Guess The Guest: Hospitality, AI, and Why Humans Are the Luxury
What started as a chat about AI at Expedia Group's Rome office turned into a frank look at travel, tech, and the messy brilliance of people. Credit to Elisa Ragno for asking hard questions and letting the answers land without a script.
The short version: AI is collapsing the old booking playbook, the browser is fading, and the value of a real human interaction is going up, not down.
A monk-run hotel, a broken PMS, and a lesson in cognition
Years ago, a night audit job at a Trappist-run hotel exposed a system held together by tape, carbon paper, and a printer that screamed like a wounded bird. To save a bit of sanity, a tiny proto-PMS was hacked together.
That's when the real insight hit: the moment you hand any thinking to a machine, it changes you. You don't just gain efficiency-you trade away a piece of how you decide, sense, and work.
Speed is the force: AI as UI
We are living inside an exponential spiral. Prediction doesn't just get harder; it breaks. The old web scattered attention across countless touchpoints. Conversational systems compress it to one.
This is why "AI as UI" is not a slogan. It's an interface shift that dissolves the browser. When the traveler stops searching, the distribution stack caves in at the center. The big platforms see it coming. Many hotels still don't.
What this does to the guest
The impulse to move through the world to move through yourself is older than any tech. That won't change. What changes is where the trip begins and how choices form.
Friction that once forced reflection is disappearing. If a model can phrase your desire better than you can, your inner map shifts. That has upside-clarity-and a cost-outsourced intention.
Humans-as-Luxury
Automation removes uncertainty. It also removes texture. In that flattening, humans become rare.
The robot gives the illusion of perfection. The human gives hospitality. One honest, unscripted gesture carries more weight than a thousand flawless handoffs.
Personalisation won't be built in your CRM
Hotels see the last mile. OTAs see an intermediate layer. Models see the whole membrane-desire before intention, signals before form.
Real personalisation will emerge upstream, far earlier than your PMS or CRM. Once it's set, it's as hard to unwind as a habit.
And yes, if the web is increasingly synthetic (see the Dead Internet Theory), human signals become even more valuable.
Why hotels resist change (it's not stupidity)
Resistance isn't ignorance. It's survival. A PMS isn't a tool; it's the geography of labor. Replacing it is like rewiring a nervous system, not downloading an app.
Vendors are trapped by their own infrastructure. Some consultants are tied up in kickbacks. Inertia pays-until it doesn't.
A few honest laughs
A digital clone answering questions faster than the original? Tempting, sure. A dead mic jokingly "unionizing" against AI? Also happened.
Would robots replace concierges? In some hotels, guests might not notice. That got a laugh-and a quiet pause.
What to do this quarter
- Build a conversational front door: Stand up an agent that handles discovery, planning, and service in one place. Treat it like your new homepage.
- Prepare for searchless distribution: Optimize for recommendations and multi-turn conversations, not pageviews and click paths.
- Own first-party data (ethically): Capture consented preferences in stay, not just pre-stay. Store events, not fields. Focus on context, not trivia.
- Redesign PMS migrations as org change: Process mapping, role redesign, playbooks, and training. Tech is 20% of the work.
- Codify "humans-as-luxury" moments: Pick three points where a person must touch the experience. Script for intent, not lines.
- Measure what matters: Track resolution time, recontact rate, guest sentiment, and lifetime value-not just conversion.
- Audit incentives: Map vendor commissions and internal KPIs that reward status quo. Remove conflicts and you'll remove half the drag.
- Upskill your team on AI: Give staff shared language and hands-on reps. If you need a starting point, explore role-based programs here.
The question under every other question
How do we stay human while machines think alongside us? Technology is a mirror, not a prophecy. It reflects who we're becoming.
The tension isn't human vs. machine. It's the human we are vs. the human we'll tolerate becoming. The ground is moving. Learn to move with it.
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