AI and other key trends changing hospitality in 2026 with Wouter Geerts | Matt Talks Hospitality

I think where AI is going to hit really hard in 2026 is beyond that in more of the messy dayto-day kind of operational work in a hotel. [music]

[music] Hi everyone, welcome back to another Matt Talks Hospitality and today I'm joined by Bout. He is the director of market research here at Muse and he's led the research for the 2026

hospitality industry outlook report. For

this we have interviewed 18 industry experts and in the report we take a long-term view of what some of the possible scenarios are about how technology that is still naent today will change the industry over the coming

decade. I am very excited about this

decade. I am very excited about this because it's a really great indicator of where industry is likely going and there's a lot to unpack. I think it's about 54 pages of kind of insights from these experts. So Ber, thank you for

these experts. So Ber, thank you for joining me. We're going to just break

joining me. We're going to just break down kind of what's in the reports that people can know what they're going to discover in there.

>> Sure. Thanks for having me.

>> So tell me about how you went about the research like what was the process.

>> Sure. Yeah. So I think everyone loves these uh sort of this is what's going to happen next year or or the coming year kind of reports. Um and we do too and and we think it's a really exciting time

of course now especially with AI and all the changes that that's bringing. So um

this is the second year actually that we're doing this big trend report where we look ahead uh help the hotel industry to understand what's what's coming rather than just sort of relying on our

own knowledge and and I know people like you you're you're always talking about what's happening in the industry and and and that's very valuable but we wanted to have a very objective view of what's happening. So we we actually uh got a

happening. So we we actually uh got a group of of experts together like you said 18 people and they they range from uh hotelers, operators to uh tech vendors, we've got some journalists,

we've got some consultants. So it's a really wide mix investors of of people that uh took part in this research. Um

and we sort of said it's quite hard to predict, right? Stuff is moving so fast.

predict, right? Stuff is moving so fast.

Um so let's put some scenarios to them.

So we actually put I think it was something like 15 scenarios uh to all of these people and said what's the likelihood of this going to happen and not just in 2026 but say in the next 5

years um what's the likelihood what's the impact of it and and what's the desiraability of it and so everyone sort of provided feedback on those things and then actually after we collected all of

that we went back to them again and and asked some more deeper questions. So we

it was quite a rigorous process of of really trying to eek out what exactly do people or do do these experts believe is going to happen in in so the next five

years and from that um we we created this report and and I think there's some really interesting things in there.

>> Yeah. Like what I like about qualitative research sometimes is that you go to go really deep. Whereas when you look at

really deep. Whereas when you look at quantitative research, you just have to trust the numbers and then you have to form an opinion about the numbers.

Whereas here you get lots of opposing views in a room and you you actually some some people say like loyalty is dead and then on the other side you get someone like no no loyalty is is for MCP is the best thing that you have because

it will always book through the Bonvoy program and it's it's really great to get all of those views because we all have to form a view of the future and we all don't know what it is. So quantitive

research is a really great method to do that. Just to touch on that, I think the

that. Just to touch on that, I think the the process and that was really the the way we went into it as well, what we wanted to get out of it is exactly that um by asking people about the likelihood

of something and the desiraability of something. You you can see that some

something. You you can see that some scenarios there's a lot of consensus amongst people and they just say yes this is going to happen or no this is definitely not going to happen. whereas

others there's a lot of sort of differences and and people believe different things and I think both provide a really interesting story. Um

because obviously if there's a lot of consensus we can say okay this is likely going to happen. If there's a lot of disparity in answers there's it doesn't mean it's not going to happen. It just

means that people don't know yet if if how this is going to look. And I think that's a really interesting story in itself as well.

>> And what I liked about some of the the people that you interviewed were these are the people that make a decision.

They're not the ones that sit back and wait for something to happen. These are

the people that say either I believe that this is the the future or I believe that this is the future. But they're

making a decision and they're making a move in that direction. Whilst most of the industry is sitting back and watching and waiting, but you need a few of those early innovators that are saying this is what's going to happen and we're going to go after that. And

that's what makes it exciting to be interviewing these kind of people that are at the kind of like preface of like the innovation that's going to happen.

And some of them will be wrong and that's okay. But at least they're

that's okay. But at least they're moving. And I think movement is really

moving. And I think movement is really really important.

>> Totally. And I think yeah, we're really at that in an article that I wrote about the report as well that's in in hospitality net. I I refer to it as the

hospitality net. I I refer to it as the inflection point of of sort of saying we're we're at a point now where AI is is starting to make a real impact. And

with that, I mean, I don't mean to disregard all of the AI stuff that's happened before, but if you look at all of the AI innovation that's happened up to now, especially in our industry, it's

quite siloed. It's relatively easy to to

quite siloed. It's relatively easy to to put some AI on a on a revenue management system to to help improve pricing, optimize it. Not saying that I can do

optimize it. Not saying that I can do it, but there's people that that can do that quite well. Um, I think where AI is is going to hit really hard in 2026 is

beyond that in in more of the messy dayto-day kind of operational work in a hotel. and and that's where um things

hotel. and and that's where um things like agentic AI which we've talked about before um that's where that can really make an impact um and and it becomes much more interesting to to look at how

AI can help there and I think that's why it's an inflection point for hotel years as well to to sort of say okay we really need to start looking into this now because it's going to have an impact not

just in the background of some tool that I'm using somewhere on the side it actually will actually have an impact on everything that you do from dayto-day today >> because there was this great chart in the report that showed all of the

different stages from the m making like the discovery to making the booking to the instay to the post stay and it showed that we're all using AI at the early stages we're all doing discovery we're all asking it questions saying

like I'm going on this beautiful destination like what are you recommending in terms of hotels and it works really well there but once you get to instay once you deal with all the legacy tech that hotels have it breaks

down it no longer works did any of the hotel or the the people that you spoke to have a strong opinion about how the instay will change with AI.

>> Yes, I think I think there's there's a there's a lot of um comments on that and I think we can probably split it by back of house and front of house, right? And

I think especially back of house there's a lot of understanding or or anticipation I guess of um AI will start to have a bigger impact on that. There's

so much manual work that's still being done. Uh, I know you talk on on this

done. Uh, I know you talk on on this podcast a lot about sort of automation and AI is is a great tool to to help automate certain things, but up to now

it probably hasn't lived up to expectations or or or potential. With

Agentic AI, we really believe it will.

Um and and I think in the interviews that really shone through as well of of things like answering emails, guest communication, but also um predictive maintenance housekeeping scheduling

all these kind of things. A lot of that can be automated more and AI will have a really big impact. Of course, front of house, like I said, guest communication, um but also things upgrades, automated

upgrades and and and recognition of of uh your most loyal and and valuable guests. All of these things should

guests. All of these things should become much better as the technology becomes better as well. So yeah, there's there's definitely a lot of impact that this can have.

>> Like one of the challenges that our industry has built itself towards is that we've got the PMS and then you've got all kinds of integrations and then you've got a data lake that takes all of the data from all of these systems and

sits outside of your PMS, but the PMS is the action driver. And I think once we bring that data back into the PMS system as we have done and I think some of our competitors are pro probably also doing

the same thing once all of the data resides inside the core system and then you've got the AI semantic layer around it you can really start to action it but it's really hard when it sits outside of

your silo to make that actionable and MCP kind of agents like uh that automates all of these really complex workflows non-standardized workflows

needs access to the pure data inside the That is the system of action and the system of action is one of those things that we'll be talking about a lot more in in the coming year. As we go back to

the start of the journey when a guest discovers and books, what are you thinking is going to happen in that kind of early stage of the booking process?

There's a few things that we already see happening and and I think there's some clarity around it, but there's also, let me say this outright, there's also a lot of unclarity on on exactly what's going

to happen, but also what happens today and and how it all works, right? Because

a lot of it is uh a black box and if if Google itself says that they don't really know how uh an LLM comes up with his answers, then then we're who are we to say that we understand the whole

process? But I think what's what's

process? But I think what's what's happening is more and more people and we refer to this in the report as well.

There's a was a recent study and a few different studies actually show pretty much all the same of about a third of people now use LLM. So Cadet GPT

perplexity Gemini to discover uh and search for travel get their inspiration through these these AI assistants. Um

and um very soon and this is already starting to happen. Booking will

probably also start to take place on this. So Expedia is working together

this. So Expedia is working together with Chad GPT or OpenAI I should say. Um

uh Perplexity has its own comet browser now where you can can book travel directly as well if you use that. So

there's more and more uh AI coming or generative AI coming throughout those different stages. it it will start to

different stages. it it will start to move into the booking experience. But

how exactly um this this AI assistant finds the information about your hotel which why it decides to show one hotel over

another. We don't really know. Um and we

another. We don't really know. Um and we also don't really know who's going to be the winner of this. Is it going to go directly to hotel websites? Is it

actually still requiring aggregator in in form of an OTAA for example to to find that availability information? Um

obviously the OTAAS are busy making sure that that's the case. The ladder is the case. Um but we do believe there's also

case. Um but we do believe there's also opportunities for hotels, individual hotels to to benefit from from this move. Like I think one of the things

move. Like I think one of the things that was true in the pre-AI age when we were all optimizing for search engine optimization is that you know if if there was no content about your hotel people couldn't find you. So we were all

just pushing out enormous amounts of content to drive traffic. That doesn't

change because AI needs content and it needs lots and lots of data about your hotel in order to surface it in the first place. So I don't think there's

first place. So I don't think there's this dramatic shift from an SEO to driving content to suddenly just ignoring content. Like we've got to push

ignoring content. Like we've got to push out relevant content and it needs to be positive. It needs to be people talking

positive. It needs to be people talking positively about your hotel because if there's lots of negative sentiment then the AI is not going to recommend this to a user because if they serve you a hotel that is terrible, you're never going to

use that AI model again for the next search. So the one thing I think that

search. So the one thing I think that will remain the same is you need to push out content work. You know, guest review platforms are a real critical component to capturing what people loved about

your hotel and then doubling down on that as a strategy for your hotel, saying, right, they talk about, you know, the wonderful lake that we are on.

I was in a hotel by a lake over Christmas. So, lean into that

Christmas. So, lean into that experience. Like, how can you make

experience. Like, how can you make people talk more about that? Because

when people look for a lake holiday, they will find your hotel. Um, so

there's no diversion. like you still need to push out as much narrative online about it. It's just it's shifting to how you service it and and how do you drive that strategy and that's the bit

that no one really knows what's going to happen but there's no shift away from content.

>> No, I I totally agree with that. I I do think that there is um there should be a heightened focus on accuracy of of content especially when it comes to the

static information about your hotel.

making sure that any platform that you're on and that information is on has the same information cuz obviously a person will go to one platform, maybe two platforms and compare maybe

information there and that's it. The LLM

can go to 20 different platforms. If there's one platform that has different information than the rest, there's uncertainty. Um, and so it might then

uncertainty. Um, and so it might then decide not to offer you as we don't really know. So, if I'm pushing my hotel

really know. So, if I'm pushing my hotel saying we are wonderfully dog friendly as a hotel, but if all the reviews say about how terrible the experience was for their dog as a dog owner, then that that is a disconnect from the real

world. And whereas in the past you could

world. And whereas in the past you could get away with that as an SEO strategy, you just push out content about, you know, how dog friendly you are, now that doesn't work anymore. So, you actually have to go and read the reviews and

build a a digital strategy around what guests are saying. And if you want them to say something, you need to make sure that it's true what you're saying. And

that that's really probably one of the big shifts.

>> Yeah. And and it's it's about remembering that most people use an AI assistant to ask it questions. And the

question can be book me a hotel, but it could also um be once they you have a hotel, you want to know more. Or when

you're trying to book a hotel, is this hotel dog friendly or not? and um being proactive as a hotelier and and actually offering the LLM say a list of your 50

most frequently asked questions uh with clear answers so we can can answer those questions very confidently is very becoming more important. So making sure that you have something like that

available uh to to uh the AI assistant is is very important. Can we talk about bookable services like upselles or cross sales of different services of the hotel? Do you think that's going to

hotel? Do you think that's going to change dramatically?

>> I think they they'll become more important and I think especially when we're talking about how do you distinguish your offering from an OTAA

and why would an LLM choose you over uh an OTAA? It's it's similar to a person

an OTAA? It's it's similar to a person uh in a in a way, but again um bookable services and having um something that distinguishes your offering from what's

available on the OTAA will become more important. So an LLM um might know uh

important. So an LLM um might know uh that the person that they're they're they're an assistant of of a person, right? So and they know a lot about

right? So and they know a lot about their that person. So they might know that they like uh breakfast at a specific time. uh they might they might

specific time. uh they might they might know about their allergies. They might

know uh that they like history and sightseeing or or any any other activities. They might know that they're

activities. They might know that they're on a pleasure trip, so want to have a a workspace. If as a hotel you can offer

workspace. If as a hotel you can offer um all of these types of services as part of the booking experience when the room is being booked, um that will put

you a leg up against an OTAA that can only book a room. Um, and and today, let's be honest, the the experience of booking ancillary services like we have

in in in the airline industry, it doesn't really exist in the hotel industry for for most hotels. And if it exists, often it requires a phone call to the hotel. Can I book this as part of

my stay? Um, or you need to do it while

my stay? Um, or you need to do it while you're there, hoping that it's still available. Um, if a hotel can offer this

available. Um, if a hotel can offer this as part of the booking experience and the LLM can book that as well as part of the experience, we really believe that sets hotels apart from other channels

and therefore actually um these AI assistants can help drive direct bookings in our view >> and we've seen you know sometimes not everything is about AI. We've actually

seen hotels put their parking inside Muse. Previously, they're like, well, if

Muse. Previously, they're like, well, if they came with a car, they would have parked it anyway. And actually, once they deployed parking with Muse, they started seeing that the revenue went up.

And they started investigating why the revenue went up. And they're like, oh, because they they actually would have parked it down the road where it was free, but because you make it bookable at the time of booking, they now decide

to pre-book it at the hotel. And that's

what's driving the revenue increase. So,

making all of your different services bookable through booking engines or through upselles throughout the journey.

and there are different products at different parts, right? So, at the time of booking, I may not want to book an early arrival because I don't actually know what time I'm arriving, but at the online check-in stage, I may want to offer that. And we've made it really

offer that. And we've made it really easy to segment kind of the stages and what kind of products you would like to offer at the different stages to customize. And this is like way before

customize. And this is like way before you even touch AI, you need to start thinking about the the kind of journeys that you're going through. One of the hardest things in a hotel is to every

year increase your room rates. Like it's

expected, right? The owners will be like, I want a 5% increase of the room rates. But you can't like you cannot

rates. But you can't like you cannot like with a product that's aging every single year and then you're getting this push for room price increase to match the inflation and and preferably a little something. So the only way to

little something. So the only way to drive increase of revenue sometimes is from ancillary services and you've got to be really smart about how you leverage every square meter of the hotel and we just try and enable that through

the platform. But you do have to do the

the platform. But you do have to do the work to figure out, okay, so what are the services that a hotelier that that a guest at my hotel would want to buy.

Bike rentals are one of those great services that we've deployed, but we don't yet see enough hotels actually putting it in the system. And I think it could be a real driver to some of that incremental revenue.

>> Yeah, I love the example of um the Paradito Hotel, one of our customers in Paris that has karaoke booths and and a cinema on the rooftop and and things

like that. like really really

like that. like really really interesting almost quirky ways of using unused space. Um and and the revenue uh

unused space. Um and and the revenue uh increase is is dramatic for them. So

>> one of those rooms in the basement that is now a storage room in most hotels, they turn it into a karaoke room. They

put a QR code in if you want to order any drinks. You can order that directly

any drinks. You can order that directly through the point of sale. So there's

not a waiter who has to constantly check in, but they'll just come when the order is being placed. Payment is

automatically taken care of. And this is what you get when you build an ecosystem text stack that is payments, PMS, point of sale um with a bookable service of karaoke rooms. That's the power of kind

of what you can do. And it drives real revenue, but also it drives real experience because now these guests are going to go online and saying, "I had the best karaoke experience at this hotel." These reviews start to surface.

hotel." These reviews start to surface.

And then people that are looking for a fun night out on a Friday night in Paris will find your hotel and it's differentiated from whatever some some budget hotel down the road that doesn't do anything special. So all of these

pieces come together and then AI feats of it to kind of tell that story really well.

>> Yeah. And I think what one latch on to that one mistake that we see quite a lot in the industries is to expect that AI will solve all of our data problems. You

mentioned it earlier as well. If you

have a data lake somewhere um it needs to be accessible and and I think don't expect that this latest technology um will actually solve that problem for

you. It's a it's a really difficult

you. It's a it's a really difficult problem and having unsiloed data that can um be utilized by AI agents um is is

extremely important. Um but AI isn't

extremely important. Um but AI isn't going to necessarily solve that problem.

So um it's it's a step that going back to the inflection point, it's a step that hotelers need to start seriously looking at that if you want to benefit from the potential of of this latest

technology that's coming or that's already here. um make sure that you do

already here. um make sure that you do invest or look into what does your stack tech stack look like today? What what

what are the data flows? What where is your data stored and and is it accessible? Because the true potential

accessible? Because the true potential of um generative AI and agentic AI is if it can grab data and can touch everything and impact and and play with

with everything that you know about the customer. In many cases, in many hotels,

customer. In many cases, in many hotels, there's just a lot of silos and and data isn't freely available. And so that will hamper the impact that AI can have. And

uh so making sure that that you solve that problem first and and focusing on that in 2026 is actually a really important thing to do. We often see a lot of RFPs, requests for proposals coming in from hotel groups who are

asking us to fill in an Excel sheet with, I don't know, 500 questions about what they had in their old system to see if the new system can supply that and then they also want something else and we don't do well on Excel sheet because

we haven't built the legacy features that you may have had in your system that was were needed 10 years ago and there I hope that we'll see a shift of CIOS who are listening to this who are thinking let's do the RFP in a different

way. We still need to know what the

way. We still need to know what the critical problems are that we want the system to solve, but I won't tell you what the features are to solve those because maybe there's new technology

that's come in. and thinking about the data lake and MCP should be questions in your RFP that you ask about to uncover whether you're buying honestly best of

breed for 2026 or if you're buying best of breed for 2015 that is been lifted into the cloud but hasn't actually done the innovation before you start an RFP process really think about will this

scale in the next couple of years because there has been this shift since 2022 since AI came in but there's been a significant shift in 2025 when MCP started coming in and you want to make

sure that you can confidently answer the the yes to all of the questions your 500 questions in your RFP in three years time and I think a lot of those RFPs won't hold up anymore and that that's really where the shift is going to come

from where CIOS need to shift their thinking towards AI and they need to ask the right questions and they're not being asked today. we still get those Excel files with hundreds of questions

with antiquated feature requests that we don't build because they don't make sense to us anymore as a as an industry.

So, I'm hoping we'll see some of that shift in RFPs going forward.

>> Yeah. And I think that's also why we talk quite a lot about the semantic layer and and I think it it's worth spending a minute on on that because it's not a term that's that's wellnown

and and you've mentioned MCP a few times now and and MCP you hear more and more about and and um it's almost put out there as sort of the solution to all of

our AI data problems and and connectivity and and um just like the API um was before the sort of the solution to all of our data problems. And eventually it isn't because it's

just a connector. MCP again it's it's connecting um allowing for connections between different systems. We talk about

the semantic layer as a an additional um layer I guess if you like um of of um understanding of of data and and the

semantic layer to us is really like a a dictionary in in technical terms called the ontology of um of all the data that

you have. It's it's important to be able

you have. It's it's important to be able to connect different systems together and that's what the MCP allows and the MCP allows for AI to connect to different systems but to understand

exactly what a data point means and and how it what it means in this system versus what it means in this system and and if if the definition of those are the same for that you need an additional

dictionary if you like and and that's what this semantic layer is uh so that we can connect different systems and we can be assured that ADR means the same

in this system as this system or that we um refer to a booking um by the hour by the by the day or whatever it might be uh in the same way across different

systems and and that's a missing piece >> that we don't have yet and that's why we've been talking about that >> to make that real like if if today you can engage with a chatbot of the hotel and it will search a database an LLM

large language model where it just gets an answer and it and answer your question. However, if you're asking for

question. However, if you're asking for something from the hotel, it can't action it. So, a human now has to step

action it. So, a human now has to step in unless you have an MCP connected. So,

you say, right, if the guest asks for shampoo, you need to have an integrated system, which is the housekeeping system, so that they can take that information and turn it into an action to the housekeeping system saying, "Hey,

housekeeper on floor one, go and deliver this shampoo to room 101." Knowing which housekeeper on floor one is where your semantic layer comes in. That's the

understanding of how does the solid operate what are the rules of operation.

So we've gone from LLM to MCP to the semantic layer that kind of becomes this level of understanding that can make it real. So whilst I think a lot of have

real. So whilst I think a lot of have not yet seen this in real life, this is coming in 2026 and it's going to make life of fatal significantly easier

because this is where you we we deploy humans to be the to be the semantic layer today to today the humans are the semantic layer but a lot of that understanding 90 95% of that we can

actually know because we know what's happening in the system. So we can actually connect the dots through AI in the future. Besides AI, what else was

the future. Besides AI, what else was there in the report? Because I feel like we've just been talking about AI, but was there anything else interesting in there?

>> There is Well, I think I think to be fair that obviously it's related to AI, but if you talk about AI, what always comes up is what does it mean for the

the human touch and the human human element of hospitality? Um and and I think that discussion has been going on since probably the internet and and um

technology coming into hotels of um where do you find that balance and and I think it's it's it's not a secret that we are obviously innovative as a company

uh and Muse and and we we want to see technology uh ingrained throughout the uh throughout throughout the hotel experience to to make it better. Um but

we also believe that actually technology can enhance the experience significantly um from from both uh the guest point of view and the staff point of view and um

and I think that's that's a very important thing to uh to to say and and actually the interviews that that I had with with the different experts uh are

really aligned to that where it's important to keep that human touch and keep that human element. Uh obviously

depending on what kind of business you're operating, there's a there's a sliding scale of of how much and where you want that human touch to be. Um but

it's it's an important aspect of the hotel industry and pro arguably more important today than it was 10, 15, 20 years ago when we didn't have mobile phones and social media. Lots of people

now actually go to hotels for that human experience. Um, so, um, I think that's

experience. Um, so, um, I think that's that's extremely important, but it doesn't take away from the fact that some of the things we've already mentioned around automation, that also takes away from the human experience. If

if you, um, need to type in a check-in, type in tons of details rather than being able to talk to someone and explain the the layout of the hotel or some fun things to do in town. So, AI

should be an enabler of more human touch rather than than >> I was um I was scrolling on TikTok.

Sorry. I I I was going to say I was watching a educational video, but I was scrolling on Tik Tok this morning and Rory Sutherlands, who's this marketing kind of expert, you see him all over Tik Tok with these great stories and he said, you know, you've got these hotel

brands who are looking at this doorman and they're like, this doorman who just opens doors is no value. And then

Mackenzie comes in and McKenzie says, right, we'll just put a revolving door into that thing and we get rid of the doorman and we save lots and lots of money. And yes, initially it does. And

money. And yes, initially it does. And

then over time you see guests starting to complain because the dormant does so much more than just open a door. They

they pick up your luggage, they give you recommendations, they they hail you a cab and they create what's the magic of hotels. So if you say like right, we've

hotels. So if you say like right, we've automated it, we don't need the humans, but actually you do need the humans even more because they now need to get insights from the hotel. So I arrived at

hotel the other day and they welcomed me and they said, "How is Beyonce your dog doing?" And I was like, "How do you

doing?" And I was like, "How do you know?" And it was our system that had

know?" And it was our system that had served them this information in in an AI tool tip. And it allowed me to have a

tool tip. And it allowed me to have a conversation with a receptionist about my dog instead of my passport and my credit card. And it changed the

credit card. And it changed the experience instantly. So I don't think

experience instantly. So I don't think we're removing humans. We need to lean into them and we need to just make sure that we leverage them in the best way possible. I had um Kevin who is the CEO

possible. I had um Kevin who is the CEO of Mashaare Hotels um and I met with him the other week and he was talking about how they were hiring actors. He said,

"Because now I don't need them to know how the night audit runs. I don't need them to know how to scan a passport from a guests, but I do want them to engage with customers." So he started going to

with customers." So he started going to theater schools to hire actors because you kind of want that experience. You

want to lean into the experience and double down on it because you want to create these memorable experiences that guests then talk about online that then feeds the LMS that then feed your booking engine funnel. And and I think

that is such a smart way to approach this. I can't say too much about it just

this. I can't say too much about it just yet because we we don't have the final results, but we're we're always searching the latest and the greatest of course and and we we're actually looking

at um sort of the workforce and and what kind of skills do uh does the workforce need today and and and in five years time and and how does it change with AI

um and and all the tools that are out there and I think a very clear thing is um soft skills will become more and more important um and you see that talking to

universities as well and they see that it's actually the soft skills that are that are more important and and a lot of different industries want uh hospitality

school students because that's where you learn soft skills. Um the analytical capabilities and and technical capabilities are important for certain jobs but for a lot of jobs it's the soft

skills that are important and especially in a hotel um that will continue to to gain in importance. So yeah, for sure not getting rid of the human element.

For sure. That's that's not what we're looking for to do here.

>> So as um you spoke to all these experts, did you get a sentiment that they all believe that 2026 is the year of change?

I feel like we've been talking about going to happen this year, but do you think that there is a real shift happening?

>> That's a tough one to to answer. I I

think there's there's always this natural uh sort of expectation at the end of December that next year is going to be totally different, right? I mean

that's just human nature that that you believe that um I do think that that I think like I said at the beginning uh of

of the call the agentic AI um potential is is great. It's strong. Um I'm I'm hopeful that it can actually have a have

a big impact and um I think it's the it's the first um piece of technology um that can be ingrained in in all the tools that are already existing in our

industry. um but that can have a have a

industry. um but that can have a have a real impact on some of the the lingering uh legacy processes that that continue to happen in the industry. So yeah, I do

I do believe talking to to uh people that there is a real expectation um that um with the speed of innovation that we're seeing uh with generative AI and

now like we said agentic AI coming up now that um things will actually happen if it happens in 2026 or maybe into 2027 and and beyond and that's always hard to

say but looking at how quickly Gen AI was was adopted let's be honest just four years ago it didn't even exist and now a quarter or even a third of people use it already >> now I have opinions about it and like

>> there you go >> I got cut off from chat GBT over the holidays and I thought oh this is a great opportunity to switch to claude or to try out the Google model and I I immediately switched on to subscriptions

and after two days with claude I was like this is not for me because it doesn't understand Dutch so it couldn't switch between Dutch and English as natively as chachi pet and then I went to the Google model Gemini and same they struggled with my language

differentiation and said, "Show me images and like we don't can't do that here, but here's something." I said, "No, no, Chat GPT can do it." So, I've been testing for the last two weeks all these different models. And I went back to chat GPT because it served me in a

really good way. But it's interesting to see how many opinions people have about all the different LLMs and what their preferred one is because, you know, we all look for it in and use it in a

different way. And I think so much is

different way. And I think so much is going to happen this year. I get excited about it, but it will be interesting to see which other hotel brands that are truly truly going to innovate. [snorts]

And you know, if you are already innovating, we would love to speak to you here um for research. So, if you do something really interesting, please reach out to us cuz I want to tell those

stories. I think it's important that we

stories. I think it's important that we tell stories of hotels that do something really innovative. Where can people

really innovative. Where can people download this report? because I I loved it. But it's, you know, you really need

it. But it's, you know, you really need to sit down with it for half an hour to just consume all of the content in there.

>> So, the I'm sure we can add a link somewhere uh down below somewhere on the side, right? [laughter]

side, right? [laughter] >> Uh to the website. There's a landing page where you can get it. Um we'll

actually have translated versions as well. So, we have exact summaries that

well. So, we have exact summaries that are shorter, only six pages instead of 45 or so. um uh where you get all of the the main things and they'll be in in uh

German and French and uh in English and um a few other languages. Um but yeah, the full report can also then be can be downloaded on the same page. Um and

there is a lot of interesting stuff, but but like we said before, there's really three sections. So focus on the section

three sections. So focus on the section that that's interesting to you. Each

section is is sort of built up separately. um it it it has its own key

separately. um it it it has its own key takeaways and a checklist and and things that you can uh start doing today. Uh

going back to what you were saying about your LLMs, I think the coming years, every hotel year not necessarily should be um triing LLMs, but should be doing

things like building your own bot. Like

I know there's a there's a a podcast episode from you where you where you do that with Lovable. Every hoteler should probably start doing that if they haven't done yet. um just start experimenting with different tools and

different systems. Look at the the technology you have today and see what AI they're implementing and and start understanding that. So back to the

understanding that. So back to the report, three sections. Uh one is on that sort of booking experience and how that's going to change. One is on this agentic AI um um expectation and what

that's going to mean and the final section is very much on the human touch and and um the human element in hospitality and how that's going to be impacted. So if you don't have time to

impacted. So if you don't have time to read 50 pages, um, pick a section and focus on >> blobs of text. Like there's nice charts, there's nice elements to it. I think one of the things I always struggle with

because I I like to consume information in different ways. I always struggle when I see 50 pages, but actually once I've read it, I've gained information.

And it was what I liked about the report was the differing opinions. Um, it was really interesting to to hear that some people just thought, for example, loyalty was dead and some people didn't think it was dead. Um, and I think you

just need to have these perspectives in your the back of your head when you designed the experience at your hotel or your brand. Um, so read the report, give

your brand. Um, so read the report, give us your feedback. Um, and if you do something interesting, reach out. We

would love to have you here on Matt Talks. Vouter, I thank you.

Talks. Vouter, I thank you.

>> Thank you very much.