Technology in Hospitality

Heard Telnyx’s voice AI concierge demo today. The agent walks through a hotel booking, asks follow-up questions, and confirms the reservation in a single, natural call. What struck me: • 𝐓𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐩𝐡𝐨𝐧𝐲 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞. The same platform supplies the phone number and carries the audio, so quality stays consistent. • 𝐎𝐧𝐞-𝐀𝐏𝐈 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐜𝐤. Speech, call control, and routing live in one place, which keeps integration light. • 𝐋𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝. Fewer services to stitch together means less time in DevOps and a leaner voice-infra bill as calls scale. Feels useful for support lines, reservations, dispatch, or any workflow that still starts with a ring. Demo below. Curious where you’d use something like this. https://lnkd.in/gZxktVfd #voiceAI #AIagents #telephony #infrastructure #tech

This week's defining shift for me is that what’s next for the smart home is perception, with machines that don’t just connect but understand. Cameras are becoming the eyes of AI in our homes. Paired with multimodal intelligence, they move beyond simple motion alerts to recognize people, pets, and objects, and respond with real context. From fitness equipment to security systems, everyday devices are starting to see us, understand what we’re doing, and act more like partners in our daily lives. This week’s news surfaced signals like these: 🚲 Peloton launched Peloton IQ, an AI coaching system that uses built-in cameras and computer vision to deliver real-time form feedback, rep counting, and personalized strength guidance. 🐶 Ring introduced new 4K cameras with Familiar Faces and pet detection, turning everyday security devices into assistants that can search for missing dogs or filter out unnecessary alerts. 🚘 Google's Nest lineup now gives its cameras sharper eyes, able to spot the difference between a car, a delivery person, or the family dog, and generate summaries that actually make sense. Why this matters: The home is one of the first places where perception systems will scale. AI that can see and interpret physical spaces makes smart devices more useful and personal. This shift marks the transition from connected homes to intelligent homes, where machines no longer just record events but actively help us live. #smarthome #physicalAI #computervision #AI #multimodalAI #ring #nest #google #peloton #spatialcomputing

Imagine a luxury hotel experience where everything feels magically personalized - your preferences anticipated, your needs met before you express them - yet you never interact with a single screen or app during your stay. This is the future of hospitality that's already here. The most successful luxury brands today operate like swans: graceful and seamless on the surface, while powerful technology works invisibly beneath. Too many companies make the mistake of showcasing their technology as a feature, missing that guests don't value the tech itself; they value what it enables: deeper human connections and more personalized attention. Marriott's Bonvoy program exemplifies this balance. Their AI-powered system works behind the scenes to personalize everything from room recommendations to loyalty rewards, but guests primarily experience these benefits through enhanced human interactions with staff who are freed from administrative burdens. The organizations thriving in this new paradigm understand a crucial truth: technology should enhance rather than replace personal service. AI and automation are most powerful when deployed strategically behind the scenes to create the conditions for authentic human touchpoints. This isn't about reducing staff or cutting costs; it's about repositioning your human talent where they add the most value. Let technology handle operational complexities while your people focus entirely on creating memorable, emotion-rich experiences. For executives navigating this transition, the blueprint isn't about chasing every new trend. Success comes from steady improvements in anticipating and prioritizing what travelers truly value. The question is no longer "how much should we invest in technology?" but rather "how can we make our technology invisible while making our human touch unforgettable?" The companies that answer this question effectively are creating the next era of travel experiences—where the digital and physical worlds blend seamlessly, and technology serves humanity rather than the other way around. Are you building a swan, or just showing off your tech? —— Want to know which travel companies are best positioned for the AI-driven future? Read my latest report: https://lnkd.in/e7nc5Qyk

TikTok just rolled out a feature that could disrupt the whole hospitality industry. Meet TikTok Go: The first major step toward social platforms becoming full-fledged booking engines. We've been saying it for years, social media has become the primary discovery engine for modern travelers. 81% of travelers use social for travel inspiration. Gen Z and millennials aren't starting on Booking.com or Expedia - they're scrolling through Instagram and TikTok, getting inspired by content. But until now, there's been massive friction in the discovery-to-booking journey. A potential guest discovers your property on social media, gets excited, wants to book, but then has to click through your profile, find your website, navigate to booking pages, and enter dates. At each step, you lose potential guests. But TikTok Go changes this completely. Here's how it works: Eligible creators can partner with hotels to create content and earn commissions when that content drives bookings. Users can now book hotels directly inside TikTok through a Booking.com integration. Each participating hotel gets a dedicated landing page showing prices, amenities, reviews, nearby attractions, and related TikTok videos. This is a fundamental shift creating several massive advantages: 1. Seamless Discovery-to-Booking: Guests inspired by your content can book immediately, eliminating the friction that kills most social media conversions. 2. Potentially Better Attribution: For the first time, we could have clear tracking from social content to actual bookings, solving the attribution blindspots that have plagued social media ROI calculations. 3. Creator Economy Leverage: You can tap into established creator audiences without building your own following from scratch. The program is already active in Indonesia and Japan, now rolling out across the U.S., with plans to expand beyond hotels into food, wellness, and other local services. We're witnessing social media platforms taking their first major step toward overtaking OTAs. The exact mechanics will evolve, but the change has been set in motion. Every major shift in hospitality creates a brief window where early adopters capture outsized returns. Websites in the 90s. Mobile booking in the 2010s. Social commerce in the 2020s. The hotels building serious social media followings today will be best positioned when these booking features become standard across all platforms. While most properties post occasional content and hope for the best, smart operators are treating social media as their primary guest acquisition engine. TikTok Go is just the beginning. What are your thoughts?

You find the perfect room on Airbnb... You click “Book Now.” Payment done. Then comes that email: "Sorry, the room is already booked." 😤 The frustration is real. 💡 So how do platforms like Airbnb or Booking.com solve this? - Rooms listed by hosts appear instantly to customers — no page reloads needed. - If one customer starts payment, the room disappears from others' search results. - If the payment fails or times out, the room is released back into availability. All this happens in real-time, without breaking the user experience. ✅ The answer: Event-Driven Architecture Here’s how i tried to recreate in my SAP-based design: 🔹 Customer searches for rooms → Search Service checks real-time availability via SAP Event Mesh 🔹 Customer picks a room → Booking Service reserves it in Redis (temporary hold for 10 minutes) 🔹 Booking Service publishes an event → Room marked as on-hold 🔹 Hotel Service updates availability → Everyone else sees 1 less room 🔹 Payment Service completes transaction → - Success → Room confirmed in S/4HANA Cloud - Fail/Timeout → Room released, event broadcasted 🎯 Why this system design: ✅ Prevents double bookings ✅ Keeps availability always accurate ✅ Uses Redis for smart, temporary caching ✅ Integrates with S/4HANA Cloud for backend ops (HR, finance, procurement) ✅ SAP Document Management can store images, invoices, and more This is a real-world case for event-driven microservices done right — blending customer experience with enterprise robustness. #SAPBTP #EventDrivenArchitecture #Microservices #Redis #S4HANA #SAPCAP #SAPEventMesh #DesignThinking #CustomerExperience

TikTok’s ability to turn a 30-second video into a hotel booking has raised eyebrows across our industry 🚨 Some call it the next wave of disruption, others see it as just another OTA channel in disguise. The truth, as always, sits in the nuance — here’s what you should know. Hotels can now be booked directly on TikTok Through a new Booking.com integration, travelers in the US can book hotels without ever leaving the app. Influencers can tag properties in their content via TikTok GO, earning commission when bookings happen through their videos. Here’s why this matters: ✅ From Inspiration → Booking in Seconds Travel discovery is already happening on TikTok. Now, that spark of inspiration can convert instantly into a reservation — no browser tabs, no drop-off. ✅ Creator Trust Drives Action Gen Z and Millennials trust influencers more than traditional ads. Pairing that with instant booking is a powerful distribution shift. ✅ Proven Performance Tools Exist Even outside the in-app flow, Spark Ads, Dynamic Travel Ads, and the TikTok Pixel allow hotels to amplify creator content, retarget viewers, and measure ROAS. ⚠️ But there are trade-offs       • Bookings flow through Booking.com, meaning higher cost of sale and loss of first-party guest data.       •  FTC disclosure rules require compliance and brand-safety.       •  TikTok’s regulatory future in the U.S. still carries uncertainty. 👉 So what’s the right play? Think of this as a both/and strategy:       1.  Leverage TikTok’s in-app booking when speed and reach are the priority.       2.  Drive creator content to brand.com when loyalty capture and long-term guest relationships matter most. The bigger picture: social commerce isn’t a fad. It’s the next chapter of hotel distribution. The winners will be those who balance today’s reach and conversion with tomorrow’s guest ownership.

I try a lot of retention tools And honestly, most of them feel the same once you log in: - Cluttered dashboards - Guesswork analytics - “Loyalty” programs that don’t actually build loyalty Then I tried the Nector.io and here’s what made it stand out: - Tiered referrals and memberships - customers unlock higher rewards as they progress, making loyalty aspirational - On-site loyalty touchpoints - loyalty hooks built right into product pages, carts, and checkouts to drive engagement at every step - Real-time analytics & UTM tracking - finally knowing which campaigns are actually driving repeat revenue - 50+ seamless integrations - from Klaviyo and Mailchimp to Shopify POS and GoKwik, it just works - Export reviews to Google Merchant Center - making your social proof visible where it matters most If you’re serious about customer retention, this is a platform worth testing.

How I Saved a Hotel Group $400k with a Multi-PMS Strategy In today's hospitality landscape, the days of a single-brand, one-size-fits-all approach are long gone. Unique franchise models and white-label management require agility, efficiency, and an agnostic perspective when it comes to technology—especially Property Management Systems (PMS). When I partnered with a hotel group managing properties of varying sizes and needs, they faced significant challenges with their single-PMS approach: *High licensing fees. *Operational inefficiencies. *Limited Scalability for growth. *Staff frustrations due to complexity. *Poor user adoption and significant downtime. The solution? A multi-PMS strategy tailored to each property's specific needs. By segmenting properties, integrating systems centrally, and negotiating better vendor agreements, we achieved: 💰 $400,000 in annual savings ⚙️ Streamlined operations and enhanced efficiency 🚀 Scalability for future expansion ⭐ Improved guest experiences through personalized service Now, I know many vendors may not like me saying this. They often aim to push for a single PMS for the entire group. But the reality is apparent: efficiency and agility are more critical than ever in a multi-regional, multi-brand operations world. The key is staying agnostic and efficiency-led. If your organization struggles with a rigid PMS strategy or mounting operational costs, let's discuss how we can transform your technology landscape together. #HospitalityTech #DigitalTransformation #PMS #Efficiency #Innovation

This is what happens when you prioritize customer loyalty.. you see results that go beyond just numbers. Loyalty programs aren’t a gimmick, they’re a powerful strategy for building lasting customer relationships. We recently implemented a loyalty program using HubSpot, and the impact was immediate. Not only did we see a spike in customer retention, but the feedback from our clients was overwhelmingly positive. They felt valued, appreciated, and connected to our brand in a way that went beyond just transactions. Here’s what worked for us: ➜ Personalized rewards: Using HubSpot, we tailored rewards based on customer behavior, ensuring they felt understood and valued. ➜ Automated engagement: We set up automated emails and messages to keep our customers engaged, making them feel part of a community. ➜ Data-driven insights: With HubSpot’s analytics, we tracked what resonated with our customers and refined our approach accordingly. What was the outcome? Increased customer loyalty, higher retention rates, and a deeper connection with our brand. How are you building loyalty with your customers? What tools or strategies have made the biggest difference for you? #hubspot #customer #strategy

AI Agents Are Booking Hotels. Is Your Direct Channel Ready to Compete? OpenAI’s ChatGPT Agent Mode has transformed hotel bookings. AI is no longer just suggesting options. It now books directly on behalf of travelers. Instead of comparing hotels across websites, guests simply ask ChatGPT for what they want, and the AI searches, selects, and completes the reservation, often through OTAs. If your hotel content isn’t structured in a way AI systems can read and trust, your brand is effectively invisible. Traditional SEO tactics focused on human search behavior are no longer enough. Hotels must shift to Answer Engine Optimization, using structured data and clear content that AI agents can easily process. Most hotel teams are not ready for this shift and may already be missing bookings without realizing it. 📢 THE PIVOT FOR HOTEL COMMERCIAL TEAMS: Hotel commercial teams need to rethink their entire approach. This is not about improving your Google rank. It is about making your hotel visible to AI agents that now complete bookings for your guests. ⚠️ The rules of the direct channel have changed. Your content needs to be structured for AI discoverability. Your team needs to understand how AI agents make decisions. Without that, you will be bypassed without even knowing it. The direct channel is at risk unless your teams become AI-literate and start building content for machines as well as humans. FIVE ACTION STEPS FOR HOTEL TEAMS: 1️⃣ Audit and Optimize Structured Data Review your website and booking platform to ensure correct schema markup is in place. AI agents rely on machine-readable data to process your rates, amenities, and availability. 2️⃣ Implement Answer Engine Optimization Move beyond traditional SEO. Focus your content on clear, factual, structured property details across all platforms where AI agents can find them. 3️⃣ Upskill Your Team on AI Literacy Train your marketing, revenue, and sales teams on how AI agents function. AI is now a participant in the booking process. Your teams need to understand how to influence its choices. 4️⃣ Track AI Visibility and Recommendations Start measuring how often your hotel is seen or selected by AI systems like ChatGPT. Visibility is now invisible. Without tracking, you won’t know what you are losing. 5️⃣ Strengthen Direct Channel AI Readiness Ensure your website, booking engine, and voice assistants are optimized to serve both human guests and AI agents. Using AI Voice Agents can help capture direct bookings that might otherwise be lost. If your team needs help optimizing your direct channel, developing AI skills, or driving immediate revenue, reach out. Whether it’s training your team, creating structured content, or helping you track AI-driven visibility, I can support you. Consider me a gig member of your team, ready to help you drive results.