AI Everywhere (3)

Generally, more people with access to AI will not mean better solutions, it will mean more noise in the market, more fragmented and badly deployed technology - just like the last decades, but at a bigger scale, and the people who suffer are hotel employees and guests.   I do believe that to stand out from the pack and deliver something truly remarkable, you need genuine innovators to bring all these solutions together in a coherent ecosystem that is open, collaborative, and truly end-to-end in how we serve guests.   The best technology partners will build closer partnerships at the backend layer, while hoteliers can build complete AI workflows on the frontend.

By HITEC 2030, AI will not have eaten established hospitality tech. It will have eaten the repetitive workflow layer around it. Hotels will still rely on PMS, CRS, RMS, payments, distribution, and other systems of record. Those systems are too operationally critical to disappear quickly.

2030 is a long time from now, especially in AI-years, which are only about 60 days long!If I think about the current trajectories and strategies of the bigger companies that will lead this movement, I see larger travel enterprises implementing foundational agentic backbones like Frontier from OpenAI or Claude Enterprise from Anthropic.

Hotels are better positioned for the AI era than most people think. They own something no LLM can replicate: years of proprietary guest data and a direct relationship with the customer. That's a genuine competitive moat, and agentic AI is finally what turns it into action.

The takeaway that stays with me isn't about any single technology. It's about what AI can actually do to change the way we experience travel.An example of this was the live demo I gave on stage to change my own flight home - not by calling a helpdesk, not by navigating an app - but by having a natural conversation with an AI agent that handled everything live: rebooking, seat, baggage, transfer all in one simple phone call.The audience went quiet for a moment.

What stood out to me most at ITB Berlin this year was how much the conversation around AI has shifted from theory to real, everyday use. Hoteliers and operators are no longer asking whether AI matters, but where it can make the biggest difference for guests and teams right now.

While a ton can be said about the various ways that AI will affect travel, one specific behavioral adjustment we will see is the resurgence of voice-based interactions. After all, what's easier to do: talk or type? For most, we can speak a lot faster than we can plug information into a computer or phone.

I generally agree with this forecast, Simone. My long held view is that the more technology becomes 'conversational', to use the current en vogue term, or voice enabled, which has long been my bent, the more friendly and accessible technology becomes.

The potential impact of GenAI in the UI for travel interactions is indeed profound. As conversational platforms like ChatGPT evolve, they could become central hubs for travel-related content, significantly altering the internet's structure and user interface.