SAN ANTONIO - A panel at the Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals' HITEC conference warned hoteliers that AI's rapid adoption carries concrete downsides: surging energy consumption, harder-to-spot deepfakes, brand-destroying homogeneity, and a measurable decline in critical thinking among younger workers. The discussion, held 10 July 2026, pushed back against the industry's mostly positive AI narrative.
Lyle Worthington, European Union operations adviser for HFTP, said ignoring the "dark side" of AI would be a mistake. "It is incredibly important that we understand the repercussions of our actions. It's incredibly important that we understand both sides of every argument, because that's how we think critically, and that's how we solve problems - only through education." These discussions at HITEC highlight how AI's rapid growth is reshaping AI for Hospitality & Events, forcing hoteliers to confront uncomfortable trade-offs.
The environmental effect
AI data centers consume enormous amounts of electricity and water for cooling. Worthington said projections show that by 2030, the facilities running AI will use more energy than Russia, with only India, the United States and China consuming more. "We can see the trajectory that this is on, and we can see the impact this is potentially going to have," he said.
Many hotels have built sustainability policies around reusable materials and towel-reuse programs. Carl Winston, founding director of San Diego State University's Payne School, argued that guests will soon demand accountability. "How are you, as hoteliers, going to define what is sustainable in an era of AI in these data centers using electricity, power and water like crazy? How are you going to disclose that? Consumers are going to demand it."
Deepfakes, hacking and other threats
Rik van Leeuwen, vice president of customer operations for Ireckonu, said AI-generated images and videos are blurring the line between real and fake. "The question if something is real, yes or no, is getting diluted, and that's the risk that we are facing here," he said. In hiring, AI-generated resumes are already causing problems. Burcin Turkkan, a doctoral researcher at the University of Central Florida's Rosen College of Hospitality Management, said human resources teams are looking to blockchain to authenticate documents because fake submissions have become common in a high-turnover industry.
Winston noted that global hotel companies face a patchwork of regulations. "Being a global company, or even if you're working in two different cultures, you've got two different sets of rules, and you've got to keep up," he said. He added that hoteliers are "probably going to use AI for navigating that."
Authenticity and AI slop
When every hotel uses the same few generative AI tools, brand voices blur. Turkkan said this homogeneity undermines years of work to create a distinct identity. Winston put it bluntly: "For your brand, you probably worked for years to create a voice, 'you stay with us, this is what you're going to get.' That AI leverage that you're using in a lot of aspects of your business now is not as authentic and may not reflect your voice."
Worthington cautioned that large language models remain largely a black box. "The programmers of these systems also don't exactly know why they're answering the way that they are," he said. This opacity makes it risky to rely on AI for guest messaging without human oversight.
The downfall of critical thinking
Winston compared AI's rise to the calculator, a tool that sparked outrage but ultimately became essential. The difference, he said, is that AI replaces critical thinking rather than arithmetic. Turkkan called this cognitive offloading, and studies already show lower critical-thinking scores among young people who depend heavily on AI.
Worthington warned that the real danger emerges if access to AI suddenly changes. "The people who have grown up in an era where you learn your critical skills, your critical thinking skills at a young enough age are impacted a whole lot less by this. But for the kids … you see that their critical thinking scores are significantly lower than they should be, and their dependence on AI is significantly higher than it should be. Maybe that's OK … but what happens when that AI is not available?"
Changes to workforce
Panelists agreed that hospitality's persistent labor shortage might absorb some workers displaced by AI, but the transition won't be smooth. Van Leeuwen pointed to the speed of change: "How are we able to catch all these people that will lose their jobs so rapidly while industries are not able to transition that fast? Because let's be honest, people aren't really good for change in general."
Winston said the human element remains in demand. "I just think the jobs are going to shift, and there's going to be plenty of jobs for those who learn the tools, because humans want to interact with humans sometimes." Turkkan agreed, stressing that hospitality will likely be among the last industries to see jobs decline because it is fundamentally a people business.
Why this matters for hospitality professionals
The panel made clear that hoteliers cannot adopt AI without accepting its hidden costs. Sustainability claims will ring hollow unless operators disclose data-center energy and water use tied to their AI tools. Hiring teams need new verification processes to catch AI-generated fraud. Brand leaders must audit AI-written guest communications to prevent a generic, inauthentic tone. Most urgently, managers who oversee younger staff should build training that reinforces problem-solving skills instead of letting cognitive offloading erode judgment. The technology isn't going away, but ignoring its downsides will create liabilities that guests, regulators, and employees will eventually force the industry to confront.
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