand type. You pay for the comfort of knowing someone else is taking care of things.

HOTEL STRATEGY⁠

About me: I'm a fractional CMO for large travel technology companies, and the co-founder of Pragmatik, a tech marketing agency that's all about results. You can find out more at wearepragmatik.com. 

Hotels Form an AI Alliance

Historically hotels have always handed over the keys to their distribution to the new middle-man that came along. Whatever new tech came along, hotels were happy to take-no-risk and then wonder why their margins keep getting squeezed. AI discovery is already going that way. An alliance makes sense. But if you ask me the ones who could own the tech for that alliance would be Cendyn with their meta-search product that (I believe) has the widest ARI connectivity.

AI ALLIANCE + OTA AI⁠

APIs and AI

I’ve seen demos of hotel PMS environments where AI helps the user build their own workflows and customize their PMS to fit their own needs. I also saw a demo where the UI could be edited “replace this card with the check-ins for today”. This is where I believe AI will totally change how we consume hotel tech.

OPEN API⁠



Every Square Meter Matters

Hotel investors are no longer evaluating guestrooms in isolation. Restaurants, public spaces, wellness facilities and mixed-use concepts increasingly determine both profitability and sustainability. Revpar isn’t a great metric (but it is one that can be “adjusted”) I personally think revenue per type of sqm would be much more accurate.

ASSET OPTIMIZATION

⁠

Direct Bookings Have Hidden Costs

For years the industry has pushed direct bookings as the obvious answer to OTA commissions. AI agents will introduce a new cost structure where hotels may pay simply to participate in discovery and search. Attention is becoming the bottleneck (see my column above). And as many have discovered the total cost of acquisition for direct is often quite similar to OTAs. But direct gives more customer control.

DIRECT COSTS + ⁠ ADVERTISING GROWTH⁠

Bad Data Travels Fast

One misleading headline can become accepted truth remarkably quickly once it starts being repeated. It’s a useful reminder to always trace impressive numbers back to their original source before building strategies around them. We know that for social media posts, but we accept that established media must have fact checked it. But fact check your data. Find the source - verify how they got there. Understand the data yourself and make your own conclusions.

DATA QUALITY⁠

Where People Get Their News

The Reuters Digital News Report confirms what many of us already experience daily: news consumption is increasingly platform-driven. The idea that your audience gets their news from a particular source is fading. They’re getting little bits aggregated by algorithms through various platforms (and hopefully fact-checking it).

DIGITAL NEWS

⁠

Beyond the Technology Conversation

I spend a lot of time discussing new technology, but the fundamentals remain unchanged. Good data, sensible APIs and practical implementation matter far more than chasing every new trend. Technology should solve operational problems, not become another one.

HOTEL TECH⁠

Where to start with hotel tech

I joined Josiah on the Hospitality Daily podcast and discussed a bit my take on hotel tech. Yes I’m deep into it and we all tend to view the world from our viewpoint. But there are at least 8 billion other viewpoints and none of them are the same. So here’s my take on where to start.

HOSPITALITY DAILY

Memory Matters More

Hotels often talk about creating beautiful websites and experiences, but guests rarely remember details. What lasts are the memories and emotions (McDonalds is a great example). Designing memorable moments is one of hospitality’s greatest opportunities.

LASTING MEMORIES

⁠

Podcasts Become Television

The boundaries between media formats continue to blur. As video becomes standard for podcasts, they have become the new talk-shows. Content remains king, but distribution is changing.

VIDEO PODCASTS⁠

• Two chained monkeys in detail - Link

• The Guide Competitors Hope You Miss - Link⁺

• Restaurant Menu History - Link

• The Hotel Yearbook Goes All-In on AI - Link

Did you know: The phrase "better mousetrap" comes from the saying, "Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door." This idea is often linked to the American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson in the late 1800s, though he did not say it exactly that way. The phrase uses the mousetrap as a symbol for any useful invention or improvement. Defined using Lomar Dictionary⁺

⁺ Note, articles that are published by companies or people I work with are tagged with the ⁺ symbol or Partner word. I’m adding this as a transparency. Previously I avoiding sharing content from partners to remain objective, but sometimes they have excellent articles that deserves being shared so to remain transparent, I’ll tag them.

Hello,

I’m going to shake things up a bit in the newsletter. I’m moving the column to the top and the articles to the bottom - mostly because the part that is most relevant over time is the column. The articles age.

Also this week I’d really like to get your feedback. When you run a newsletter like this, it is a bit like talking on a soap-box with a blindfold on. And the main feedback that one gets is people at tradeshows who are looking for a social conversation starter so they say, “Loved your newsletter”. It’s cool. But would love more insights.

Best, Martin

Pragmatik marketing agency turns hospitality SaaS
companies into highly visible market leaders.
Find out more ➛

Opinion

I’d love your opinions on this newsletter. When I started it, it was never meant to be a media company, a personal brand, or a growth project. It was a place to collect notes (I have this thing where I like to share my thoughts).

Years ago, while reading newsletters and articles from both inside and outside hospitality, I began noticing patterns, trends, and ideas that I wanted to remember but with my comments. The newsletter became my way of organizing those thoughts and sharing them with anyone who might find them useful.

Over time, it became a thing. I publish content simply because it generates clicks. For example, topics like direct bookings versus OTAs continue to attract attention after decades of debate, yet I rarely find much new insight in them. I’d rather explore ideas that challenge the main trendy thoughts, borrow lessons from other industries, or highlight changes that might matter in five years rather than five days.

Many of the choices in writing this come from my own preferences as a reader. The lack of images, for example, was intentional. I prefer information over decoration, in most cases I find images for articles aren’t really helping other getting someone’s attention. But readers are already here, so not needed IMO. The limited personal content was intentional too. I’ve always believed the focus should be on the topic, not on me, my breakfast, my struggles or my lifestyle (it’s not that interesting).

But I never really asked what you think.

The newsletter has grown far beyond anything I expected, yet for the better part of five years I’ve mostly been sharing my thoughts into the void and hoping they were useful. Whenever I meet readers, the feedback is overwhelmingly positive, which is wonderful to hear, but it rarely tells me what could be improved (also, who is going to walk up to you can say anything else?).

So I’ve put together a short survey. Every question is optional. There are no right or wrong answers. I’d genuinely like to know what you enjoy, what you skip, what you’d like more of, what you’d like less of, and what you think is missing altogether.

The last thing I want is to become trapped in my own assumptions about what makes this newsletter valuable. Your feedback can help shape where it goes next (well, maybe :).

I’d love to hear what you think. If you could take 5 minutes I would really appreciate it.

Share your thoughts

Vibe Coding Comes for Hotel Training

The idea that a training manager can become a developer is interesting. Vibe coding lowers the barrier between operational knowledge and software creation. In hotels, where turnover is brutal and training gaps are constant, this could let teams build simple tools faster. It will be messy, but it could be great.

VIBE CODING

About me: I'm a fractional CMO for large travel technology companies, and the co-founder of Pragmatik, a tech marketing agency that's all about results. You can find out more at wearepragmatik.com. 

Creativity as a Business Skill

Sir John Hegarty’s new series arrives at a good moment. As AI makes production cheaper and faster, creativity becomes less about making more things and more about knowing what should exist in the first place. Good hoteliers are creative and have taste. Maybe getting more inspiration from others can help.

BUSINESS CREATIVITY

Good SEO but still invisible

Ranking first used to be the dream. Now it can mean winning a game fewer people are watching. AI summaries, changing search behavior, and zero-click results are making SEO feel less like a channel and more like a background signal. Search is not dead, but we are definitely changing how we search. It feels so inefficient to search on Google now.

SEO SHIFT



Michael Levie at HITEC

HITEC 2026 seems to have been full of AI announcements (I’m not there so I only see what others say). Michael Levie made a point about humans acting like robots, this is real. We’ve processed everything to such an extent that people aren’t being people. I have said this before but I really believe AI could help make people better people in hotels.

HITEC AI

Brand Identity in an AI World

I wrote a piece in the Hotel Yearbook about brand and AI. AI may make it easier to generate marketing assets, but that also makes brand identity more important. Guidelines and tone of voice are useful, but they are not strategy. AI will expose weak brands faster than it strengthens them. Also see next point from someone with more experience than me.

AI BRANDING

In AI, Point of View wins

April Dunford argues that, in the age of AI, information gets easier to produce and harder to value. That makes having a point of view more important, not less. A company that only repeats category language will disappear into the machine-generated middle. Strong positioning has always mattered, but AI makes blandness much more visible. But the risk IMO is swinging too far on the pendulum. Companies aren’t people, I argue they shouldn’t have political beliefs but they can have ideologies if those serve their customers.

POINT VIEW

Blanding the hotel

Big hotel brands love boutique hotels because they bring taste, personality, and cultural relevance (and more investment capital). But their loyalty programs slowly eat the soul of those hotels. I remember a Bonvoy member complaining about citizenM - clearly not the right customer. Big brands don’t sell rooms they sell loyalty memberships and investment vehicles.

BOUTIQUE LOYALTY - BRAND COSTS

Ritz-Carlton and Late Check Out

A Ritz-Carlton collaboration with Late Check Out is such a brilliant marketing and brand campaign. Luxury hospitality gets more interesting when it borrows fashion culture. More hotels could and should do this. I once worked with a hotel brand to create a home deco object that would make their membership a living-room statement. Fits the AI point of View article above.

LUXURY COLLAB

Guests Are Leaving the Funnel

Hilton, Choice, and EY talking about AI at NYU is interesting because the honest admission is that discovery is moving outside brand environments. It reminds me of what happened when OTAs arrived and that led to frantic Direct booking campaigns for chains. Independents have an edge here, they know that making the shortlist has always been the real marketing work. This story keeps shifting to new platforms.

AI DISCOVERY - MACHINE SHOPPING - AI TRAFFIC IS SMALL

What 10,000 Ads Reveal

Nest Commerce’s analysis of more than 10,000 ads has some excellent takeaways. Unfortunately this means everyone will be making the same looking ads in a few weeks. But then some creative person will break the mold and change the trend. This has been the way for the last few hundred years. I think the cycle will just accelerate.

CREATIVE DATA



Satya’s reflections on future of AI

Satya Nadella wrote an interesting article on how AI and humans will work together in the future. I read it from the viewpoint of a hotel. It’s even more obvious in our world. The IP of a hotel is the welcome, the guest experience, the people. AI can learn a lot of that, but it can’t do it - however it can help make people better at it.

MICROSOFT AI

World Cup Demand? or !

Hotels expected the 2026 World Cup to create a booking surge, but according to Skift that isn’t the case. Yet I’ve watched many games - every stadium was full. So what happened? That demand is quite precisely quantifiable. Number of seats in the stadium vs number of rooms. I’m actually curious to understand how it was misestimated (was it, or was it just headlines).

WORLD CUP

• Is Apple TV Becoming HBO? - Link

• The Guide Competitors Hope You Miss - Link⁺

• The stuff that one can vibe code: Calorie tracking - Link

• The Hotel Yearbook Goes All-In on AI - Link

• Good charts, bad data in Travel - Link

Did you know: The word "vibe" comes from the noun "vibe," which is short for "vibration." It originally referred to the feeling or atmosphere that something or someone gives off. The verb form developed in the late 20th century, especially in African American Vernacular English (AAVE), and became popular in mainstream English through music and youth culture. Defined using Lomar Dictionary⁺

⁺ Note, articles that are published by companies or people I work with are tagged with the ⁺ symbol or Partner word. I’m adding this as a transparency. Previously I avoiding sharing content from partners to remain objective, but sometimes they have excellent articles that deserves being shared so to remain transparent, I’ll tag them.

Hello,

I frequently search for real use cases of AI in hotels. I’ve seen a few. But none of them are going to change everything in one big swoop. All of them are incremental. The sum-total will be big, but it will take time. See my column below.

Best, Martin

Pragmatik marketing agency turns hospitality SaaS
companies into highly visible market leaders.
Find out more ➛

Hotel Tech Keeps Growing, and AI?

When I first created the hotel technology landscape chart back in 2015, it contained roughly 120 companies. At the time, it was often shared as a visual representation of confusion, showing how fragmented the industry was. But, what we were trying to map was how data moves in hotel tech, PMS to revenue management, to channel manager, to OTA, meta search, etc.

Today, the chart contains around 300 companies (and these are only the main players in each category) there are thousands of others. Yet, despite years of mergers, acquisitions, and consolidation, hotel technology keeps getting larger.

The question today is where does AI fit into all of this? Will it replace it all?

There is a narrative that AI will replace large parts of the software industry. The more time goes, the less I believe that will be the case. You cannot approximately process a payment. You cannot mostly connect to Booking.com. You cannot have an average room inventory. These systems exist because accuracy matters. The dark blue core of the chart is likely to remain very much intact.

There are three areas where I do think AI will bring change. The first is the analysis layer (outer rim). These solutions exist to help make decisions, assemble data, pre-analyze it etc. This is likely to change because AI dramatically lowers the cost of building tools around specific operational needs. Customizing Analytics and BI tools is a never-ending game of tweaking and customizing layouts. AI has a huge opportunity to bring conversational updates to these solutions.

The second one, as I have written before, there is an entire spreadsheet layer sitting between many of these systems. Almost every solution on this chart has a spreadsheet that works alongside it to tweak data, prepare information, etc etc. This is ripe for AI custom apps.

The third one I realized quite recently and deserves more attention. Customers, using Agentic AI, to adapt their systems to their own workflows. Most software vendors can’t adapt their products to every customer. Yet every bigger hotel has unique process needs. Using AI agents we could shift a large part of that work to the customer. Using plain language, tell the AI to create the workflow they need.

For example telling your AI Agent that all corporate payments should be routed through a different provider, approved through a specific workflow, and reported in a particular format. It designs the process, you approve it, and the workflow is implemented. Historically, that request (if approved by vendor) would have entered a product backlog and waited years to be developed. Or it would have turned into a spreadsheet automation as in point two above.

This could dramatically accelerate the pace of innovation in our industry. Core systems would continue providing the foundation while exposing more API data and documentation, capabilities etc. Customers would then use AI agents to adapt those systems to their own operational requirements rather than waiting for software vendors to do it for them.

So perhaps the real opportunity for AI is not another category, or another vendor. Instead of forcing hotels to adapt their processes to software, software may increasingly adapt to the hotel.

Which incidentally would make core systems exponentially harder to replace.

News of the week

What guests don’t agree on

Recent infographic about guest satisfaction made me realize that the two topics guests are the most in disagreement about with hotels is F&B and Decoration. What they’re most in agreement about is Location. In France there’s a saying that we don’t discuss taste and colors…

F&B AND DECORATION⁺

About me: I'm a fractional CMO for large travel technology companies, and the co-founder of Pragmatik, a tech marketing agency that's all about results. You can find out more at wearepragmatik.com. 

The Premium Price of Silence

Apparently 84% of travelers prioritize quiet accommodations, acoustic comfort over in-room entertainment, would pay extra for cultural authenticity and sustainable operational practices. It seems novel, but I’m not sure it is. I once tried to market a hotel based on B&O TVs (and other fancy stuff) - it never worked.

QUIET HOSPITALITY DESIGN

Keeping Humans in Travel AI

Recent travel sector data on AI adoption confirm that travelers still overwhelmingly demand human interactions. I don’t think this is news to anyone. I still really believe in the idea that AI could create a whole new category of travel assistants which would be the perfect mix of travel and AI. But that’s just my pet AI opinion from another post by Stuart Greif at an earlier Skift AI Forum.

HUMAN TRAVEL AI



Vibe coding an OTA

A dutch developer got tired of OTAs and decided to make his own, incidentally it also includes a pretty innovative global review and ranking system. While the booking process doesn’t really work what is really interesting with this is how someone can now scrape and code an OTA for a particular niche. Isn’t that how Booking started?

BEST AND WORST HOTELS

Coca-Cola’s Practical AI Playbook

Coca-Cola is using AI to improving marketing investment decisions. Using AI and scenario modeling to allocate spending more effectively. It is another reminder that some of the most valuable AI projects are not flashy consumer experiences but better decision-making behind the scenes.

AI MARKETING AI WIZARD⁺

The Myth of Universal AI Visibility

The idea that marketers can measure a universal “share of model” across AI platforms sounds appealing, but also unlikely. iPullRank’s experiment suggests LLMs may draw from private and personalized sources, including email, making visibility harder to quantify than traditional search rankings. It is interesting, we need a metric we can use, but it also needs some base in reality.

AI DISCOVERY

What an AI-first OTA could look like

In my review of the future for OTAs in the age of AI, I commented that for them to retain their positions as travel distributors they would need to have an solution that is so good, it would convince people to move away from GPT, Claude, Gemini etc for travel planning/booking. Failing that, they would become mere plumbing to others. This startup is building the complete itinerary model, OTAs will probably look like this soon. It is a feature for them, a startup for others.

ODESSIA

AI and Data at Skift Summit

Everyone knows AI matters now, but the harder question is where it actually improves the guest experience or commercial performance. What I want to see more of is actual use cases. They’re probably all small incremental improvements. Media makes us expect huge overhauls. But maybe that’s why nobody dares to show what has been done. Still we should celebrate every success we can get our hands on.

TRAVEL AI HOTEL AI

Notifications problems

Anyone who manages things now knows the problem. Every hour is a battle of more and more notifications, most of which are automated. Between text messages, Teams, Slack, Project tool, Figma, Inbox, Apple watch and your Phone. Focus becomes an obstacle course. Alex Liebermann built his own dashboard. Interesting (also see my column on AI below).

FOUNDER DASHBOARD

Hotels Face Fewer Search Clicks

AI-driven zero-click search is a real challenge for hotel marketing. If travelers get answers directly from Google or AI tools, hotel websites will lose traffic. It is inevitable. But hotels aren’t selling views they sell rooms. So does lower traffic matter? I think we should focus on ensuring the data is better used by AI tools so people still book.

ZERO CLICK



OTAs Keep Spending Big

Booking.com and Expedia spending nearly $4 billion on marketing in a quarter proves that they’re still great partners. They will outspend anyone to promote your hotel. AI may change discovery, but it has not removed the need for demand generation.

OTA MARKETING

• Youtube Stars Making Movies - Link

• The Guide Competitors Hope You Miss - Link⁺

• A short story about Anatomy’s history - Link

• Nike Rips the Script - Link

• Robots 200 Million miles away - Link

Did you know: The word “professor” comes from the Latin word “professus,” meaning “having declared publicly.” It originally referred to someone who has declared their knowledge, especially a teacher. Over time, it came to mean a high-ranking teacher at a university or college. Defined using Lomar Dictionary⁺

⁺ Note, articles that are published by companies or people I work with are tagged with the ⁺ symbol or Partner word. I’m adding this as a transparency. Previously I avoiding sharing content from partners to remain objective, but sometimes they have excellent articles that deserves being shared so to remain transparent, I’ll tag them.

Hello,

Keeping up with all the AI news is a full time job. Finding ROI in AI implementations is still fuzzy (I’m old enough to remember when we used to ask that about Social Media). There is no doubt about the potential, but let’s be concrete about it - still nobody changed the world by being concrete. Have a great read (rant warning in the column).

Best, Martin

Pragmatik marketing agency turns hospitality SaaS
companies into highly visible market leaders.
Find out more ➛

Sadio Mané and “overtourism”

Sadio Mané turning a historic building in tier 2 city, Bourges into a luxury hotel is a great example of celebrity capital supporting secondary destinations. The project could bring attention to a city that is not usually on the global luxury travel map. Could projects like this be like this distribute travel better?

DESTINATION DEVELOPMENT

About me: I'm a fractional CMO for large travel technology companies, and the co-founder of Pragmatik, a tech marketing agency that's all about results. You can find out more at wearepragmatik.com. 

Five Subconscious Hotel Signals

Subconscious signals in hotel experiences are interesting because they are probably things great GMs already feel instinctively. Entrance rug, smell, sound, temperature, dust. Hospitality quality is often visible before it is measurable.

HOTEL SIGNALS⁺

Louis Vuitton Hotel Will Not Open

The Louis Vuitton hotel on the Champs-Élysées will apparently not happen. I’ve argued before that it would be a huge risk for the brand. Hotel brands behave totally different from consumer goods. Maintaining experience and quality isn’t just a question of factory quality control. Time makes hotels worse. People are different etc. But LVMH CEO is also notorious for making big statements, so let’s see how this goes.

LV HOTEL



Marriott’s AI Chassis

Marriott building a model-agnostic AI chassis while keeping guest data off outside models is interesting. But it really reminds me of the data-lake concept that many have been speaking about for a while. We honestly don’t know what AI is really going to bring, I think it will be incremental not watershed. But we know for sure that a solid data infrastructure will be the backbone.

AI INFRASTRUCTURE

Rosewood Leaders and AI

L’Hôtel de Crillon hosted Rosewood Academy around leadership in the age of AI. I’m sure others are too. I’d love to get some of the insights of what they found. They’re the ones doing the real hotel work. We get carried away with agentic ai and all kinds of buzzwords - but what is actually working?

AI LEADERSHIP

Revolut and N26 as new OTAs

The idea that fintech apps could become OTAs is interesting (but more likely they’ll be a reseller). But they own payments, identity, trust and frequent app usage. It’s the super-app discussion all over again. In that case they could do e-commerce too. We’re back to where do current OTAs fit in the future?

FINTECH OTAS

The age of Average

With AI designing more and more, we’re entering what iF Design Report aptly calls the age of average. The recent Ferrari EV reveal was not necessarily bad as the internet made it out to be. But it was very average in terms of design. It looks like many other cars on the market. The slew of new websites with their elongated serif fonts and ASCII art are super cool. But they’re already average. Hotels have been in the Age of Average for some time now. As some joked, just replace the curtain colors and it could be a Marriot, a Hilton, a Crowne Plaza or any other brand. Even between luxury and mid-scale hotel guests don’t see the difference. I guess it is in the details we can’t see.

AGE OF AVERAGE UN-COURAGEOUS ROOMS

What Designer Hotels Miss

Tom Michelberger’s work is a reminder that hospitality is not only design, but atmosphere, people and community. Beautiful spaces can still feel empty. We all know this. But it’s always great to hear from people who actually did it right, not just the pundits.

REAL HOSPITALITY

Hotel Hopping Becomes A Trend

Hotels.com’s “Hotel Hopping” trend is interesting. Guests are apparently doing multiple hotels for a same trip. Based on location, concept and specific experiences. Now’s a really good time to review your USP and make sure it is not everything-for-everyone.

HOTEL HOPPING

Travel queries getting longer

Google says travel queries in AI Mode have tripled in length, which makes sense. Think about it “hotel paris marais” is not how we think. For hotels, this means old keyword strategies are not enough; content has to answer more specific, conversational needs. It is less about ranking for “hotel Paris st germain” and more about being the right answer to “I’m looking for a hotel in paris that is near the louvre, but not on a main road, that has AC because I heard AC is forbidden in Europe, and with a good breakfast and under $300 a night on the 7th August for 1 week” (that was short)

TRAVEL SEARCH

Google moves hotels into the cart

Google putting hotel booking next to products like shoes and groceries is a huge conceptual shift. Travel is being treated less like a separate vertical and more like another commerce category. Not sure how this will work. How long will it lock the inventory? But they’re smart, they’ve tried a thing or two in the space. Curious how this changes things, but in the end Google sells clicks not trips.

GOOGLE COMMERCE

Opinion

Professing Marketing by Theory

I recently read an article claiming that two-thirds of American marketers would fail a basic marketing test. But after looking at some of the questions, I couldn’t help wondering whether the problem isn’t the marketers. Maybe the problem is the test itself.

Many of the questions were essentially vocabulary tests and academic framework tests. Don’t get me wrong, terminology is very important (I co-founded a dictionary for that reason). But let’s not pretend that knowing the correct definition of positioning is the same thing as knowing how to do positioning.

I’ve met marketers who could probably pass the test but their main skill was terminology (and budget submissions). I’ve also met people who couldn’t explain half the terminology but consistently built brands, generated leads, and drove real revenue. Which one is the marketer?

The author is a prominent marketing professor who sells a marketing course. Unsurprisingly, the conclusion appears to be that marketers need more formal education. I may be biased here because I’ve interacted with him before. Years ago I asked which of his courses would help my team become better marketers. I was very direct that I wasn’t looking for fluffy theory. I wanted a practical course. His response was that none of the courses would help me achieve that. At least it was candid.

Marketing is one of those disciplines where formal education can help, a little, not a lot. David Ogilvy had no formal education. Neither did Bill Bernbach. And Steve Jobs was arguably a brilliant marketer too. Education wasn’t what made them legends. They became legends because they understood communication, people, attention. And most importantly, they understood how to make people care.

Marketing itself can’t seem to agree on many of these definitions. Take positioning, April Dunford has a definition, Al Ries has a totally different one. None of them are wrong, one just needs to understand the context. So when somebody says a marketer failed because they picked the wrong definition, it’s a little frustrating.

I’m not defending incompetence, there are absolutely terrible marketers out there, I’ve met many. “I got 3 TikTok posts go viral” now consider themselves a growth expert. Some marketers have never looked at a profit-and-loss statement in their lives. The profession certainly has its share incompetent people. But if they want to learn, I recommend spending a year doing in-person sales. Not memorizing definitions.

Would you say a hotel GM isn’t a good one because they can’t define goppar? Or would you judge them on their ability to manage the constant unpredictable problems of running a hotel and having happy guests?

Luckily some people still value competence above theory. That’s the test that matters.

• Google I/Os 100 announcements - Link

• The Guide Competitors Hope You Miss - Link⁺

• Creator Media is growing into a normal media market - Link

• Ferrari Luce a more moderate view - Link

• A Map of what made People Happy - Link

Did you know: The word “professor” comes from the Latin word “professus,” meaning “having declared publicly.” It originally referred to someone who has declared their knowledge, especially a teacher. Over time, it came to mean a high-ranking teacher at a university or college. Defined using Lomar Dictionary⁺

⁺ Note, articles that are published by companies or people I work with are tagged with the ⁺ symbol or Partner word. I’m adding this as a transparency. Previously I avoiding sharing content from partners to remain objective, but sometimes they have excellent articles that deserves being shared so to remain transparent, I’ll tag them.

Hello,

While I think a lot of AI updates in hotel operations will be incremental and not revolutionary, the opposite is true for hotel distribution. How fast will it happen, I can’t tell but there’s no doubt it will happen. But no spoilers - you’ll have to read that below.

Best, Martin

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Airbnb Moves Beyond Stays

Airbnb’s Summer 2026 release seems designed to push the company beyond accommodation into a broader travel-services layer. Car rentals and grocery delivery experiences. Airbnb is slowly turning the trip into a platform, not just the stay. See my column below.

AIRBNB SERVICES

About me: I'm a fractional CMO for large travel technology companies helping turn them into industry leaders. I'm also the co-founder of 10minutes.news a hotel news media that is unsensational, factual and keeps hoteliers updated on the industry.  

ChatGPT Ads Manager Walkthrough

There has been a lot of noise around ChatGPT ads, but practical walkthroughs are more useful than speculation. The interesting thing is not just whether ads appear in AI conversations, but how advertisers will understand intent inside a conversational interface. Search advertising was built around keywords; AI advertising may be built around context. That could be powerful, but also very easy to overdo.

AI ADVERTISING

Positioning in the Age of AI

April Dunford’s article is excellent advice for B2B tech companies. Positioning needs to move when customer behavior, competition, or technology changes enough that the old story no longer works. The danger is overreacting to every trend and rewriting the narrative too often. The better approach is to ask whether AI changes the buyer’s problem, the alternatives, or the value of your solution. But read the whole thing.

AI POSITIONING

AI in your PMS

Three of the main PMS vendors have announced AI functionality. Lots of incremental updates. Does it change everything? no. But these updates compound and with AI coding they will be coming faster and faster. The key problem all of this is encountering? Messy data. Which explains why many of the PMS are becoming broader solutions. The Operating System monicker or the Platform label or whichever name we use. The fact is that data is a real problem if we want to make these changes iterate faster.

CLOUDBEDS MEWS SHIJI⁺

Robots in Hotel Operations

Apparently some hotels are adopting robots in housekeeping to clean hallways after hours. I’ve seen this in Danish hospitals and airports. But hotels are still quite a long way from any meaningful robot work in housekeeping. With room configurations being different everywhere. Robots changing bedsheets is probably harder than catching cables. When it works, it will be amazing. But I’m not holding my breath.

ROBOTICS OPERATIONS

OTA “Loyalty” Programs Compared

OTA rewards are becoming more important because they influence where guests start their booking journey. Booking Genius, Expedia One Key, Trip Membership, MMTBLACK, and Airbnb all approach the problem differently. But the end goal is the same, convince people to stick with a platform. They haven’t gotten to the status systems yet. Maybe that would be the hack: add a membership fee to level up?

OTA LOYALTY

Designs and Luxury and hotels

Apparently design-led lifestyle luxury is moving away from opulence and toward cultural identity. I think a lot of people are trying to figure out “the new luxury”. Some things will change, the bar keeps rising. What was luxury before is normal now. 20 years ago, nobody would have paid $1200 for a phone, today millions do. Before we had one set of furniture for most of our lives, now we replace most of it with every move. The bar goes up but the need for luxury will not change.

HOTEL DESIGN

Stuffing Ads Inside AI Conversations

Ads appearing inside ChatGPT conversations raises the big tension of AI monetization. Google seems to be testing some ideas too. Unfortunately we’ll need to live with this idea. But how will it not become spam, I’m not sure.

CHATGPT GOOGLE GEMINI SPAM

Opinion

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 can research a full itinerary for a 5 day trip with the family in London. And it can be iterated on. Or it can propose 5 totally different itineraries and the family votes on one. Currently it will be full of errors (I tried a few times) but soon it wont. And in any case, the main structure of the travel plan is now settled, i.e. discovery is done.

Next the family organizer or the tech savvy kid can generate a small apps or widgets around that trip. A family itinerary that keeps track of flights, delays, weather, bookings, activities and changes in one place. High-end travel organizers do this already, and as with most technological innovation, it democratizes luxury lifestyle.

The universal shopping cart has a huge potential. Could it finally solve complete itinerary booking? I’m optimistic, but I also know this is a much harder problem to solve than online retail. Putting a hotel, flight, activity and spa treatment into one cart would be amazing but I realize it is also one of those problems where the last ten percent is actually ninety percent of the work.

Still, the direction is important. If the browser, Google account and AI assistant become the place where the itinerary inspiration and planning lives, which seems inevitable, then it changes how discovery happens completely. When I wrote about OTAs becoming the plumbing that was what I meant.

Yes, Expedia has flights, hotels, cars and they have lots of experience in this space. Probably more than any other major OTA. If they can build their own agent, adding activities they would have a pretty solid system.

Booking has a lot of the data, but fragmented in multiple areas, Kayak, RentalCars, and a lot of it is just meta-search which is painful to manage all the way to booking. They can build and scale as they’ve proven when their decided to take on Airbnb and build their own appartment rentals.

Speaking of Airbnb, they might have the strongest play in actually building the system they’ve clearly seen the problem with AI bookings and they know how to create great user experiences. But they don’t have near as much data as Expedia and Booking, and they’ve never shown a huge ability to API and partner with other industries, though they seem to be working on that.

None of this is settled yet. But in my view there’s no way that search continues to be what it currently is. Some have argued that there’s nothing wrong with Flight search today, so why use AI search. I guess the same could have been said 30 years ago when we could just call a travel agent.

• Filipines and the LinkedIn “thought leaders” - Link

• The Guide Competitors Hope You Miss - Link⁺

• Why St Tropez still works - Link

• “The Age of Average Design” iF Design Trends - Link

• Why America Has So Many Thai Restaurants - Link

Did you know: The word "loyalty" comes from the Old French word "loiauté," meaning faithfulness or fidelity. It developed from Latin "legalitas," from "lex," meaning law, so originally it implied being faithful to the law or to a lord. Over time, the meaning expanded to devotion and faithfulness in personal, social, and business relationships. Defined using Lomar Dictionary⁺

⁺ Note, articles that are published by companies or people I work with are tagged with the ⁺ symbol or Partner word. I’m adding this as a transparency. Previously I avoiding sharing content from partners to remain objective, but sometimes they have excellent articles that deserves being shared so to remain transparent, I’ll tag them.

Hello,

I can’t recall a strategy meeting I’ve done that didn’t have sales, owners, investors et al explaining me that the company is also for this segment, and that segment and also the other segment. Focus is important. More in my column, for now here’s the newsletter.

Best, Martin

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Hotel Inspiration Moves Upstream

Hotel distribution has always focused heavily on the booking moment, but this piece argues that many decisions are now shaped much earlier. Creator content, AI recommendations, etc. Word of mouth has always been top of the list and will be for some time. But it is safe to say, creators and AI recommendations are big new entrants on the list. And hotels / destinations need to think with that.

HOTEL DISCOVERY

About me: I'm a fractional CMO for large travel technology companies helping turn them into industry leaders. I'm also the co-founder of 10minutes.news a hotel news media that is unsensational, factual and keeps hoteliers updated on the industry.  

PMS as Infrastructure

Last week I argued that the PMS is and will be the future system of record. But Susanne Williams argues that it might be a lot more complex. She poses a lot of really interesting questions. Worth the read - and do drop your comments in there.

PMS INFRASTRUCTURE

Hotels Have a Leadership Problem

Lean hotel management structures can look efficient until one key person leaves. I’ve run hotels that way, it was exciting - but ridiculously stressful. If you wants a day that never looks like the last one, it’s a brilliant way to go. But for everyone else, I wouldn’t recommend it (it wasn’t fun for me). Yet, IMO hotels are a unique opportunity - anyone can become a GM, if you can cope and get things done. Probably a masterclass for any entrepreneur.

LEADERSHIP RISK

Loyalty and Credit Cards

Hotel loyalty programs and co-branded credit cards are becoming major revenue engines for the big brands. But it is moving loyalty from the hotel experience itself toward financial incentives, points, and status mechanics. Useful, yes, but I still wonder whether this builds real loyalty or just some kind of customer lock-in.

LOYALTY CARDS

Michelin Keys for Hotels

Michelin’s hotel Keys bring a familiar luxury signal into hospitality, but the interesting question is how much influence they will really have. Restaurants changed around Michelin because the guide created demand, status, and pressure all at once. Hotels are more complicated because service, design, location, and emotional experience are harder to reduce to a rating, and they already have a lot of rating systems in place. Still, if the philosophy is creating a destination (the original goal with the restaurant ratings), then it might bring a whole new concept to hotel ratings.

MICHELIN KEYS

Answering the question

Globally, the biggest mystery guests have (according to many forums read) is why and how do hotels change their rates sometimes doubling overnight. Travel is one of the few consumer industries that change so much, so fast. And it seems guests don’t understand it. Some RMS’ are tackling that question head-on.

CHANGING RATES⁺

A Trust Framework for Hospitality AI

AI can be a confident liar, an educated tourist, a trusted ally or an educated guesser. The framework with which the data is labelled, understood, managed etc will be the difference. But this is much easier said than done. Anyone who has looked into PMS data knows this - it’s a proper mess out there.

TRUSTED AI

Travel’s Future May Be Boring

The idea that travel’s future belongs to “boring companies” might be right. TNMT discusses that after years of big platform dreams and unicorn language, the companies solving operational problems may be the ones that last. Aviation tech, weather intelligence, fintech, and systems that remove friction are less glamorous than consumer apps, but they address real pain. In hotels the less tech is visible the better things are.

BORING INNOVATION

Spain Moves From Volume to Value

Watching Spain’s evolution in travel is interesting. From a very vocal problem with locals considering tourism as the problem. The government is looking at shifting from more arrivals, to increasing spend through better connectivity, infrastructure, and digital systems. Spain may become a useful case study in moving beyond volume without abandoning volume entirely.

TOURISM VALUE

Google’s Guide to AI SEO

Google publishing guidance on optimizing for generative AI search features is a sign that AI visibility is becoming part of normal SEO. The basics probably still matter: useful content, clear structure, authority, and pages that answer real questions. The mistake would be chasing AI optimization while neglecting standard search hygiene. Hotels should get the fundamentals right before inventing a new acronym for the same work. Plus, Google’s SEO advice was always “just make great content we’ll handle the rest”.

AI SEARCH

Opinion

Are you the cheapest or the best?

There’s only two choices in the customers mind, is this the cheapest? or is it the best?

The cheapest is easy. It is measurable, comparable, and totally objective. Two products, same features, one costs $1000 less. Decision made. Just a number, and numbers are very good at ending arguments.

The “best” is where things get more interesting, and much messier. Take cars. Nobody walks into a dealership saying they want something mediocre. They want the best car for their budget, the best fuel efficiency, the best design, the best engine, or even the best color. It is always the best, just filtered. This is where marketing actually lives.

The job of marketing is not to be moderately good across the board. The job is to define what “best” means for a specific audience and then own that definition completely. And yet, so many avoid doing this because it forces a hard choice. You cannot be the best for everyone. You have to decide who you are really for, and by doing that, you also decide who you are not for.

Ask a hotel tech company where they are the best, and the answer often starts sounding like a checklist. Best for small hotels, best for large hotels, best for resorts, best for independents, best for chains. At that point, it means nothing. This is not a new idea, it appears in every positioning framework, every product market fit discussion, and every brand strategy textbook. And still, in practice, it is ignored.

Why? Because choosing what you are best at is uncomfortable. It means excluding things. It means admitting that you are only exceptional for a specific group of customers. It is much easier to say you can serve everyone than to say you are going to be exceptional for a few. But the market clarity. This also applies to hotels. Look at most chain designed hotels today, they’re essentially commodities with a logo. They can fit any brand, just change the curtains. But the new brands are focused.

Choosing to be the cheapest is a valid position. In many ways, it is simpler. You do not need complex messaging or emotional storytelling (though RyanAir does a great job). You just need to be cheaper, and the proof is in the price. So if you are not the cheapest, then you have to be the best there is no attractive middle ground where people actively search for the second-tier option.

This becomes even more important as choice increases and platforms, marketplaces, and AI compress options into shortlists. When fewer options are shown, the winners will be the ones that are clearly superior in a specific way or clearly cheaper. Everything else risks disappearing into irrelevance.

Working out your positioning is not about describing your product. It is about deciding what you want to be the best at, for whom, and then having the discipline to ignore everything else: 1. Start small. 2. Own the niche. 3. Win it (or change). 4. Then expand.

This is super obvious in hindsight and in an column like this - but it takes a lot of courage to implement in real life. I wrote about how brutal those meetings can be here.

• Why Business Stories Work - Link

• The Guide Competitors Hope You Miss - Link⁺

• Turning World Cup Prices Into a Campaign - Link

• Why everyone’s launching a beverage brand - Link

• Louis Vuitton Mayfair Hotel - Link

Did you know: "Amazing" comes from the verb "amaze," which has roots in Middle English "amasen," meaning "to confuse or surprise.” "Amaze" is related to "maze," a state of confusion or puzzling. The "-ing" ending turns the verb into an adjective, showing the quality of inspiring surprise or wonder. Defined using Lomar Dictionary⁺

⁺ Note, articles that are published by companies or people I work with are tagged with the ⁺ symbol or Partner word. I’m adding this as a transparency. Previously I avoiding sharing content from partners to remain objective, but sometimes they have excellent articles that deserves being shared so to remain transparent, I’ll tag them.

Hello,

PMS Wars article I wrote a few years ago continues, at the time the main point was that we were seeing a massive shift to cloud. That’s still happening. But now that we’re seeing where technology is going with more agentic and AI, we’re hitting the next phase. And I don’t think PMS is going to go away. See the column.

Best, Martin

Clean electrolytes that support hydration
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Airbnb and AI Distribution

Airbnb is amazing at being in the news, this week their CEO make headlines stating that AI distribution isn’t solved. The interesting part is not whether AI can answer a booking question, but whether it can reshape how guests compare homes, hotels, price, location, and experience. I think he’s totally right - there isn’t a great UI yet some kind of blend of chat, filtering, point and click and visual comparison still needs to be worked out.

AIRBNB AI + AI INTERFACE

About me: I'm a fractional CMO for large travel technology companies helping turn them into industry leaders. I'm also the co-founder of 10minutes.news a hotel news media that is unsensational, factual and keeps hoteliers updated on the industry.  

Dirt Is the New Luxury

The idea that “dirt is the new luxury” captures something real in hospitality. Guests are increasingly drawn to places that feel grounded, natural, imperfect, and connected to land rather than polished into sameness. It is a different kind of luxury something more hands-on than hands-off. I don’t think one replaces the other though.

RURAL LUXURY

An AI Braintrust?

The idea of an AI braintrust is useful because most companies are not short of AI tools, they are short of judgment. The setup that Neil Perkin recommends here is quite interesting. But I would seriously warn people from relying too much on AI “advice” in my experience they seem perfect in areas where one doesn’t have enough experience to have judgement. But where you have good experience you will notice that the AI advice is weak.

AI BRAINTRUST

Kayak Founders Reunite for AI Travel

The Kayak founders working on an AI travel startup under Booking Holdings is exactly the kind of move to watch. They have track record in building stuff. As Airbnb CEO mentioned AI travel search is far from solved. Some really talented people are working on this problem. Will we see a breakthrough this year?

AI TRAVEL

Playground of Possibilities

Designing possibilities in hotels seems to sit in the confusing area between designing with purpose and intentionally designing without purpose. “No iconic hotel ever became famous for its rooms”. Maybe this is why the best hotels I have experienced have been millionaire pet-projects that aren’t too worried about profit.

CREATIVE SPACE

The Office Space as Hospitality

Maybe Wework founder was just too early? The office becoming a hospitality business is one of the more obvious ideas that many landlords still resist according to Bashar Wali. If people can work from home, the office has to earn the commute through experience, service, community, and usefulness. Hotels have a lot to teach offices, especially about arrival, atmosphere, and care.

WORKPLACE HOSPITALITY

Hotels need blogs again

An in-depth AI search study in the hotel industry highlights that providing large amounts on context around a hotel increases the possibility of the hotel getting found on AI search. I think a lot of people have been saying this for a while, but finally some real data about it. Also lots of other interesting reads in the link here.

QUERY FRAMING

Tying the GM to a Tree

It is weird that in our industry what is considered a great GM is someone who is constantly firefighting. They’re looked at as great problem solvers etc. But in theory the best GM would be someone nobody ever sees, because nothing goes wrong. Utopic but ultimately true. Here’s another take on new hotel GMs.

HOTEL MANAGEMENT GM TURNOVER

Expedia’s Strong Quarter, Weak Reaction

Expedia reporting its strongest first quarter and still facing a negative market reaction says a lot about investor expectations. Companies are being judged not only on results, but on whether their model still looks dominant in an AI-shaped future. I’ve written my views on this before. OTAs have gained customer trust, they need to figure out how to keep it. Airbnb and Booking are clearly working on it. Is Expedia?

EXPEDIA RESULTS

Kempinski vs the Sea of Sameness

Asset light is profitable there’s no question. In the long term it also means the “brands” and hotel buildings become commodities. Luxury experiences are hard, there’s an element of je-ne-sais-quoi required. Since the space is inherently tied to the experience it is interesting to see how this moves in the industry.

BRAND CONTROL ASSET LIGHT

Opinion

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 OTAs as the main battle. CRM people see guest data as the center. Payment providers think payment rails are the foundation of everything.

My view is, payments are infrastructure, not strategy. Distribution is the key factor in revenue, but it is not the whole business. The fight against OTAs is really a question of controlling your own distribution, not eliminating intermediaries. Etc.

Stronger data
AI is going to force the industry to have stronger and better data channels. Yes, one can suppose that AI can handle the mess of data so why bother. But then what do you do when it starts to mess up rates and availability? Because it based the actions on some fuzzy logic.

Apps vs platforms
In theory, best-of-breed is ideal. The best RMS, the best CRM, the best guest messaging platform, etc. But trends are moving toward consolidation. One major vendor is simply easier to manage. One support team, one commercial relationship, one negotiation, and fewer integrations to maintain. A specialist product may be stronger in one category, but for hotels who mostly deal with the unpredictability of humans, reliability of systems is better than perfect systems.

For all we say about AI being able to handle unstructured data, if guest profiles are in one place, rooms in another, F&B in yet another, and operations elsewhere, I believe the error rates will be even higher. I’m sure this is debatable. Just like the Lidar+vision vs pure vision debate. But logically one clean source will always be better for humans and AI.

PMS and the risk of stagnation
The criticism of slow PMS vendors is fair. For decades, PMSs have been the bottleneck of hotel innovation. Closed APIs, expensive integrations, poor documentation, and painfully slow development cycles have made them obstacles rather than enablers.

Entire categories of hotel tech exist because PMSs failed to evolve. CRSs became separate because PMSs never solved distribution properly. Customer data platforms exist because guest profile management inside many PMSs is so bad that in some cases, it is easier for hotel staff to create a second guest profile than to find the original one. That is not a data problem, it is a product failure.

There is a future risk with platform consolidation is that once vendors know customers are locked in, innovation slows even further. Once the vendor is settled in and they know how hard it is for their customers to switch there will be little to no incentive to innovate. I don’t have a magic answer to this - but maybe PMS will build free migration tools which would suddenly make shifting a lot easier.

Theoretically, since hotels could build their own interfaces they wouldn’t need to re-train their staff on new systems.

The AI Shift
Every vendor is adding copilots, agentic assistants, dashboards, and predictive tools. Most of it is useful, much of it will be surface-level enhancement at first. But that’s OK we need to find the way.

A few months ago, I asked the CEOs of several PMS vendors where they believed MCP (or whatever the protocol will be) would/should sit. They didn’t reply or told me “they don’t know”. Maybe they consider this a possible threat to their business model? I’m probably overthinking it.

I think PMS should be the trusted operational layer that allows AI to function reliably across departments. Could a third party do that instead? Of course. But the closer you are to raw operational truth, the stronger your position becomes.

Agentic layer in PMS
So contrary to the original article I don’t believe AI will reduce the importance of the PMS. But the PMS might become less of an interface and more of an infrastructure layer. Its value moves away from screens and toward trust, data quality, and orchestration.

I looked at a lot of agentic in saas. My over-simplified conclusion is that all agentic is (currently) doing is solving extremely bad UI and UX design. Take moving reservations as an example. In many hotels, the guest experience at reception is now worse than it was before computers. Staff are trapped behind endless clicks, slow workflows, and systems that force them to serve the screen before they serve the guest. So we create an agent that can “move the reservation of Joe Smith the Platinum member to tomorrow”. It goes through all the steps and does it.

Huge advantage in time. But it begs the question, why wasn’t it like that in the first place? Why do we have these ridiculous multi-click systems?

AI will not just improve PMS workflows. It will expose how much bad UX was normalized for decades. It will show how much unnecessary complexity hotels accepted simply because poor software became standard.

That does not mean the future is chat assistants everywhere. Point-and-click is still an excellent interface, especially in front of guests. The goal is not replacing every screen with chat. The goal is fewer bad workflows, better logic, and systems that support hospitality instead of slowing it down.

The PMS War
The future PMS may look less like traditional software and more like infrastructure. The interface may matter less than the trustworthiness of the data underneath it. As I mentioned above, one could imagine hotels building their own UI layer on top of the system, but I think I’m getting ahead of myself here - hotels haven’t been great at building their own tools.

So what is the PMS war? Well lets see who manages to build the strongest data infrastructure for hotels and the best agentic layers on top of it. The race is on, nobody wants to be replaced. A lot of money has been poured into making the best next platform.

That is the real PMS war, but there wont be a single player. Chains are too different from groups who are too different from independents and so far this industry has proven the Innovator’s Dilemma quite wrong with very few solutions moving from small hotels to chains. So I believe that the future of PMS in the AI era is about who becomes the trusted authority of truth inside the hotel.

• Hong Kong Design Projects - Link

• The Guide Competitors Hope You Miss - Link⁺

• Amazon Opens Supply Chain to Others - Link

• Visually exploring the hotel world with Flipbook.page - Link

• How NASA built Artemis II computer - Link

Did you know: "Artificial" comes from the Latin word "artificialis," meaning "made by art," from "artificium" (craft, skill). It entered English in the late Middle Ages and originally described something constructed or made with skill, not occurring naturally. Defined using Lomar Dictionary⁺

⁺ Note, articles that are published by companies or people I work with are tagged with the ⁺ symbol or Partner word. I’m adding this as a transparency. Previously I avoiding sharing content from partners to remain objective, but sometimes they have excellent articles that deserves being shared so to remain transparent, I’ll tag them.

Hello,

With AI I think we have a unique opportunity in the hotel industry to move old workflows that have been replicated into the digitial world and have resulted in over-engineered processes away from people. And maybe that could bring back real delightful innovation to guests. And maybe I’m just being too wishful. Now for something (not) completely different:

Best, Martin

Clean electrolytes that support hydration
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AI Raises the Creative Bar

AI has made it easier for almost anyone to make something, but that means a lot of people with zero taste will make things - because they can. Performance obsessed marketers will iterate their ads indefinitely, until they all look almost exactly the same. Originality, taste, and judgment are becoming more valuable. Maybe this brings us to a new Mad Men era (after all, they came after a time when snake oil performance marketing was abundant).

CREATIVE QUALITY

About me: I'm a fractional CMO for large travel technology companies helping turn them into industry leaders. I'm also the co-founder of 10minutes.news a hotel news media that is unsensational, factual and keeps hoteliers updated on the industry.  

Airbnb, Wyndham and AI Distribution

Apparently, Airbnb refused to appear in Google Hotel Finder to protect their differentiation. I’m not sure that’s accurate. The scalability of selling one appartment in one location vs 500 rooms in one location are hard to compare. Airbnb has no economy of scale in destination marketing. They could, at best, sell a street but very few addresses. Still an interesting comparison to Wyndham’s apparent AI plan vs Airbnb. When it comes to brand building however I’d say Airbnb is running a tighter ship than Wyndham.

AI DISTRIBUTION

Aviation Fuel

Fuel shortages and rising energy costs are putting massive pressure on airlines. Travel tends to be at the mercy of so many factors, geopolitics, energy, viruses, economy etc. But maybe this accelerates the process of finding alternative fuels for aviation? Necessity is the mother of all invention they say.

TRAVEL PRESSURE

Dumb Social Media Wins for Hotels

Some simple hotel social media tactics from Scott Eddy. Film before the hotel is ready, Use your comments as feedback, shoot vertically, multiply the content you have, post it twice, put prices in your captions, use “unusuable” footage. I tend to agree with him on most of this. Tell a story, give it some heart and soul. But it does require you have a clear vision of the positining. Tactics only work if you know where you’re going.

SOCIAL BASICS

Hotels Have a Workflow Problem

The idea that hotels do not have an AI problem but a workflow problem is pretty much the story of digital transformation in the industry. AI wont fix broken operations but it could be used to add an abstraction layer (that will cause future problem). I believe the advantage of a lot of the AI agentic work will be speed to prototype the workflows that should be changed.

HOTEL WORKFLOWS

The Future of Marketing

Marketing is being pulled in two directions at once: more AI, more automation, more volume and hyper focus on performance. But this also opens a door to more creativity and more ways to try to leave a lasting memory. I’m hoping they grow together, but we’ll need to see how that goes. Some interesting reads from the FT.

MARKETING FUTURE

Creative Relevance Matters

More on the risks in AI and creator-led content: brands can produce more while becoming less recognizable. Advertising needs memory structures, not just volume, and brand assets are what make campaigns compound over time. In the AI era, distinctiveness may become even more valuable.

CREATIVE SALIENCE

The Impossible Hotel DOSM Job

The Director of Sales and Marketing role has become a pile-up of old and new responsibilities. Revenue management, CRM, performance marketing, distribution, brand, sales, and analytics. We need better systems and smarter responsibilities.

HOTEL DOSM AI ANALYTICS COMMERCIAL WIZARD

Prompt Injection Gets Real

Prompt injection moving from theory into real abuse is a warning. The more AI systems read websites, emails, documents, and guest messages, the more exposed they become to manipulation.

PROMPT INJECTION

Uber, Accor and Expedia

Uber’s partnerships with Accor and Expedia show how travel distribution is becoming more embedded and cross-platform. Loyalty points, hotel inventory, rides, and app ecosystems are starting to connect in more practical ways. Here’s a case where integration and inventory still requires a lot of customer adoption. Uber is usually a last-mile habit. Not a planning and booking one. Can they shift behavior to move up the funnel.

TRAVEL DEALS

Opinion

The innovative history of hotels, that faded

For decades, maybe centuries hotels were the perfect place to showcase innovation, new technology and the lifestyle of the future. Running hot/cold water, in-room phones, elevators, in-room entertainment. These things were in hotels first. But since the digital revolution, hotels faded away from being innovators.

I wrote this on LinkedIn last week and, I wanted to revisit it here. During COVID, I spent a lot of time researching the history of hotel innovation together with TechTalk Travel, Shiji and the Hotelschool The Hague.

My premise for the research was, maybe during these big disruptions hotels innovated. So we looked into the wars, and so forth to see if this was true. It wasn’t. There didn’t really seem to be any correlation. But what struck me most was how, for decades and even centuries, hospitality was the global showroom for innovation.

Hotels were often the first places where people experienced electric lighting, elevators, private bathrooms, plumbing in every room, telephones, air conditioning, in-room TVs, and even minibars. They were aspirational places where guests encountered the tech they wished they could get at home. A hotel stay meant stepping into a new sort of ideal. You can download the mega-pdf of the history of hotel tech here.

But somewhere around the rise of the internet / smartphones this ended. Possibly due to the fact that a lot of the innovation was digital and not physical, and hotels are physical places. But the shift happened quite rapidly, in just just 15-20 years or so, most hotels started seeming clunky or vintage when it comes to innovation. Innovation at home started moving faster than in hotels. At home we have personalized entertainment in most rooms, subsidized TVs with our personalized streaming preferences, cheap connected speakers, voice controlled lights and plugs. A lot of the things that “the house of the future” promised became cheap commodities.

Hotels couldn’t / didn’t catch up. Our IT systems made it so complex that installing simple things like screen casting into our rooms became immensely complex. In some ways our own systems made it harder to innovate. Closed or expensive APIs. Legacy setups. Processes and “we’ve always done it like that” or other reasons.

Can hospitality become the innovation showcase again? Can hotels return to being the place where people first experience the future living ideals?

I think we can, but as the biggest shifts are happening in the digital space - we need to look at how to embed it, instead of showing it. I’ve long advocated for a new role of Experience Designers or maybe that should be a new discipline of the interior designer. But I digress.

Above I listed some of the key innovations and asked GPT to make an infographic out of it. It is quite good. But many errors (as AI tends to be). So take it with a grain of salt - but it is directionally correct. And the new ChatGPT image generator was surprisingly good at the text part of the image.

• Understanding Jackson Pollock’s relevance - Link

• The inspiration Benchmark for hospitality - Link⁺

• Computer History: IBM 1401 - Link

• Richness vs Sadness - Link

• How Hermès Watches joined the watchmaking big league - Link

Did you know: The word "innovate" comes from the Latin "innovare," which means "to renew or change." "Innovare" is formed from "in-" (into) and "novus" (new). The verb entered English in the 16th century, keeping the meaning of making something new or introducing change. Defined using Lomar Dictionary⁺

⁺ Note, articles that are published by companies or people I work with are tagged with the ⁺ symbol or Partner word. I’m adding this as a transparency. Previously I avoiding sharing content from partners to remain objective, but sometimes they have excellent articles that deserves being shared so to remain transparent, I’ll tag them.

Hello,

Incredibly this edition has almost no mentions of AI. It did concern me that it seems like the only thing I talk about, but I made no effort to avoid it. Probably just confirmation bias. I do think there’s a thread about not being boring in advertising though.

Best, Martin

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and muscle function, without the junk.
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Time as the New Luxury

The Peninsula is reframing luxury not as space or service, but as control over time. Letting guests define their own schedules where the guest journey bends around the individual rather than the system. And it is a direct booking perk. Not boring advertising.

TIME LUXURY + INVISIBLE HOTEL

About me: I'm a fractional CMO for large travel technology companies helping turn them into industry leaders. I'm also the co-founder of 10minutes.news a hotel news media that is unsensational, factual and keeps hoteliers updated on the industry.  

Hotels above the political noise

There’s something about the hotel industry that makes it unique. There’s a huge element of making people happier and it works. But then there’s also the fact that hotels are rare neutral spaces where different worldviews coexist. In today’s spectacle sensationalism, the “soft power” of hospitality might actually have more value than we realize.

HOSPITALITY ROLE

The AI Platform War in Hospitality

This really interesting thread on Linkedin has replies from the CEOs of both Cloudbeds and Mews. Some unpopular takes. A) unfortunately the best tech rarely wins, the best go-to-market frequently does. B) We still have very little understanding how this AI wave will land. Is agentic the way, is chat the way, is OpenAI the way or Anthropic etc. It’s hard to predict. But nobody can argue against solid APIs and data layers.

TECH PLATFORM

Google changing the Rev Mgr job?

Google’s hotel price tracking feature adds a new layer of transparency (I wonder will revenue managers be scraping that to monitor their compset analysis?). Mostly now this is going to make bad revenue management obvious. Hotels that frequently panic drop their rates 10 days out will become obvious. Google’s prediction algorithm of flight delays is pretty accurate. Will this be too?

PRICE TRACKING

Hotel Growth Tension

The best hotel brands are the smallest ones. In fact if you count all the hotel brands there are more major luxury and ultra luxury brands than upscale brands. Nobody has solved this problem yet. Rapid growth and quality standards. Software people come and claim to have fixed it, until they realize they need to reinvest millions into FF&E every few years. The US hotel industry is full hotels that seem to have been designed by a single person and desperately need a refresh (and quieter AC units).

GROWTH TRAP

TikTok Enters Hotel Distribution

TikTok testing hotel metasearch is good news for hotels. Seems they are relying on OTA integrations for now but I’m sure hotels will get access soon enough (hint Cendyn). For influencers and travel enthusiasts to be able to integrate hotels into their stories this would give them a great incentive to write more stories about other areas which aren’t the main tourist spots.

SOCIAL BOOKINGS

The Dubai reset strategy

Dubai’s decision to temporarily close and renovate flagship hotels is the smartest way to go. Timing will be everything here, but the confidence is notable. I would suggest those hotels who aren’t renovating at least make the most of this time to overhaul their tech stack and build the most guest friendly city in the world.

MARKET RESET

Entertaining Marketing

An interesting new report by Small World and Tracksuit about how marketing needs to move towards entertaining, or die. The problem is obvious, but the solution is not. On one hand entertaining is a great way to get attention and marketing is a lot about getting attention, but it is even more about getting engagement and action towards the product. We have (IMO) over optimized to the latter and lost touch with the prior as Ogilvy said, you cannot bore your customer into buying.

ENTERTAIN OR DIE WHO OWNS ATTENTION

Design, taste, opinions

So coders can design with AI, Designers can code with AI. The same goes for hotels. AI Designs are obvious from a mile away. AI coded apps probably the same when reviewed by coders (but mostly we’re not coders). So what gives. Taste and Opinions will persevere. Just like humans know when physics are off in a movie, they’ll see when the creative side was given to a machine.

SOFTWARE DESIGN

Software ate the world-ish

There are some fancy charts that show how software ate the world. Represented through market size and market cap. Seems great until you relate it to the real world. A hotel operates primarily in the physical world. Software hasn’t changed that much for hotel life. Some things are better, something are worse. But beds are beds. Guests are guests. And I suspect the majority of industries are the same. Software companies are just valued higher than before they existed.

RAILROADS VS TECH

Opinion

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-principle concepts in marketing that are consistently misunderstood, even by experienced managers. 1. Always start with quantity and 2. For your ads to stick you need to be accepted by the market.

Quantity comes before quality. Always. You cannot optimize something that does not exist yet. Before you refine, before you chase the perfect ICP, before you obsess over conversion rates, you need reach. How much? Well until you have a steady stream of leads that become sales, do not reduce volume. Shift the budget around to those that seem to drive best quality but now is not the time to cut. And yes, that means you will get a lot of bad leads. Tell everyone to get over it.

If you have to choose between exposure in the approximate market or highly precise targeting with minimal reach, for the same budget, the broader option is almost always the right one.

The second concept is even more fundamental. Marketing only works if there is baseline acceptance in the market. It is very hard to force demand through ads alone. If you or your product are not perceived as relevant or desirable, all ads will struggle or become extremely expensive.

Many B2B teams misunderstand “content marketing”. The goal is not primarily lead gen. Lead magnets, gated assets, and downloads are secondary outcomes. The primary job is to build goodwill, familiarity, and positioning. You are giving and sharing with the market and earning the right to advertise to them. If you get 10 downloads through a lead-magnet, it is pointless. Give the content out for free and get thousands of downloads, then advertise to them.

Not following the above, I’ve seen marketing get more and more expensive. Constant re-planning starts kicking in. Changing the people, the agency etc. Instead of holding the line and slowly pruning the spam sources. Of course, if there is zero understanding of what is working, there are cases where resetting makes sense. Stop everything, reintroduce activities one by one, and measure properly. But that is a specific approach, stuff is reintroduced fast.

Growth rarely starts with efficiency. It starts scrappy, often off-brand, and possibly even a little cringy. That’s OK - now that there’s choice you can pick the stuff that works and cut off the details that don’t. But don’t “reset” all the time.

• How Traditional TV is Changing - Link

• The inspiration Benchmark for hospitality - Link⁺

• Social media and their tobbaco problem - Link

• GDS history revisited - Link

Did you know: The word "opinion" comes from the Latin word opinio, meaning "belief" or "way of thinking." It entered English through Old French in the Middle Ages, and its basic meaning as a personal belief or judgment has stayed the same over time. Defined using Lomar Dictionary⁺

⁺ Note, articles that are published by companies or people I work with are tagged with the ⁺ symbol or Partner word. I’m adding this as a transparency. Previously I avoiding sharing content from partners to remain objective, but sometimes they have excellent articles that deserves being shared so to remain transparent, I’ll tag them.

Hello,

Was at a conference this week. It was meant to be amazing, but unfortunately it wasn’t. I listened to some discussions on luxury, lot’s of people projecting - there’s nothing wrong with opinions. But they should be clearly pre-faced with “I believe” or “I think”. Also a legacy media CEO was asking for people to spend more money with them as they are a trusted source and AI would use them more. So many questions with that.

Best, Martin

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Loyalty Programs and Hotel Choice

A global survey reveals that 87% of travelers prefer hotels with loyalty programs, with “generosity” being the most valued attribute. So, as I’ve commented many times before, these aren’t loyalty programs but rewards programs. The main thing members want is rewards.

HOTEL LOYALTY TRENDS

About me: I'm a fractional CMO for large travel technology companies helping turn them into industry leaders. I'm also the co-founder of 10minutes.news a hotel news media that is unsensational, factual and keeps hoteliers updated on the industry.  

Blue Oceans in Luxury

For those who don’t know “red oceans” = intense competition and “blue oceans” = untapped innovation. To escape market saturation, brands are looking toward longevity, biohacking, craftsmanship and the underserved wealth of the “Silver” demographic. Interesting mini analysis. More in my column.

LUXURY BLUE OCEAN

onefinestay’s Luxury Move

Consolidating their focus on bigger locations with longer stays. From a cost point of view it makes send, same cost to acquire customer higher returns. But a less-but-better strategy is great especially in the luxury space.

LUXURY RENTAL STRATEGY

The Agentic AI Skills

Florian Montag says that you can’t adopt “agentic AI” if your team doesn’t have the skills to manage it. The whole premise with AI was that it would just be natural language. Reality is we’re not there yet. But I’m not sure if that is a habit problem or training problem. In any case I agree we need to stop viewing AI training as an IT cost and start seeing it as a core operational necessity.

AI SKILLS GAP

Demand for Personalized ads

A lot of discussions about hyper-personalization with AI. I’m not really convinced that this is the way. It is a really cool gimmick and can help close the last part of the deal. To help a customer project themselves in the product. But I don’t know that customers are really needing it.

DEMAND FOR PERSONALIZATION

Hotels as Social Clubs

There is a trend of hotels converting underutilized ballrooms into members-only social spaces for local residents. By blending traditional hospitality with the exclusivity of a social club. It’s a smart way to solve the “dead space” problem while building a community around the location. I love that hotels are getting creative to use that space with more local activity. Bazin had a vision for that at Accor once, maybe it was just too early.

HOTEL SOCIAL CLUBS

OpenAI’s New Stuff

OpenAI released a bunch of new stuff this week. One item was a tracking pixel. Which means they’re going to be able to measure conversions on ads. I would be curious how this impacts hotel search when we get there. The biggest release was their new Image generator that can now manage text and seems way more capable (see image below). New Agentic tool. Privacy anonymizing tool. Clearly playing catch-up with Claude. So we we all need to switch now?

CHATGPT AD TRACKING. AGENTS. IMAGES

Claude’s New Stuff

Speaking of new AI tools. Claude introduced Claude Design last week. Which is kind of like a design co-worker to create items like powerpoints and keep them on-brand. The speed at which new tools come out is impressive. My advice is keep trying out the new tools, but don’t replace your workflows yet.

NICE VIDEO

Hotel Design as the Difference

A long time ago I wrote that a hotel has 3 differentiators: Location, Comfort and Price. A hotel who is great at all three doesn’t need marketing but likely doesn’t exist. The job of hotel marketer is to identify which of the three the hotel excels at and position the hotel properly. Many are subjective. Even location isn’t just a matter of meters and feet. Great to see some are using comfort more than location.

HOTEL DESIGN

Retail and Hospitality

Luxury brands are moving into hotels and social clubs to maintain relevance. But luxury retail and hotels have been courting each other for decades. Remember those glass display cases in the luxury hotels? Still there is more to do here, better experiences. Sometimes less empty, sometimes less full. Somehow buying in a hotel never feels like a good deal.

RETAIL HOSPITALITY SHIFT

Optimizing FAQs for AI Search

Hoteliers are beginning to optimize their website FAQs specifically for LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude. The goal is to ensure that when a family asks an AI for a “family-friendly hotel in X,” your property is the one that gets cited. This is a quick win for SEO: being the most readable source for an AI. It’s a simple but effective strategy that every hotel should be looking at right now. Instead of making a lot of random FAQs - analyze all the comments of your happiest customers and get ideas from there. Also the least happy ones so you can ensure you’re not listed for those items.

AI SEARCH OPTIMIZATION

Opinion

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 not see private aviation expanding at the pace it is.

At the core, luxury has at the introductory level always been about signaling success. That does not disappear because people say they care about the environment or experiences. Humans like visible proof of status, a trophy. That instinct is old and remarkably stable.

What has changed is the format of the trophy. It used to be primarily physical. You bought something, you owned it, you displayed it. Now we can display the trophy in more ways than just wearing it. Social media has turned visibility into a constant performance. The object is still important, but the photo, the moment, the shareable proof has become just as valuable.

This creates an interesting dynamic. Experiences have become a form of luxury signaling, but they do not replace objects. They complement them. A rare watch on the wrist and a photo from an exclusive location serve the same function. They tell a story about who you are and where you sit in the hierarchy.

Where I do think the conference narrative touches something real is in the speed of the cycle. Social platforms compress time. Trends move faster. What felt new for five years now feels old in one. That has consequences. Consumers get bored more quickly. Brands have to respond.

This is where luxury is actually evolving. Not by abandoning products, but by increasing variation, frequency, and storytelling. More frequent updates. A hotel that was exclusive needs more reasons for people to come back and show new reasons to show that one has been there.

So no, luxury is not dying. I don’t think it is shrinking. If anything, it needs to move faster. The demand for status symbols remains intact, as more people succeed and move up the ladder they’ll need more of these trophies. What is changing is the cadence. Faster cycles, more options, and a tighter link between ownership and visibility.

The interesting question is not whether people want things or experiences. It is how brands will manage a world where both are required, and where the window to feel relevant keeps getting shorter. Which is great for craftsmanship. But then luxury has always been about superior craftsmanship.

• France’s Cultural Road Signs - Link

• The inspiration Benchmark for hospitality - Link⁺

• Unlocking Unstructured Data - Link

• Unilever’s Influencer Machine - Link

Did you know: The word "luxury" comes from the Latin word "luxuria," meaning "excess" or "extravagance." It entered English in the Middle Ages and originally meant "extravagant living" or "sensual pleasure." Over time, it started to mean something expensive and pleasurable that is not necessary. Defined using Lomar Dictionary⁺

⁺ Note, articles that are published by companies or people I work with are tagged with the ⁺ symbol or Partner word. I’m adding this as a transparency. Previously I avoiding sharing content from partners to remain objective, but sometimes they have excellent articles that deserves being shared so to remain transparent, I’ll tag them.

Hello,

This week I spoke to the director of a 17 room hotel who had switched to fully integrated payments. I asked him why? (It can’t be that big a deal in time saved). He said the owner wants the staff to spend more time with the guests. This is the way.

Best, Martin

Clean electrolytes that support hydration
and muscle function, without the junk.
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Headless software

With AI becoming the user interface and builder of interfaces there are questions on if enterprise software and systems like PMS even need a front end. I can see both sides. Lately I had to work on text for a page. AI didn’t make the content it built the whole page ready to publish. So do we need a CMS now? Do we just need databases and APIs? History says we need interfaces. Visionaries think not. Here are two great viewpoints. Sinofsky legendary Microsoft product guy, Levie the CEO of Box com

STEVEN SINOFSKY vs. AARON LEVIE

About me: I'm a fractional CMO for large travel technology companies helping turn them into industry leaders. I'm also the co-founder of 10minutes.news a hotel news media that is unsensational, factual and keeps hoteliers updated on the industry.  

Omni Leans Into Lifestyle Branding

Omni Hotels’ partnership with Peter Millar shows how hospitality is leaning deeper into lifestyle positioning. It’s less about rooms, more about curated experiences and brand ecosystems. These collaborations can differentiate or they risk being surface-level marketing. But finding one’s niche is getting more and more important. See my column.

LIFESTYLE PARTNERSHIP

Loyalty Economics Under Pressure

The question around loyalty programs and automation is fascinating, if AI optimizes point usage, profitability models could break. These systems rely on inefficiencies. Remove friction, and margins shrink. Marriott alone has $4B in points liabilities.

LOYALTY SYSTEMS + LIABILITIES

Loewe Cracks TikTok Luxury

Loewe’s TikTok success shows that luxury can work on mass platforms, if done right. Consistency and content quality matter more than exclusivity here. It’s a shift in how luxury communicates.

LUXURY TIKTOK

Luxury Goes All-In on Sports

Luxury brands investing in sports has been a growing trend in the last few years. Probably in search for growth. Still it is interesting to see how the apparel brands are being lowered down and luxury brands are picking up the top line. Nike successfully used to be the winner’s brand. LVMH is looking to take the spot.

LUXURY SPORTS

The integration tax

The debate around unified hotel tech stacks continues vs best of breed continues. All-in-one systems risk mediocrity, but fragmentation creates inefficiencies. There’s no perfect answer, but the more I speak to people the more it seems all-in-one is the better way. One big point is the negotiating power of the hotel. Another is that there’s an increasingly high cost of integrations.

TECH STACKS

Stories that connect

The idea of telling great stories and connecting with the audience as an advertising solution isn’t new. The best salesmen are also amazing storytellers. With modern platforms there’s an opportunity for hotels to build great stories, micro stories. And maybe finding film school students to get creative could be a way. Just a thought.

AD NOSTALGIA

Travel as Identity

Apparently, travel choices are becoming expressions of identity, not just decisions based on price or loyalty. I don’t think it is a new thing. It is probably more obvious now with social media. But it has always been this way. It goes back to Grand Tours in Europe. But now one can take Ryanair to go to a luxury hotel.

IDENTITY TRAVEL

Worldcup slashing ADR

Lighthouse published data that hotels are slashing prices on the world cup. The story went into mainstream media, was converted into a story about anti-American sentiment, avoiding inflation - basically everything the media wants to hear. The reality is that the hotel industry doesn’t know how to deal with mega events. I am still looking for one mega event that was a great success in pricing. Olympics, World Cups, F1 special events etc. A computer would probably do a better job than humans on pricing these events.

THE SLASHING + MEGA EVENTS

Allbirds pivots from shoes to AI?

Allbirds, the company that made great wool sneakers but was copied by everyone else, was going broke recently. Somehow some people in consumer goods business thought that there was a new business model that didn’t include making making more money than you spend, there isn’t. But now they have changed from making good shoes to AI. And the stock market loved it. It feels like the early internet era where just adding .com to your name made you a Wall Street success. Suggested prompt to read the press release: Explain this to make like I’m a 5 year old.

NEWBIRDS

Opinion

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 professionals and point hunters, I don’t think many navigate this consciously. They might think they are booking an Aloft hotel, or a Moxy, or a Pullman. But the moment you move through the booking flow, you are no longer interacting with a “brand.” You are inside Marriott, Accor, IHG.

Which means the real competition is not brand vs brand. It is system vs system.

This also explains why scale adds up so much. Marriott alone generates around 76 million organic visits per month. Hilton adds another 59 million. Wyndham contributes 30 million. The top three already control more traffic than the remaining 33 groups combined.

It get’s quite interesting when you start mixing in the OTAs into the mix. We often hear that Airbnb is “the new hotel company.” It is a great narrative. It positions them alongside Marriott, almost as a modern equivalent. I always thought it was smart, but a little deceptive. They were always an OTA.

Anyhow, Airbnb generates around 20 million organic visits. That places it below the top six hotel groups. Expedia, “the second biggest OTA”, would rank roughly fourth below Wyndham. And yet, Airbnb’s market cap sits at around $82 billion, not far off Marriott’s $95 billion.

Markets and reality are not always aligned. I think we know that by now.

Still a fun infographic and excercise done by the 10 Minutes Team. And they’re sharing the dataset with subscribers.

Ten fun facts that stood out from the dataset:

1. The top 3 hotel groups control 56.4 percent of all organic traffic

2. The top 6 control 83.8 percent

3. The median hotel group gets less than 1 million visits

4. Marriott is 81 times larger than the median

5. Booking.com alone exceeds the combined traffic of the top 6 hotel groups, which also means more than 83.8% of the rest of the hotel groups

6. Agoda is roughly equal in size to Marriott in organic traffic, meaning Agoda alone is bigger than #1

7. OTAs collectively generate 2.9 times more traffic than hotel groups

So yes, brands still matter. But not in the way we often think. I guess everyone needs to become the number one of their niche and then these comparisons don’t matter anymore. Or do they?

• The OpenAI Soap Opera continues - Link

• The inspiration Benchmark for hospitality - Link⁺

• Playbook for the Agency of the Future - Link

• The AI Cheat-Sheet for Executives - Link

Did you know: The word "advertising" comes from the verb "advertise," which is from the Middle English "advertisen," meaning "to take notice of" or "to inform." This in turn comes from the Old French "advertir" and Latin "advertere," meaning "to turn toward." The sense of promoting products or services began around the 18th century. Defined using Lomar Dictionary⁺

⁺ Note, articles that are published by companies or people I work with are tagged with the ⁺ symbol or Partner word. I’m adding this as a transparency. Previously I avoiding sharing content from partners to remain objective, but sometimes they have excellent articles that deserves being shared so to remain transparent, I’ll tag them.

Hello,

Spring was here this week. I had forgotten what it meant to be outside in a t-shirt and still feel warm. I guess that’s the great thing with winter, we enjoy spring and summer more. Now to the newsletter.

Best, Martin

Clean electrolytes that support hydration
and muscle function, without the junk.
Find out more ➛

Is precision marketing the goal?

AI is making it possible to apparently show the right hotel to the right person, a lot of marketers and revenue managers seem to see this as the holy grail. I’m not sure it is. I think there’s a mix-up between sales and marketing. Marketing shouldn’t loose sight of making good, relevant and repetitive messaging that drives home a position and a clear interest in a brand of product. I’m not sure hyper personalization will improve revenue.

PRECISION MARKETING

About me: I'm a fractional CMO for large travel technology companies helping turn them into industry leaders. I'm also the co-founder of 10minutes.news a hotel news media that is unsensational, factual and keeps hoteliers updated on the industry.  

Boring AI is good

A push into AI-driven asset setup tackles one of the least glamorous but most painful parts of hotel operations: manual data entry. This is a good reminder that AI’s biggest wins may not be guest-facing hyper personalization, but unglamorous back of house data entry.

AI WORKFLOWS + AGENTIC CHECKINS⁺ + PMS AUTOMATIONS⁺

The Talent Gap in Aviation

Operational roles are becoming harder to fill across industries. McKinsey’s angle suggests strategy and innovation can close the gap. Hospitality is facing similar pressures, just less visibly. I think we need to celebrate people who can do things more. Those roles are going to be needed for a while still. And people who are willing and able to do physical work should be looked up to. If you have any doubts, try asking your teenage kid to take out the trash.

AVIATION TALENT

P&G brings media in-house

P&G’s move to internalize media planning seems to be a trend. I think this will be assisted or managed by AI for all the regular stuff. Then acute needs can be managed by hand - such as a Nutella pot flying through a space capsule. However this is a big shift for the big ad agencies. But as there is a constant need (see column below) an internal team seems to make sense.

MEDIA STRATEGY

Brands are built holistically

Orlando Wood’s argument that brands must be understood as coherent wholes makes sense. It isn’t consistency for the sake of consistency. He states Red Bull as a classic example. But this is super complex problem in hospitality. Buildings are inconsistent. Time wears them down. Maybe that’s why hotel brands are turning to their rewards programs as the main brand.

BRAND BUILDING

Streamers Push for more Ads

Netflix’s pricing strategy signals a clear direction: ad-supported models are becoming central, not secondary. Amazon has shown how much money can be made from ads (they make most of their profit from ads now, even more than AWS). But wasn’t this the very thing that Netflix tried to fix? Travel industry has it’s share of this. And when hotels will be selling ads on your in-room TV, let’s hope they don’t wake you up at night to show you an ad.

STREAMING ADS

Focus beats broad

Trying to attract everyone often results in attracting no one. Independent hotels that define a clear audience can sharpen their positioning and messaging significantly. Clarity creates stronger demand than compromise. It’s simple, but in the hotel industry we still love to make “everyone hotels”. Outside of the ultra-luxury brands there are a few like Zoku, citizenM, who built hotels around clear audiences. I remember teaching a class on hotel marketing and telling hoteliers to figure out how they will be the best hotel in ______ and sticking to that.

TARGET AUDIENCE + HOW TO FIND HOTEL USP

The Rise of trust over price

Apparently, 83% of travelers prioritize trust over price, that’s a major shift in value perception. I don’t have the data how this was calculated. If you ask people “do your prefer trust over price” I think they’ll answer trust 8 times out of 10. Also what is trust when you’re booking a hotel? The reviews? ratings? Photos? - interesting still.

TRUST ECONOMY

Still asking who owns the Guest?

The obsession with ownership of the guest is funny in the hotel industry. In the end the guest comes to your building, stays in a physical room you provided, in a bed you prepared. Of course the hotel owns the relationship. The others are merely routing. But do try to make sure you can reach out to them again later.

GUEST RELATIONSHIP

AI Is Driving OTA Growth

Algorithms increasingly direct users toward OTA platforms. This was predictable. They have standardized inventory. Anyone building a global system wants a single pipe for all the data. I just can’t imagine a scenario where having hundreds of different data feeds will be a better option for AI platforms. Hotels should focus on the long-tail searches. “Hotel within 20 minute walk from Microsoft offices in London”, there’s a lot more to be done here.

OTA AI IMPACT

Opinion

There is no such thing as “Done” in Branding

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 answer is uncomfortable for most founders and startup CEOs. Building a brand isn’t a project you finish, it is something you do to stay relevant - all the time.

Here’s the typical Founder scenario. A company builds a fantastic piece of software or a revolutionary physical product, and they funnel every single cent into R&D. They believe that if the product is good enough, the world will beat a path to their door.

They’re wrong.

The company I mentioned above is Coca-Cola. And here is the “brutal” reality: for decades, in blind taste tests, customers ranked their product second best. Yet, they remained the global leader. Why? Because while a good product gets you in the door, the brand wins the championship.

Coca-Cola doesn’t sell brown carbonated water; they sell “happiness,” “refreshment,” and “legacy.” That costs $5 billion a year to maintain.

But, investing in a brand is painful. It’s brutal on the balance sheet because, unlike a direct performance campaign, you don’t see that money come back next month. You see it 10 years from now when a customer chooses you instinctively over a cheaper, “better” competitor.

The truth is if you aren’t comfortable with the relentless, expensive, and long-term cost of brand building, you should probably aim lower. The majority of founders, CEOs and CFOs are not comfortable with it. The few who are? They’re the ones who are successful. And as we know, the majority of startups fail - and this is key reason why it is rarely the product (well unless the product is a scam).

There are no shortcuts here. The brands that survive are the ones that never stop reminding their target audience that they exist.

If you are building a company and you want success:

1. Invest heavily in your brand and accept that it is the rent you pay for mindshare.

2. Accept obscurity.

There is no “Option 3” where your product is so good that marketing becomes unnecessary. Even the king of the mountain is still spending $5 billion a year just to keep the crown polished.

If you want to see success, stop treating your brand like an after-thought and start treating it like your most expensive, and most valuable, asset. At the end of the day, people can copy your features. They can’t copy your brand position.

• What is a Brand: Stephen King - Link

• The inspiration Benchmark for hospitality - Link⁺

• Brands investing in Space - Link

• Becoming a hotel trendsetter- Link

Did you know: The word "marketing" comes from the noun “market,” which traces back to the Latin word “mercatus” meaning “a trade” or “place of trade.” The addition of “-ing” creates a word for the activity of going to market or buying and selling goods. Over time, the meaning expanded from the act of selling in markets to the complex modern system of promoting and selling products or services. Defined using Lomar Dictionary⁺

⁺ Note, articles that are published by companies or people I work with are tagged with the ⁺ symbol or Partner word. I’m adding this as a transparency. Previously I avoiding sharing content from partners to remain objective, but sometimes they have excellent articles that deserves being shared so to remain transparent, I’ll tag them.

Hello,

There is quite a lot to talk about this week. So I tried to put more source articles. And since this is easter weekend in many countries, maybe it gives you more to read on those long mornings.

Best, Martin

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AI is How Europe Plans Travels

European travelers are increasingly using AI in the inspiration phase. In fact it seems to be their main use of AI. That’s a big shift, because it moves influence earlier in the funnel. The urgency to find ways to be relevant and present on AI search is growing. I don’t have a magic wand and so far very few people do. But one thing is for sure, the more accurate and relevant data about your hotel is available the more chance it has of being discovered.

AI TRAVEL PLANNING

About me: I'm a fractional CMO for large travel technology companies helping turn them into industry leaders. I'm also the co-founder of 10minutes.news a hotel news media that is unsensational, factual and keeps hoteliers updated on the industry.  

Major Events Revenue Mgmt

Strong ticket sales but weak hotel bookings is a surprising disconnect. I wonder if we’re suffering from the standard mega-events revenue management dillemma. Paris Olympics, Vegas F1, London Olympics etc etc. Apparently if one would leave the standard revenue management rules operate it would work better than working out exceptions, at least thats what some professionals told me.

WORLD CUP DEMAND

Airbnb Gets a Boring Addition

Airport transfers are another step toward Airbnb becoming a full travel platform. Airport pickups are boring. With all the ride hailing apps even more so. But then that’s how Booking became big, through a lot of boring additions. Is being unsensational the recipe to success?

AIRBNB EXPANSION

Booking Windows are Cancellation Opportunities

A 40-day booking window with a 39-day cancellation window says it all. OTAs (one in particular) has made bookings a placeholder thing. Like that tentative meeting on your agenda. Several companies have created algorithms to predict cancellation risk, but I don’t see a lot of them in use. Encouraging people to cancel earlier could help. But then I guess it is human nature to hope that everything will be fine.

BOOKING BEHAVIOR

ChatGPT is picking winners

The evolution of ChatGPT into a recommendation engine changes how shopping decisions are made. If AI picks the “best option,” for hotels it will become even more important to give more data, details etc. For now it is related to shopping. But this will inevitable move to travel. And likely will become a cost per click.

AI COMMERCE + GETTING CITATED + OPENAI

There are only 2 choices

Luxury is booming while economy struggles. The middle is getting squeezed, forcing clear positioning decisions. As I have referred to before, there are only two choices when shopping. The best or the cheapest. The cheapest is objective. The best is subjective. Positioning work is how to place your brand as the best. The best in what?

K-SHAPED MARKET

Consistency is luxury

Good interview, argues that in luxury it isn’t personalization that makes the difference it is consistency. That luxury isn’t about creativity, it’s about reliability. That’s a hard truth in an industry where consultants sell storytelling as the big deal. But consistency is also the hardest to scale for a hotel chain. So storytelling is easier to sell.

LUXURY CONSISTENCY + PERSONALIZATION HYPE

Belmond Wins by Slowing Down

Belmond’s strategy is almost contrarian. Slowness as a feature, not a bug. That’s a strong brand signal in a world obsessed with speed. Sometimes differentiation is about resisting trends. I love it, as long as the slow down isn’t about waiting in line for hours (Disneyland already owns that).

SLOW HOSPITALITY

Follower counts don’t matter

The shift from follower count to interest in social media marketing changes things. Now it is about generating truly interesting posts that people will be interested in. We could say, less spam, more information? Hotels need to think like creators, not just brands.

CONTENT DISCOVERY

Social Media’s tobacco moment

This was bound to happen. Whenever one designs addiction into one’s product there are going to see long term problems. The idea that most social media companies and current entertainment platforms measure their success on time spent on their platforms incentivizes the addiction concept. Curious where this goes from here.

BIG TOBACCO MOMENT?

Opinion

Secret software layer nobody talks about but AI might absorb

We keep hearing that AI will replace SaaS. That agentic systems and coding tools will make software obsolete. Maybe they will (but there’s so many questions on that). However, there is one layer of “software” that nobody talks about which is an earlier candidate for replacement.

It is Excel.

More specifically, it is what Excel and spreadsheets represent inside companies. That invisible layer of problem solving that sits between nothing and real software. They are quick-fixes (that often become super complex over time).

Every company runs on it. Small companies, large enterprises, even complex organizations or F1 teams that should not logically depend on spreadsheets still do. Not because it is ideal, but because it works, fast.

This quasi coding environment. It lets anyone build input and output systems, dashboards, calculators, validation layers, data correction tools, and small operational workflows with logic, macros, pivots and more. It is where problems that are too small for engineering teams still get solved.

And that is the key point. These problems are real, but they are not big enough to justify proper software. They also change constantly, which makes them even harder to formalize. So they live in this flexible, messy, highly customizable space. Which most companies depend upon to function.

This is the layer AI is already starting to absorb. What used to be a spreadsheet passed around internally is now becoming a small “webapp”. Coded after that last meeting where the problem was identified.

A simple example is something like a salary or tax calculator. Historically, this lives in Excel. Now, the same thing can be turned into a quick app with a basic interface, hosted somewhere, accessible to anyone in the company. This shift is already happening.

Over time these things will get bigger and bigger, will need to connect to APIs, will need actual structure. Then they’ll probably turn into real systems. But for that there will need to be environments with security, API management etc.

Microsoft has a structural advantage, Google is not far behind, with its Workspace, and environments. The real bottleneck is no longer “can you build this” but “where do we build this.”

Excel will be around for a while, but the use of Excel/spreadsheets as the programable database, interface etc will probably change with AI coding. Now everyone can built some quick app solution.

So really don’t think the first real wave of AI disruption is SaaS. All these apps will need to get stable data from somewhere.

• Claude Code, friends keep talking about it - Link

• The inspiration Benchmark for hospitality - Link⁺

• Media industry: distribution vs direct dillemma - Link

• Artists versus Founders - Link

• ATMs didn’t kill Bank Teller jobs - Link

Did you know: The word "addiction" comes from the Latin word "addictio," which means "a giving over" or "a surrender." In Roman times, it described being strongly devoted, often due to a legal judgment. Over time, the word began to describe being strongly and often harmfully attached to something, usually referring first to drugs or alcohol and later to other behaviors. Defined using Lomar Dictionary⁺

⁺ Note, articles that are published by companies or people I work with are tagged with the ⁺ symbol or Partner word. I’m adding this as a transparency. Previously I avoiding sharing content from partners to remain objective, but sometimes they have excellent articles that deserves being shared so to remain transparent, I’ll tag them.

Hello,

It’s super hard to keep up with everything AI, it’s probably a full-time job. And it wouldn’t be a super productive one because by the time one has mastered one solution, the next one is released. But Google launched a cool system called Stitch. Anyhow, back to the newsletter.

Best, Martin

                                Klairhaus, the perfect employee and customer gifts. 
                                     Quality, crafted, every day items for the office.
                                                               Find out more ➛

Google Maps Enters AI

Google’s “Ask Maps” feature shows how AI is becoming the way to interact with tech. In contrast, searching on my Settings having to type the exact word “Displays” to adjust the screen settings is becoming frustrating. We’re going to move to from keywords to concepts. All tech will need to adopt this in their UI.

AI MAPS

About me: I'm a fractional CMO for large travel technology companies helping turn them into industry leaders. I'm also the co-founder of 10minutes.news a hotel news media that is unsensational, factual and keeps hoteliers updated on the industry.  

AI Agents in Travel

According to IDC prediction, AI agents will be central in planning trips and dining experiences this year already. They predict fewer clicks, fewer choices, and potentially fewer brands in the decision set. A lot of this has been predicted already, I don’t think it is this year, and I think the “fewer brands” isn’t how history goes. See my column below.

AI AGENTS

Banks Entering Travel

It seems banks are emerging as serious players in travel distribution, leveraging their customer data. A discussion that they’re competing with OTAs exists as well, but where is the best inventory? I think it is a smart brand extension. As I write below, brand trust will be a growing need.

BANKS IN TRAVEL

Hotel AI That Actually Does Work

Continuing example of an AI assistant actually usable in hospitality (still a skunkworks project) building a full housekeeping schedule in minutes actually doing operational grunt work. These small efficiencies compound quickly in hotels. It’s not glamorous, but it’s exactly where AI wins. Many say AI will replace SaaS, I think it will replace Excel.

AI OPERATIONS

AI-Native Services Attract Billions

VC interest in AI-native service providers is a major shift in how tech and services will be built and delivered. Basically the idea is that VCs want to invest in service companies that are built using AI, the thinking is that for every dollar spent on software 6 are spent on services. So they want to capture that market. So are we going to move from revenue management systems to revenue agencies? Or will it become $1 for tech and $2 for services?

AI SERVICES

World Cup Demand Reality Check

Despite the hype, RevPAR growth for the 2026 World Cup is expected to be modest at 1.7%. Big events don’t automatically mean big profits. I never saw this more clearly than for the Paris Olympics. This is where AI and a proper revenue management system not managed by humans with all their emotions would have made a difference.

WORLD CUP DEMAND

PMS Change Is About Mindset

Switching a PMS isn’t just a tech upgrade, it’s an organizational reset. I did one once, vowed never to do it again. In hindsight I wished the provider had been there to help manage the transition, help me foresee the mess it would make. Guide me through the process. Because as I wrote last week, managing the tech was really not my biggest concern on day-to-day basis.

PMS CHANGE

Social Media Crowding Tourism

Tourism is increasingly driven by expectations created online, not reality on the ground. I guess that’s the modern version of “Pictures from Italy” by Dickens which probably crowded lots Italy at the time (probably none of France). Destinations like Hallstatt show how viral exposure can overwhelm infrastructure which gives that famous impression of “over-tourism”. But I think everyone will always want to capture the instagram shot. It’s like trophy travel.

TOURISM EXPECTATIONS

Google’s Quiet Agent

Google is rolling out agent-like capabilities directly on some Pixel phones. I personally think this is where the agents will primarily sit. Things like OpenClaw, Claude App etc will probably become parts of our phones and computers with access to our files and some embedded security items. At least if you delete all your files, then it is your fault and not some cloud company. Feels like a slow but strategic play for Google. If Apple is working on the same strategy - that’s even slower.

GOOGLE AGENTS

AI Didn’t Kill OTAs (Yet)

OpenAI stepping back from bookings boosted OTA stocks, but that’s likely a temporary signal. OTAs may survive, but their role could shift significantly. I’ve written about this a few times including my analysis of the possible options.

OTA FUTURE

Opinion

Will AI kill brands? or make them stronger?

There’s a growing narrative that AI, OTAs, and marketplaces will commoditize everything. In that theory brands will not matter because users can simply “search through to the product” and pick the best option. In theory, that sounds true. In practice, it quickly breaks down.

Try searching for a simple vitamin on Amazon.

You’ll find dozens, sometimes hundreds, of nearly identical products. Prices range wildly. Some have 30,000 reviews (are those mostly fake?), others have 300 (is it unreliable?). The photos look polished, but is that just AI or a great designer? Basically that commodity idea is just a sea of unfiltered (or sponsored) choice.

When the stakes are low, maybe you take a risk. But when you’re putting something into your body, or booking a $2500 hotel stay, you want to trust. Not data. Not AI summaries. Trust.

And trust, today, is still built through brands.

There’s an assumption that AI will solve this by aggregating and summarizing information better than humans. I’m not convinced. If platforms like Google, Amazon, Booking, or Tripadvisor haven’t solved fake reviews at scale, it’s unlikely a generic LLM will magically figure it out. In fact AI systems, trained on aggregated opinions, could be even easier to manipulate. Flood the system with enough “good” signals, and the AI will confidently recommend the wrong product.

Currently LLMs optimize for what is most said (it becomes the most probable suggestion), not necessarily what is most true.

So where does that leave us?

Back with brands.

Take Apple. When they release the Macbook Neo, people don’t see it as “cheap.” They see it as “accessible premium.” The same product from an unknown manufacturer, even with identical specs (OK the they wont have MacOS), they would struggle to get attention. Not because of the product, but because of the lack of trust.

And a hotel stay frequently costs a lot more than a Macbook.

As AI compresses discovery into fewer options, the choice will be more opaque. Fewer touchpoints. Less differentiation. More reliance on invisible ranking systems. In that world, brands become shortcuts for decision-making. And if we look back at internet history, that is exactly how Google search evolved too. After letting everything roll up to the top of search pages, after a while authority became a key point. And isn’t authority another concept for a brand?

Ironically, the more the internet promises to democratize everything, the more we need brands to navigate it.

As I wrote in my First principles of marketing article. The moment you have more than one of something, you need marketing. And if you do marketing consistently enough, you end up with a brand.

I don’t think AI will be the exception, I think it will probably reinforce it.

• A tool to write a better investor pitch - Link

• The inspiration Benchmark for hospitality - Link⁺

• Using Nano Banana for Architecture - Link

• Soap Operas in the Tiktok age - Link

• Nothing goes viral by accident - Link

Did you know: The word "brand" comes from the Old English "brand," which meant "burning" or "a mark made by burning." Historically, people marked livestock with fire-heated tools to show ownership. Over time, the meaning changed from a physical mark to representing the identity or image of a product or company. Defined using Lomar Dictionary⁺

⁺ Note, articles that are published by companies or people I work with are tagged with the ⁺ symbol or Partner word. I’m adding this as a transparency. Previously I avoiding sharing content from partners to remain objective, but sometimes they have excellent articles that deserves being shared so to remain transparent, I’ll tag them.

Hello,

Less news this week, probably because I’m not a political commentator. One thing I did want to comment on was how technology needs to become a utility in the hospitality industry. Be less present. See my column on why.

Best, Martin

                                Klairhaus, the perfect employee and customer gifts. 
                                     Quality, crafted, every day items for the office.
                                                               Find out more ➛

Real Hotel AI Skunkworks

A great example of a hotel finding a way to start a skunkworks project with AI. There are a lot of things in AI that dont work. Try building a cool website with Claude, it works really well - then try to correct a typo - it’s painful. There are many things that are science projects. But getting someone to start improving workflows is a great way to get started. Start skunkworks projects. Find local enthusiasts who can help you try stuff out. I don’t think anyone can “teach” AI. You need to try it.

AI OPERATIONS

About me: I'm a fractional CMO for large travel technology companies helping turn them into industry leaders. I'm also the co-founder of 10minutes.news a hotel news media that is unsensational, factual and keeps hoteliers updated on the industry.  

Google testing new Hotel Search

With the Digital Markets Act forcing fairness, Google is reportedly changing search results even more. While this is making for a awkward and archaic user experience in Europe (plenty of features just don’t make it here) it is interesting for hotel direct revenue to not rely on just one channel. Google, thanks to excellent execution (and a bit more advantages) had managed to own the majority of direct revenue channels. For hotels, this could mean a shift in traffic sources, and possibly less dependence on Google over time. It’s a regulatory move, so I’m cautious about my expectations, so far most regulatory moves only drove more consolidation of power.

GOOGLE SEARCH

Bleisure Booming

Bleisure travel is no longer a niche, it is becoming standard behavior. Travelers are extending trips and spending more on experiences. For hotels, this is a clear opportunity to rethink packages, pricing, and services around longer stays. The line between business and leisure is fading fast. Will that become a hotel category? Concepts like Zoku have a clear advantage here.

BLEISURE TRAVEL

Luxury Investment Keeps Growing

Performance of luxury hotels was never the big pull, yet luxury hotels continue to attract strong investor interest. The segment remains one of the most resilient and desirable asset classes. It is a great asset and a fantastic vanity project for those who can afford it. Most the best hotels I have stayed at were not great on balance sheet, but someone with enough resources kept it going. The real-estate asset and brand becomes the investment in many cases.

LUXURY INVESTMENT

Travel Tech’s Adoption Problem

Interesting discussion about travel tech’s invested $700M and only 2% adoption. Everyone knows change is coming, but we don’t know where it is going exactly. The irony is that once adoption tips, it will likely happen very fast and there will be winners and loosers. So do companies go the Meta route of investing billions into the metaverse and then shutting it down. Or wait it out. I think there’s a middle ground. Also tech isn’t the biggest problem hotels face (see column).

TECH ADOPTION

The Website Is Splitting?

There’s an idea that hotel websites will split, one for humans, one for AI agents. Discovery is moving upstream into AI interfaces, while websites may become transactional backends. It would be a fundamental shift in how digital presence works. But website for AI agents are wholly inefficient, agents prefer an API or MCP connection. Discovery is moving to the AI chatbot layer, it seems inevitable. But how does one get the “vibe” of the hotel? Will AI generate a video for the user?

AI INTERFACES

What Hotels Can Learn from First Class

Every excellent hotelier knows this. It isn’t luxury fixtures that make the Air France La Première shows how far hospitality can go when every detail is intentional. It is not just luxury, it is orchestration of experience. Hotels can learn a lot here, especially around personalization and emotional impact. At that level, guests don’t remember features, they remember how it felt.

LUXURY EXPERIENCE

Everyone wants to be an ad platform

Marriott and United are pushing a simple idea: travelers spend more while traveling, so that’s when you should target them. Some years ago, when it became obvious how much money Amazon was making on ads, the writing was on the wall. Everyone wants to become an ad platform and start printing money. Today most of Amazon’s profits are from ads. They are pivoting from a logistics company to an ad company. And hotel brands are doing the same. If the ads are relevant, why not. But the risk is we turn into some level of Idiocracy.

TRAVEL ADVERTISING

Opinion

In hotels, tech should be a utility

There is sometimes a misconception in the hotel technology vendor world: that technology sits at the center of hospitality operations. From the perspective of a technology vendor, that assumption feels natural. After all, the industry is full of systems: PMS, POS, payment, channel managers, RMS, booking engines promising to optimize everything.

From inside the tech ecosystem, it can look as if the hotel runs on software.

But from inside the hotel, much less so.

For many owners, a hotel is primarily a real estate investment that should grow in value over time. Profitability matters, of course, but it isn’t the only metric. The building, the location, the brand positioning, and the experience of the space matter enormously.

And unfortunately technology does not move the building to a better location and it does not suddenly turn an average property into an iconic one.

When a great designer creates an iconic hotel, technology rarely plays a role reality is almost all iconic hotels had non-iconic or even legacy tech. I do believe designers should expand to include tech in their designs. The savvy hoteliers think that way.

On the operations side, the daily concerns of a general manager are not centered around technology. Training new employees has a massive impact on guest satisfaction. Things like managing housekeeping quality, making sure linen arrives on time, ensuring rooms are ready when guests check in, dealing with guest complaints, coordinating maintenance issues, running food and beverage operations. All these consume more bandwidth than tech.

These are messy, human, logistical challenges.

Technology can help at the margins. It might improve efficiency by ten percent, perhaps twenty percent in some areas if implemented well (RFID linen is amazing, but is the improvement always worth the cost?). Very few of the real operational headaches in a hotel can simply be “solved” by a piece of software. And for those who haven’t managed a hotel, I often characterize being a hotel GM (of smaller hotels) as the most random job I have ever done. It is essentially firefighting all the time.

That is where the tech narrative sometimes disconnects from reality.

There are areas where technology truly is essential. Distribution is the obvious one. Revenue management, channel management, websites, booking engines, payment infrastructure, these systems are critical. Hotels absolutely need a property management system. They need reliable financial systems. They need connectivity with the broader travel ecosystem.

But from the hotel’s perspective, these systems should behave like utilities. They should work reliably, quietly, and largely stay out of the way.

No general manager wakes up planning to sit in front of their PMS to manage their hotel.

The best hotel technology should behave like utilities. It is essential, but it is not something anyone wants to think about. When it works well, nobody notices. When it fails, everybody notices.

And perhaps that is the uncomfortable truth for many technology providers. Hospitality revolves around people delivering experiences inside physical spaces and tech is like water, it should be there when you need it and not when you don’t.

Sometimes the best innovation is simply getting out of the way.

As a tech industry we need to do better as helping hotels need to do less with our products and more with the guests.

• How social media stopped being social - Link

• The inspiration Benchmark for hospitality - Link⁺

• Why brands go bad - Link

• Apple adapting their marketing to their neo audience - Link

• Should a brand pick a side? I think not - Link

Did you know: The word "Hospitality" comes from the Latin word "hospitalitas," meaning "friendliness to guests," which is formed from “hospes” meaning “guest” or “host.” Over time, the word came into Old French as "hospitalité" before entering English. Defined using Lomar Dictionary⁺

⁺ Note, articles that are published by companies or people I work with are tagged with the ⁺ symbol or Partner word. I’m adding this as a transparency. Previously I avoiding sharing content from partners to remain objective, but sometimes they have excellent articles that deserves being shared so to remain transparent, I’ll tag them.

Hello,

I had a bit of time to look at what I saw at ITB. It a bit hard to summarize, because there is just so much. But I did my best to give my impressions below.

Best, Martin

                                Klairhaus, the perfect employee and customer gifts. 
                                     Quality, crafted, every day items for the office.
                                                               Find out more ➛

No more shopping in ChatGPT

OpenAI appears to be scaling back its plan to integrate shopping directly into ChatGPT. I’ve commented on this before they will not want to own the cancellations, over-bookings and all the other problems related to bookings and shopping. I think the best predictor of AI is Google and Hotel Ads, they’ll want to operate as a meta-search. Markus Busch has written a great analysis on Google’s work here.

CHATGPT COMMERCE + GOOGLE TRIED THIS BEFORE

About me: I'm a fractional CMO for large travel technology companies helping turn them into industry leaders. I'm also the co-founder of 10minutes.news a hotel news media that is unsensational, factual and keeps hoteliers updated on the industry.  

AI at ITB Berlin

AI dominated the conversation at ITB Berlin this year. Operators are increasingly exploring AI for operations, marketing, and productivity, but there’s discussion that we’re loosing the human side of hospitality. I don’t think that’s a problem yet, but considering some hotel chains - we shouldn’t ignore the possibility. See more in my column.

AI IN HOSPITALITY

Reddit’s Influence on Hotel Bookings

Reddit has become a powerful, influence on hotel bookings. The candid peer conversations are shaping brand reputations in ways that traditional marketing cannot touch. That sounds like TripAdvisor 20 years ago ;-) but this time it is super unstructured. Reddit ads aren’t cheap - but could be good for top level inspiration, I wonder how many agencies are using it despite the inevitable complaints about ROI.

REDDIT TRAVEL INFLUENCE

Data vs Marketing

Digital marketing promised perfect measurability, and in many ways it delivered. But it also led to an over-reliance on data where people spend more time number crunching than creating great ideas. With AI this is going to accelerate. Every decision will be based on A/B tests, creativity will become secondary. The content will become the same for everyone. We’re going to go back to blue logos on white background?

DATA DRIVEN MARKETING + META CREATIVE STRATEGY

Dubai

The rumors of Dubai’s rapid demise are greatly exaggerated in my opinion. The proximity to Iran was never a secret. The risk existed for some time, in fact it was one of the primary risks related to real-estate investments in the city. There are very valid concerns and there are attacks. For an area which was known as one of the safest, the shock is real. But to say the dream is shattered is pushing it.

DUBAI HOTEL NEWS

Regulators and Hotel Data Sharing

UK regulators are investigating whether major hotel groups used benchmarking data from STR to indirectly coordinate pricing behavior. All it would take is one call to one RMS provider to understand that, if they’re not using STR data they’re scraping online data and they’d be surprised to see how much pricing FOMO happens in our industry. I wonder how they pick their battles.

HOTEL DATA REGULATION

Long Serif Fonts = AI startup?

There was a beautiful trend in typography this year: Long serif fonts. It gave some humanity to this magical yet opaque world of AI. But this is the problem with design trends. Everybody gets on the train and now we have a stereotype style. Grainy gradients and long serif fonts have become the trademark of early 2026 AI startups. At least it is easy for brand positioning.

VOICE AI STARTUP

The proof that names don’t matter

I’ve often argued that the name of your company doesn’t matter, as long as you are comfortable with it, that’s enough. The rest is a problem of branding. The evidence of this is the car industry. Literally the worst names, yet those companies became huge global brands that are recognized by kids (who wont own one for another 15 years). Bayerische Motoren Werke is not a good name, neither is Build Your Dreams, the list goes on.

MOST VALUABLE CAR BRANDS

“Boring” Innovation?

Putting POS, Spa and PMS on iPads isn’t new. Lots of people have done it at least individually. Selling solutions on Ipads isn’t new either. Though most prefer custom hardware. Building payment solutions within mobile devices isn’t new either. But maybe combining all of these boring things, into an eco-system might be the non-sexy innovation that our industry needs.

IPADS AND PMS⁺

Opinion

ITB, Still the best show

Every year, when I walk into ITB Berlin, I have the same thought: this is the show of our industry (especially when the weather was like this year). Its a reminder that hospitality and travel are more than just businesses, its people who genuinely love the industry. You can even feel it in the subway on the way to the show.

Of course, this year again (like everywhere else) AI was unavoidable.

You see it on almost every stand, in almost every pitch, in almost every conversation. Some companies are doing genuinely impressive work. Interestingly, the most practical use cases I saw were in revenue management and analytics. That’s where AI seems to be moving beyond buzzwords and actually helping people make better decisions. Next step we need to bring in all the hotel’s data, CRM, F&B, Finance etc etc.

Also a lot of the AI labels are what I would call “investor AI”. Adding “AI” to your story is a requirement to attract funding. The problem is that investors and customers are not the same audience. Investors want to hear that your technology stack is cutting-edge. Customers, on the other hand, couldn’t care less if your system runs on AI, React, JavaScript, COBOL, or something invented last week.

They care about one thing: does it solve their problem? And these two narratives get mixed up, companies end up using their successful investor decks to try to sell to customers, and customers can’t figure out why the solutions matters.

Another trend that stood out to me is the continued rise of platforms. Multi-solution companies are clearly becoming dominant service providers in the hospitality tech ecosystem. Many companies are building an “all-in-one” solution or aggregating multiple products into a single platform. And I think this is a good thing for the customer.

But, it’s becoming harder and harder to understand what these companies actually do.

You walk up to a stand and hear something like: “We optimize your hotel’s performance through a unified ecosystem of intelligent AI solutions.” That sounds great, but I still don’t really know what you do.

Maybe we need a new version of Simon Sinek’s talk, but instead of Start With Why, we need Start With How. Sometimes simply explaining what and how you do it is really practical.

Then there was quite a few revenue management solutions, some new ones, some just had bigger stands. A conversation with a long-time industry friend made me reflect on RM as a discipline. It can sometimes feel like a tribal and somewhat idealistic world, full of deeply held beliefs about how pricing should work. Each convinced to have their own secret sauce that is the right way. Apparently there are approx 70,000 revenue managers in the world, HSMAI has nearly 5000 members. It’s not a huge TAM. Of course one can say one will grow that, but will we really?

For many non-experts, the obvious question is, if great RMSs exists, why hasn’t pricing been fully automated yet? Is it technology? Culture? Ego? Fear of losing control, or losing jobs?

I noticed that halls are starting to cluster around solutions, 8.1 is revenue and marketing, 10.1 is becoming the payments tech. Tech is becoming a big part of ITB. It used to be just a hall 8.1 now there are 3-4 halls.

My biggest regret at ITB, as always, is the number of people I didn’t manage to see. The deeper conversations that never quite happened. I had several, but there simply isn’t enough time.

But I’ve come to realize that maybe ITB isn’t really about that. ITB is where we remind each other that behind all the articles, the newsletters, the Linkedin posts, we are still very real people.

• 100 Years of Solitude: AI and Hotel Commercial Optimization - Link

• The inspiration guide for hospitality - Link⁺

• Invisible Apps Designing Brands for the Agentic Era - Link

• Death of Spotify? - Link

• The comment section of Netflix Paramount deal - Link

Did you know: The word "platform" comes from the Old French "plateforme," meaning "flat form or ground." The word is made up of "plat" (flat) and "forme" (form, shape). It was first used in English in the 16th century to describe a flat, raised surface, and its meanings expanded over time to include political, technical, and digital uses. Defined using Lomar Dictionary⁺

⁺ Note, articles that are published by companies or people I work with are tagged with the ⁺ symbol or Partner word. I’m adding this as a transparency. Previously I avoiding sharing content from partners to remain objective, but sometimes they have excellent articles that deserves being shared so to remain transparent, I’ll tag them.

Hello,

Somehow it seems a lot of people suddenly considered that travel and tech’s future is uncertain and many stocks took a hit. It was bound to happen, we don’t now where the AI cards will land. A lot of things will get shifted around. But fundamentals such as great service are likely to stay.

Looking forward to ITB, hopefully a lot of new inspiration there.

Best, Martin

                                Klairhaus, the perfect employee and customer gifts. 
                                     Quality, crafted, every day items for the office.
                                                               Find out more ➛

Things to learn from Ralph Lauren

There’s a really interesting analysis of Ralph Lauren and how they’re navigating the current retail uncertainties. How they’ve positioned their brand and managed their distribution. First point was to make the brand safe. Then tackle distribution while keeping rates healthy. Maybe some inspiration for hotel brands.

SELLING THROUGH CHAOS

About me: I'm a fractional CMO for large travel technology companies helping turn them into industry leaders. I'm also the co-founder of 10minutes.news a hotel news media that is unsensational, factual and keeps hoteliers updated on the industry.  

Smart Money Shifting to Hospitality

An interesting take, but I wouldn’t jump to conclusions just yet. The theory is that for fifteen years, investors chased software, but AI flattens digital differentiation, thus “smart money” is moving into physical hospitality. This is a possibility, but I wouldn’t discount software because of the current uncertainty.

HOSPITALITY INVESTMENT TRENDS

Writing was sacred at Amazon is AI breaking that?

I’ve always loved Amazon’s memo culture worked because it forced clarity. People I work with probably get annoyed with the fact that I write more than I do meetings, Writing helps condense, it also help ensure things don’t get forgotten. If AI makes it too easy to produce beautiful words the danger is volume replacing thinking. Does AI actually make the concept clearer or just fluff it up?

AI WRITING

The End of Airbnb Search Box Era

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky predicts that apps won’t even have search boxes in three years. Instead of browsing lists, travelers will describe an intent, and AI will build the journey. For hoteliers, this means your data must be structured perfectly for AI to “find” you without a human typing your name. For some time now there’s been discussions about attribute selling. OTAs never really got on board, maybe this is where they get leap-frogged? (they’ll probably adapt).

AGENTIC TRAVEL FUTURE + ATTRIBUTE BASED SELLING

Asset light, Accor analysis

Accor was the latest chain to move away from real-estate to services. This analysis is short and interesting on what it meant financially. As mentioned below about brands and hotels feeling like cutting rooms. I wonder the impact that asset light may/may not have on hotel brands. Could be positive as more freedom to ensure hotels meet standards, but I wonder.

7-YEAR PLAN

OTAs, GDS - valuations

I’m not a financial analyst. But we don’t need to be to see that OTAs and the main GDS players stock market prices are having a rough time. Is it a correction or is it just temporary market uncertainty? A lot of saas are getting hit with the “is SaaS dead” narrative, most of that narrative is useless hype, as Ben Affleck said - it mostly serves the AI companies who can use it to fundraise. Excel, Zapier, Shortcuts didn’t kill travel.

SABRE STOCK PRICE

In Hotel Tech, integrations are the moat

A lot of “hotel tech innovation” dies before it gets a chance to really go to market. While there are issues with CRS and PMS who gatekeep and profit from their positions. There’s also the very little understood fact that the moat of any tech product in the hotel industry is the number of integrations. You may have the best product but in the hugely fragmented hotel tech space, if you can’t connect you dont matter.

TECH INTEGRATION

Travel Agents vs Operators

There’s an argument for executive travel to “stop booking trips and start owning outcomes.” Premium service can still be genuinely premium, even in an era of self-serve everything. But will people pay for it enough to make it worth it? I think there’s a model where less premium service works for a broader amount of people, the travel assistant.

EXECUTIVE TRAVEL

Hospitality Shouldn’t Feel Like a “Cutting Room”

Brand storytelling is great, but the real test is whether the guest actually feels the story in the moments that matter, arrival, service recovery, little surprises. This article is a useful reminder that “experience” can’t be a slide deck concept; it has to show up in operations, training, and decision-making. But it takes time and work to get all these elements aligned.

BRAND EXPERIENCE

Opinion

Bookings’ AI orchestration vision

OTA and GDS stocks have dipped, AI might take over trip planning, and suddenly the future doesn’t look as guaranteed as it did six months ago. We’re seeing this in software as well. New uncertainties, and investors begin to ask: what is the real moat here?

I’m not a financial analyst, so take this as industry observation.

A few weeks ago, I argued that for OTAs to win in this next phase and remain more than pipes, they would need to deliver a substantially better experience than what exists today. In their current form, their future added value is relatively small. Aggregation, filtering, checkout. AI will be doing that better.

However, and this is where I think Booking.com’s CEO is correct, the real opportunity is not search. It’s orchestration. That would be a substantially better experience than what the AI platforms can deliver.

Owning the complete, journey in real time: flights, hotels, payments, changes, cancellations, disruptions, would be quite amazing. Well basically what a great travel agent does. If you miss your flight, your hotel adjusts. If plans shift, the system recalculates. That requires infrastructure, connectivity, payments, customer service, and a willingness to handle upset customers at 2am.

My theory is that this would be better managed as a gig-economy thing. But Booking seems to think they can build that as a tech product.

AI platforms will not want to refund disputes, fraud management, relocation logistics, rainy weather, over-bookings, and angry calls. I think whoever is willing to own the entire complexity of travel, not just the inspiration phase, still has a real role to play. And that is where most of the travel experience happens. At the end of the day, inspiration generates bookings but it is a tiny part of the experience.

In summary, their vision makes sense - but then as we know, ideas aren’t the hard part.

• Harvard Dropped a Free AI & Prompting Course - Link

• The inspiration guide for hospitality - Link⁺

• Maybe AI Doesn’t Reduce Work—It Intensifies It - Link

• Who is Peter Saville - Link

• Hospitality is Eating Luxury’s Lunch - Link

Orchestration: Definition 3. The automated arrangement, coordination, and management of complex computer systems, software, or services. Defined using Lomar Dictionary⁺

⁺ Note, articles that are published by companies or people I work with are tagged with the ⁺ symbol or Partner word. I’m adding this as a transparency. Previously I avoiding sharing content from partners to remain objective, but sometimes they have excellent articles that deserves being shared so to remain transparent, I’ll tag them.

Hello,

Probably I should call this edition the human edition. It’s funny how so many viewpoints are either/or. Between AI, automation and people, it isn’t that. And we’ve been at this debate for over a century. Also did you know that a century ago, American’s saw tipping as a European thing that was pointless? See my column.

Best, Martin

                                Klairhaus, the perfect employee and customer gifts. 
                                     Quality, crafted, every day items for the office.
                                                               Find out more ➛

Louis Vuitton’s Narrative Hospitality

The LV Hotel in Bangkok is a masterclass in using “hospitality” as a device to tell a luxury brand’s story. They transformed a heritage building into an immersive showroom and shopping experience. It is brilliant and I really think there are opportunities here for boutique brands to partner with the retail brands and do pop-up work.

EXPERIENTIAL RETAIL STRATEGY

About me: I'm a fractional CMO for large travel technology companies helping turn them into industry leaders. I'm also the co-founder of 10minutes.news a hotel news media that is unsensational, factual and keeps hoteliers updated on the industry.  

AI vs. The OTA Monopoly (repeat?)

With Booking’s stock market dip the debate is back on. I’m always surprised how quick people are to jump to deep conclusions and analysis based on a momentary stock dip. I wrote my brief analysis and linked to some further analysis in my post some weeks ago before the stock took a hit.

AI TRAVEL DISRUPTION + AI PLATFORM AND CAKES

The Human Element in High-End Travel

In the world of six-figure travel, human relationships remain the ultimate luxury that automation cannot touch. This is a brilliant interview with SmartFlyer giving a behind the scenes look of humans in travel. I did try to make a daily itinerary for a visit to a museum recently. Despite uploading their agenda of the day, AI’s itinerary was a mess, we arrived and things were closed, or it suggested workshops that didn’t exist etc. so yeah - humans still exist. But I really want low-cost service like a travel assistant who can do these things.

LUXURY TRAVEL ADVISORY + TRAVEL ASSISTANTS REVIVAL? + HUMAN ELEMENT ECONOMICS

Subscription Models for Airlines

Interesting inspiration from the retail industry from airlines and Zara for inspiration on how to build predictability and loyalty through subscriptions. By offering privileged access and flat-rate convenience, they can move away from the race-to-the-bottom on price. This shift from transactional sales to recurring relationships could be inspiring. But you don’t need to move yourself to another city to shop in Zara. Also loyalty is such an over-used word in business.

AIRLINE LOYALTY MODELS

Nomad’s Boutique Strategy Under Hilton

Andrew Zobler is attempting the most difficult balancing act: scaling a brand globally while keeping its boutique soul intact. By leveraging Hilton’s distribution network but retaining control over design and branding. It’s a test of whether a major hotel giant can successfully nurture a “cool” brand without diluting what made it special. If they pull it off, it creates a new blueprint for boutique brand acquisitions. I hope they succeed.

BOUTIQUE HOTEL SCALING

Breakfast as a Strategy

Luxury hotels are moving breakfast from a buffet afterthought to a key driver of the guest experience and brand narrative. It’s often the last touchpoint a guest has before checkout. When I was a hotelier we tried to value it more, but it was never great. It is a brilliant opportunity and could be a great profit driver.

HOSPITALITY GUEST EXPERIENCE

The Danger of Founder-Centric Branding

Many brands fall into the trap of over-glorifying the founder’s vision at the expense of the customer’s needs. While a great story is inspiring, it only works if there is something in it for the customer. The brand narrative needs to be a bridge to the customer, not just an owner story. Your story is only as good as the problem it solves for someone else. Staying at a hotel that is all about some rich person who wanted to show their interior design skills doesn’t really make you want to come back. Staying at a hotel that is all about a rich person wanting to solve the needs of a frequent traveller based on their own experience, is more likely to.

CUSTOMER CENTRIC BRANDING

The Rise of Outdoor Hospitality

An interesting market growth. Camping have been big in France for many decades, is there something to learn from that market or is this totally new? The glamping market seeing double-digit growth, major players like Marriott are taking space in the niche. This is one area where Airbnb could have a big advantage.

OUTDOOR TRAVEL TRENDS

Nope, the Software Industry Isn’t Dying

As I wrote two weeks ago here it is from someone who has actual experience: The “who” and “how” of coding are changing, the appetite for complex, specialized solutions is only growing. We are in a messy, uneven transition period that rewards those with deep domain expertise. It turns out that even when AI writes the code, someone still needs to know what problem they are trying to solve.

FUTURE OF SOFTWARE

Airbnb’s AI-Fueled Growth

Brian Chesky sayd their recent revenue surge is less about luck and more about a calculated rebuild of their core tech platform. Embedding AI into every operation without the massive overhead of building their own data centers. “Small-team innovation” he calls it. Interesting. Also I really wonder if the video isn’t AI generated, but maybe I’m just seeing things.

AIRBNB TECH STRATEGY

Opinion

Full self-service isn’t working, Amazon’s proving that

Amazon has quietly started closing more of its Amazon Go physical stores. The idea was revolutionary: just walk in, grab what you need, and walk out—no checkout lines, no friction, all powered by sensors and AI. Per many studies, if you remove friction you increase consumption. But this didn’t work out.

I visited one a while back. The tech was great. But the place felt like I was shopping from inside a vending machine. No buzz, no people, no accidental “excuse me” as you reach for the same item as someone else, I don’t know why - but it was just an eerily cold experience. It really did feel like shopping in a vending machine.

Amazon set out to eliminate the worst part of the store: waiting in line to pay (it really is the worst part). But in doing so, they also removed the best part: people. We don’t enjoy lines but we understand that we need to pay. And every now and then, in that line, someone smiles. Someone makes a comment about the weather. Someone helps you bag your groceries. Small things, but they stick.

Do we need lines for that? No, no please do not conclude that from this article. But someone smiling, someone commenting on the weather, someone helping us bag the groceries. That actually makes it part of life, the part that’s hardest to scale: human connection.

Many hoteliers get this. But they’re going to the other extreme. Trying to keep all the bathwater, forever. There’s a middle ground where speed and efficiency is critical backed by just the right amount of human connection. ID-checks, Payments and transactions are not the right place to try to build human connection.

A century ago in New York Automats were a solution to have fewer waiters because they were seen as a necessary evil (did you know that at the time American’s considered tipping to be a European thing and wanted to do away with it?). In the end humans survived and Automats less so.

AI and automation layers can take care of the boring, repetitive stuff: stock checks, payment processing, receipt emailing. But let’s reserve the front-of-house for the human connection.

We’ve spent a century trying to replace humans with machines, (and I tend to agree some humans are really annoying). But I think we need to analyse the work that has no real value, in fact in many cases it has negative emotional value, and automate those.

Today many front desk experiences are similar to Customs & Border Control. Reality is with the tech available now we don’t even need the front desk in it’s current form. This could just be people taking your luggage and showing you to your room while checking you in on the fly.

There are so many opportunities. Removing people shouldn’t be one of them. Removing the negative value tasks of people should come first.

• Winter Olympics are better than the Summer Games - Link

• The inspiration guide for hospitality - Link⁺

• Automating Academic Illustrations for AI Scientists - Link

• Google’s view on Digital ads for 2026 - Link

• Gildo Zegna on the true price of luxury - Link

Did you know?: The word "tipping" comes from the verb "tip," which is believed to have originated in the 1700s from the English underworld slang "tip," meaning "to give, to pass." The noun sense for extra money may come from the phrase "To Insure Promptness," sometimes written on jars in inns or coffeehouses. Defined using Lomar Dictionary⁺

⁺ Note, articles that are published by companies or people I work with are tagged with the ⁺ symbol or Partner word. I’m adding this as a transparency. Previously I avoiding sharing content from partners to remain objective, but sometimes they have excellent articles that deserves being shared so to remain transparent, I’ll tag them.

Hello,

Taste, opinions, judgement - these qualities still belong to humans. The great news is that the hospitality needs more of this not less. Maybe AI could have come up with Jony Ive’s new Ferrari interior design, but it wouldn’t know if it had. Let’s train people on taste, opinions and judgement (productively).

Best, Martin

                                Klairhaus, the perfect employee and customer gifts. 
                                     Quality, crafted, every day items for the office.
                                                               Find out more ➛

RM vs. Loyalty

There’s a conflict of interest between RM and Loyalty. Loyalty wants to give as much as possible to make them come back. RM wants to charge as much as possible to increase revenue. Apparently there’s a way to make them work together. Going to be an interesting tug of war.

REVENUE AND LOYALTY ALIGNMENT + MYTH OF HOTEL LOYALTY

About me: I'm a fractional CMO for large travel technology companies helping turn them into industry leaders. I'm also the co-founder of 10minutes.news a hotel news media that is unsensational, factual and keeps hoteliers updated on the industry.  

Room Categories and complexity

I remember being a huge proponent for simplifying room categories. Early hotel marketing projects I worked on, one vendor of CRS was super proud that they had managed to build over 600 room packages. We thought it was insanity. But we had a limited view, we can argue that revenue managers might have complex projects, but they certainly aren’t dumb. So maybe those room types do serve a purpose.

ROOM CATEGORY SIMPLIFICATION

Machines vs. Artistry

As AI automates routine tasks, human skills like taste, judgment, and influence are becoming our most vital assets. AI can process data, but it struggles with the nuances of human intuition. The future will belong to generalists who can solve problems and specialists who understand the deep nuances of their industry. So essentially hotel GMs and many of the front-office work is safe.

HUMAN INTUITION ADVANTAGE + FOCUS ON WHAT NOT TO AUTOMATE

Future-Proofing Global Brands

The challenge with any hotel brand is maintaining consistency while delivering value. Jean-Yves Minet believes that mastering purpose, value proposition, and personality is the only way to build future-proof brands. It is true. But I think there’s fundamental element - money. Because hotels need to be upgraded every 5 years max. The biggest failure in hotel brands (IMO) is that without constant reinvestment - consistency is lost.

BRAND CONSISTENCY STRATEGY

Ferrari Luce, yes I have an opinion too

Jony Ive’s design for Ferrari’s first electric vehicle, caused a massive uproar in the quasi-design community. People hate it, people love it etc etc. I believe that judging a physical design based on an image is impossible so I have no opinion on the actual design. I can say that the current Ferrari infotainment system is embarrassingly bad. My main opinion here is that, the presentation is insane. I can learn from this. It seems as if as much effort was put into the presentation of the design than the design itself. Seems like a waste, but look at the impact.

PHYSICAL DESIGN COHESION

The DMO of the Future

In a fascinating experiment, AI agents were asked to design the future of destination management, resulting in a platform that prioritizes community impact over tourism volume. I mentioned this in my over-tourism rant some months ago. We should be using AI to improve distribution, not stop tourism and this is a great example of doing that. Some things we need to watch out for however are that AI takes their data from published data so it will be as biased as the loudest voice.

AI DESTINATION MANAGEMENT

AI as a Tectonic Shift for Productivity

There are a lot of random thoughts (including mine) on how AI will change productivity in hospitality. Some teams have started actually building apps for it. Embedding intelligence into daily decisions regarding cost management, staffing, and maintenance. Bringin more stable operations and fewer surprises for leadership, regardless of how sophisticated the tool itself is.

HOTEL AI PRODUCTIVITY + SUMMARY⁺

The Legacy Preservation Layer in Travel

The travel industry (and probably many others) have a legacy layer that has no interest in evolution and which arguably slows down innovation. I don’t disagree, I’ve known startups who went bust because they couldn’t get access to legacy APIs. But that the layer needs to be removed is like shouting at a symptom to try and fix the cause. The key here is build better, cheaper, faster. Customers will change if the benefits are good enough, not if they are tiny increments.

TRAVEL DISTRIBUTION INERTIA

Claude Opus 4.6 and the AI Analyst

Anthropic’s latest release, Claude Opus 4.6, marks a shift from AI as a simple assistant to AI as an operator in finance. By automating high-stakes knowledge work end-to-end, it effectively functions as a junior analyst. It will probably not be as fast and as predictable as a dedicated Revenue Management system or other hotel BI tool. But it is interesting.

AI FINANCIAL AUTOMATION

Ads Inside ChatGPT

OpenAI has officially introduced sponsored results at the bottom of ChatGPT responses. These ads are currently restricted to a small group in the US and do not influence the actual answers provided by the AI. This could be an interesting opportunity for hotels, let’s see. There are discussions if this will influence the responses. I don’t know of any platforms where ads have not impacted the quality of the responses. Amazon, Google, Facebook, Youtube, Media - somehow paid has influenced the results over time.

AI ADVERTISING MODELS

Opinion

Next level AI image editing

I’ve written before about using AI to tweak hotel images. Add snow to the courtyard. Make it sunny. Throw in some Valentine’s decorations. Useful for campaigns. Helpful for social. Maybe gimmicky, but really practical.

But something has shifted.

I just tested a new feature with reve.com where I uploaded a hotel room image. The AI didn’t just “decorate” it. It analyzed the scene, identified the bed, the chair, the lamp, the windows, the walls, and then allowed me to select individual elements and move them around.

Move the chair. Shift the table. Adjust the layout. See the video below. This was my first try, I’m sure there are many better ways to do this.

When I asked it to move a chair, it turned into a bench. Not perfect. But the perspective was right. The lighting was coherent. The scale made sense. The room still looked real.

That’s not just image editing. That’s spatial reasoning.

And that adds a lot of possibilities for hotels and speed to market. (Example the test room photos can now be scaled to all the room types for the pre-opening website).

Architects can now test layout variations in minutes instead of days. Interior designers can experiment with furniture placements without 3D modeling. Owners can reimagine a lobby before committing to expensive refurbishments. Marketing teams can prototype new room configurations visually spending on FF&E.

What excites me most is not just the marketing angle, though that’s obvious. It’s the operational and design implication. Meeting space layouts, family room layouts, office setup in a room. We can have more options that can be sold as attributes and visualize them.

As I wrote last week the things with AI is to start projects, build stuff. Try things out. I used Reve last year. It was cool, then something better came along. So I dropped it. Now they’ve launched this option, it’s back. In other words things move fast, fixed ideas are the biggest enemy of staying on top of things.

So if something is not great today, try it again in a few weeks it might be amazing.

• The Return of Apprenticeships - Link

• The inspiration guide for hospitality - Link⁺

• We’re too obsessed with distinctiveness - Link

• Prince’s legendary half-time show - Link

• Confessions of a London fake news TikToker - Link

Did you know?: The word "skunkworks" comes from "Skunk Works," the nickname for the Lockheed Martin Advanced Development Projects division created in the 1940s. The term was inspired by a comic strip called Li'l Abner, which had a "Skonk Works" factory. The spelling changed to "skunkworks," and over time, it began to mean any group doing secret, innovative work inside a larger company. Defined using Lomar Dictionary⁺

⁺ Note, articles that are published by companies or people I work with are tagged with the ⁺ symbol or Partner word. I’m adding this as a transparency. Previously I avoiding sharing content from partners to remain objective, but sometimes they have excellent articles that deserves being shared so to remain transparent, I’ll tag them.

Hello,

OK so everyone is on about Clawd Bot. It is changing everything. But what does that really mean for hotel industry. Where we’re not office working and we have actual sheets to change and people to welcome. See my column below. PS: See you at ITB?

Best, Martin

                                Klairhaus, the perfect employee and customer gifts. 
                                     Quality, crafted, every day items for the office.
                                                               Find out more ➛

Whatnot: Live Commerce

It seems live commerce is finally starting to work in the west. Whatnot has quietly generated $8 billion in sales and dominates over 50% of the US market. Its rapid growth in fashion and beauty suggests the category is finally picking up. I wonder how hotels and travel can get into this. Community-driven, real-time shopping is becoming a thing.

LIVE COMMERCE GROWTH + MORE LIVE SHOPPING BOOM

About me: I'm a fractional CMO for large travel technology companies helping turn them into industry leaders. I'm also the co-founder of 10minutes.news a hotel news media that is unsensational, factual and keeps hoteliers updated on the industry.  

Boutique Brands

Hotel brands are typically a vehicle that can be sold to big hotel chains which become a way to grow franchises for the chains. But maybe there’s another model. Ian Schrager and Highgate are redefining the “boutique” model to scale without losing their souls. Founders focus on design and brand identity while using the operational talent of a larger partner. It’s interesting, but it does beg the question: what is the exit plan? For now, let’s focus on the growth of great brands.

BOUTIQUE BRAND IDENTITY

The YouTube Opportunity

A gap is opening for high-quality, mid-tier content on Youtube pushing traditional Hollywood talent toward to where viewership is booming. The creator economy is essentially becoming the new “middle class” of entertainment. Which is also a great opportunity for smart product placement marketing that is more subtle. Giving boutique brands a way to reach their audience.

CREATOR ECONOMY SHIFT

Google Maps as a market maker

A bit over a decade ago when business listings appeared on Google Maps, most SEO and marketing agencies were “hacking” them to drive tons of qualified traffic to their hotels. Some OTAs were literally hacking hotel’s listings to put their site as the website. Since then things have improved. But Google Maps is still a market maker in the restaurant business. A long but interesting analysis.

ALGORITHMIC MARKET IMPACT

PMS Transitions as a Leadership Test

Prominent hotel consultant Simone Puorto apparently said as a hotelier he would rather go through a divorce than a PMS change. I did a PMS change as a GM - it was painful (not as bad as Simone says). I wasn’t prepared for the backlash and staff frustration. Ultimately, a shiny new tool won’t fix the change management no matter how good it is. I wished someone (the PMS vendor) had prepared me for what was to come.

PMS CHANGE MANAGEMENT⁺

2026 The AI-First Shift

According to Amadeus trend for 2026, hotel discovery and “configurable stays” will be managed through AI (see my last week’s column as well). For hotels success will depend on having structured, machine-readable content, as AI discovery will favor data organization. I wonder if hotels could just create an XML file on their site with all the structured data that AIs want and see how that goes.

AI TRAVEL TRENDS

Emotion over Perfection

The small, non mandatory gestures matter more than rigid perfection. In an age of automated everything, a human-centered, slightly “imperfect” touch is becoming the ultimate premium.

EMOTIONAL LUXURY⁺

People-less Retail Pivot

Amazon is closing 72 Amazon Go and Fresh locations. They plan to keep the “Just Walk Out” technology alive in other formats. I tried those stores. Really cool. But it feels like walking through a vending machine. No attachment. Might as well order online. Maybe something for hotels to analyse.

AMAZON RETAIL SHIFT

The Randomness of AI Recommendations

New research shows that AIs like ChatGPT and Claude are highly inconsistent when recommending brands, often producing varied lists for the same prompt. While some brands appear more frequently, the correlation between “visibility” and a brand’s presence in the database is weak. Something to consider with all generative AI. See my column.

AI BRAND VISIBILITY + AI SEARCH OPTIMIZATION

Opinion

The AI Dilemma: Should Hotels Wait or Build?

AI is moving so fast it’s really really hard to keep up. One week it’s all about chatbots. The next, it’s local AI agents like OpenClaw executing full workflows on a local device. It’s amazing. But it’s also messy.

This puts hotels in a difficult spot.

Right now, most AI is still probabilistic. That means it gives you a result that is likely to be right, not guaranteed. In marketing, that’s fine. If a chatbot suggests five possible taglines, it’s doing its job. But a PMS can’t guess what rooms are available. An RMS can’t offer a different price every time you refresh the page, depending on which way the wind is blowing. And no one wants their restaurant menu to be reinterpreted every 10 minutes. (Such systems need to be deterministic meaning logical systems that produce identical outputs when given the same inputs.)

At the same time, waiting for the tech to stabilize feels like what hotel industry has done for decades and rarely the best thing.

After the dotcom bust, hotels waited to see if the internet would become a thing. By the time it was obvious, Expedia had already captured much of the distribution stack. We waited on mobile, too. And today most mobile bookings are made through OTAs. When hotels hesitate, others (mostly OTAs) move and pick the low hanging fruit.

Now AI is knocking. And again, the instinct is to wait. Let it mature. Let it become safe. Let someone else figure it out. But here’s the problem: AI will not slow down. And by the time it feels “safe,” others will have already eaten your lunch.

Still, charging into this headfirst with big budgets isn’t the answer either. The landscape is too volatile. Standards don’t exist. There’s a lot of “bricolage” (french for hacking and tinkering things together). One solution that works today might be completely irrelevant in six months. Worse, it might break critical workflows if implemented poorly.

So what’s the right move?

There is an idea floating around that maybe, someday, every company (and even individual) will make their own software using AI and that SaaS is dead. It would mean no more off-the-shelf PMS and so forth.

But we are nowhere near that future. I agree it is a possibility and the recent Clawdbot/Openclaw buzz gave us a glimpse of what that could mean. But this is proof-of-concept level. There is still a very long way to go.

Here’s what I think is the right move.

You don’t need to bet the farm. You need a sandbox. A small, focused, skunkworks effort (possibly with a freelancer or AI engineer) working off clean, anonymized hotel data to test ideas. Could you build a better UI on top of your PMS that lets staff request actions to get done and the system executes over multiple clicks and functions? Could you automate parts of group booking administration? Could you prototype whatsapp, email, replies to guests within seconds and adapt it to your style and needs.

Most of it will break. Some of it will be pointless. A few things might be brilliant (see the article below on accidental discovery).

But more importantly, your team will begin to get familiar with what can be done. You’ll learn how to think with AI, not just talk about it. You’ll stop waiting for perfect products and start shaping what you need.

And when the giants do arrive with polished tools and scalable models, the hotels that already have internal experience will be the ones best positioned to integrate, adapt, and move quickly.

Waiting is the easy option. But it rarely works out well in tech, as history has shown. If you’re going to get ahead in this next shift, it won’t come from buying the right product, it’ll come from learning how to build with what’s already here.

Start a skunkworks. That’s your edge.

• The Power of Accidental Scientific Discovery - Link

• The Death of the Mass Market Paperback - Link

• Stan Smith: Some people think I’m a shoe - Link

• Instagram Reels Move to the Big Screen - Link

• The OTAs of the World Infographic Remixed - Link⁺

Did you know?: The word "skunkworks" comes from "Skunk Works," the nickname for the Lockheed Martin Advanced Development Projects division created in the 1940s. The term was inspired by a comic strip called Li'l Abner, which had a "Skonk Works" factory. The spelling changed to "skunkworks," and over time, it began to mean any group doing secret, innovative work inside a larger company. Defined using Lomar Dictionary⁺

⁺ Note, articles that are published by companies or people I work with are tagged with the ⁺ symbol or Partner word. I’m adding this as a transparency. Previously I avoiding sharing content from partners to remain objective, but sometimes they have excellent articles that deserves being shared so to remain transparent, I’ll tag them.