IHG hires McDonald's AI exec Wei Manfredi to lead enterprise AI and architecture
IHG Hotels & Resorts appointed Wei Manfredi as senior vice president of AI and architecture, signaling a deeper bet on data-driven operations and guest engagement. Her mandate: strengthen IHG's technical and data architecture, build strategic partnerships, and ensure AI initiatives are innovative, operationally sound, and secure.
Manfredi brings hands-on experience running AI at scale. She was most recently vice president of global architecture, data and generative AI at McDonald's, with prior leadership roles at Google Cloud, Lululemon, and Visa. She's also been recognized as a top AI leader for 2026 and among the 100 most influential AI leaders in America.
IHG's chief product and technology officer, Jolie Fleming, highlighted Manfredi's track record delivering AI-driven strategies for global brands and emphasized momentum across the portfolio. The company says this hire is part of a broader push to drive measurable benefits for owners, guests, and teams.
Why this matters for executives
- AI moves from pilots to platform: Expect consolidation of data pipelines, model governance, and enterprise architecture to support reuse across revenue, marketing, and operations.
- Owner ROI under a microscope: Automation, better forecasting, and personalized offers should drive lower opex and higher conversion-if data quality and change management keep pace.
- Security and trust become differentiators: Responsible AI, privacy, and guardrails will be table stakes for brand-wide deployments.
Competitive context
Marriott International, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, and Hyatt are investing in agentic development. Industry leaders expect agentic commerce to begin reshaping hotel booking in 2026-think autonomous systems that gather guest intent, negotiate options, and transact without hand-holding. This lifts expectations for speed, accuracy, and personalization across the funnel.
What to watch next
- Data unification: Movement toward a common guest and owner data layer across PMS/CRS/CRM, enabling near-real-time decisioning.
- Partnerships: Signals of deals with hyperscalers, model providers, and industry platforms to accelerate delivery.
- AI in booking flows: Incremental rollout of agentic booking assistants and smarter merchandising, measured by conversion rate lift and reduced abandonment.
- Ops impact: AI copilots for frontline teams-faster issue resolution, better upsell prompts, and predictive maintenance-tracked against labor efficiency and guest satisfaction.
- Governance: Clear model risk management, auditability, and bias monitoring rolled into standard tech controls.
Action list for strategy and tech leaders
- Audit the data foundation: Map sources, latency, quality, and identity resolution. Fix what blocks real-time personalization and forecasting.
- Prioritize 3-5 cross-property use cases: e.g., dynamic pricing and demand sensing, next-best-offer in direct channels, and AI-assisted service recovery.
- Stand up an AI control framework: Model documentation, human-in-the-loop thresholds, PII handling, and red-teaming before scale-up.
- Pilot agentic commerce safely: Start with bounded inventory, clear KPIs (conversion, margin, CSAT), and A/B holdouts.
- Upskill teams: Product, data, and ops leaders need shared language and tooling to move from experiments to production.
Signals that the strategy is working
- Fewer systems handoffs and faster cycle times from data to decision.
- Sustained uplift in direct booking conversion and ancillary revenue per stay.
- Owner adoption of AI-enabled tools, evidenced by repeat use and NPS.
- Documented reductions in handling time and maintenance spend without guest experience trade-offs.
For background on IHG's technology direction, see the company's newsroom and updates on partnerships and platform investments: IHG News & Media.
If you're building your internal capability roadmap, this curated index can help teams find role-based AI upskilling tracks: AI courses by job.
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