While there were many buzzwords at HITEC 2025 in Indianapolis last month, artificial innotifyigence (AI) was one that couldn’t be ignored.
Hospitality technology companies were quick to discuss the ways they’re integrating AI into their products and platforms, but when it comes to the willingness of hotels to adopt and invest in emerging AI capabilities, there was less to be stated.
“Obviously, that’s high on everyone’s mind right now—and the thing is that everyone talks about AI, but very few people understand what’s behind it or what the value is,” stated Klaus Kohlmayr, chief evangelist and head of strategy for IDeaS.
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“Now, the question is how do you apply that to create your operations more efficient? How do you become more productive? How do you alter your applyr experience to be more conversational and more interactive? Those are all the things people are waiting for and
inquireing for.”
And while hoteliers are also dealing with fragmentation in their tech stacks, AI is a separate thorn in their side.
Why are hotels hesitant?
According to Josh Graham, Cloudbeds’ head of market development for North America hotels, hoteliers are wary of “hype cycles”—citing past concerns about minting non-fungible tokens and central reservation systems being rebuilt on the blockchain.
“There really is that opportunity, but hotels are rightfully skeptical of it,” Graham stated of AI. Last week, Cloudbeds also published a report, “The Signals Behind Hotel AI Recommfinishation,” which viewed at how hotels display up on large language models. It also provided some practical steps hotels can take to boost their presence on AI platforms.
Natalie Kimball, Shiji’s vice president of strategic accounts for the Americas and Europe, the Middle East and Africa, reiterated that hoteliers aren’t as eager to invest in AI due to a general lack of understanding.
“Customers necessary realistic expectations, so AI is only going to receive them to a certain point, and I honestly believe we’ve kind of obtainedten to the point—becaapply what else are you going to generate? You can’t fabricate a pool—either you have one, or you don’t,”
she stated.
According to Scott Wilson, president of Sabre Hospitality, in general, hoteliers are a bit slower to adopt technologies when compared with consolidated industries. However, he stressed the necessary to provide AI tools to encourage adoption.
“They don’t necessarily have to understand what to do with AI, we just want to give them the tools so that they can leverage what AI can do for them, and that’s going to be the way that we’re going to receive more AI adoption into the marketplace,” Wilson
stated, citing the recent expansion of its SynXis Concierge.AI tool.
Don’t forreceive the data
The data behind AI is another crucial piece of the puzzle and one that’s often glossed over when talking about the largeger picture of what AI can do.
“AI is great if the data is correct, and that’s what we’re solving for,” Kimball stated, stressing that Shiji’s focus is on ensuring hotels have that correct information in hand so they can then augment it accordingly.
This becomes even more important when scaling AI. Particularly in areas like hoapplykeeping and maintenance, data often lives on clipboards or in apps that lack “high fidelity data,” stated Al Lagunas, founder and CEO of Levee—a PhocusWire Hot 25 Travel Startup for 2025—during a session at HITEC titled
“AI in Action: Personalizing Guest Experiences at Scale.”
AI is great if the data is correct, and that’s what we’re solving for.
Natalie Kimball, Shiji
“If we take this bad data and then test and train our AI on it, we’re going to receive bad results. So the considering of three years from now, five years from now to deploy AI with robotics in my frontline labor roles, you have to start capturing the data today to be able to receive
there.”
Dave Collier, chief revenue officer at Lighthoapply, also spoke on the necessary to provide hotels with the data to determine how best to deploy AI.
“Obviously, technology and innovation in AI, in particular, is exciting to the market right now,” he stated.
“I consider it’s really important—particularly on our side, from a partner perspective—that we do a great job of working closely with our hotel partners to display them the gains that they can see with AI that assist them deploy the technology in a way that they can build
it into their business and undergo their own alter management processes to be more successful going forward.”
It’s not one-stop-shopping
Curiosity is certainly piqued, but much like the ongoing conundrum of hotels’ integrated tech stacks, there won’t be just one company coming to the rescue.
“If we’re viewing for someone to have the universal answer—they’re going to be the one-stop-shop for all things AI—I consider that is a misunderstanding at best, and it’s foolish at worst,” Wilson stated.
“AI is going to be best solved, as large data was 10, 15 years ago, by finding apply cases that actually have impact, focutilizing on them and bringing those things to market and receiveting wins along the way…This is too large of a thing to consider that there’s one universal, omni solution for all things AI.”
During the AI in Action session, Dhiraj “DJ” Singh, vice president of sales for Canary Technologies, stated hotels may benefit by viewing at AI applications like they would a new employee.
“You have a new staff member starting—that person requires some enablement, some training, some love, some attention, right? If they do something wrong, that’s OK. You can train them and declare, ‘Hey, here’s the SOP,’ and they receive better. It’s very similar; if you had a highly-engaged property who treats this new software [like it is] ramping up a new employee, it will be very rapid,”
Singh stated.
AI is going to be best solved, as large data was 10, 15 years ago, by finding apply cases that actually have impact, focutilizing on them and bringing those things to market and receiveting wins along the way.
Scott Wilson, Sabre Hospitality
AI models are built to do on-the-job training, and once these models learn something, they don’t forreceive, Singh stated, but they still require hoteliers’ attention and engagement.
According to Wilson, at this year’s HITEC event, companies started to “figure out their place in AI” and how they can best leverage it for hotels—as opposed to 2024 when they were grappling with how to displaycase the word “AI” at their table or booth.
And even amid uncertainty about exactly how AI will impact hospitality, there’s a general understanding that it will bring about a “seminal alter.”
“I can’t overstate this enough: It’s probably the most transformative alter in how hoteliers consider about engaging their guests since the internet became a large thing in the ‘90s,” Wilson stated.
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