Category: Recent News

It feels like summer is on the way, so now is the time to invest in a digital strategy that focuses on seasonal menus, guest experiences and mobile ordering that delivers greater efficiency and satisfaction on both sides of the menu (for staff and guests) and ensures you will be basking in summer profits!

Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals (HFTP®) is pleased to announce the Headliner session lineup for the 2025 Hospitality Industry Technology Exposition and Conference (HITEC®). The highly anticipated conference is poised to provide groundbreaking insights and inspiration for technology enthusiasts and industry leaders. This year’s standout headliners include Todd Buchholz, a distinguished economist, Harvard professor, former White House economic adviser, and acclaimed author and Jeremy Gustche, CEO of TrendHunter.com, a globally renowned platform for innovation and change.

Matthew Ward, Founder of Hotelios Consulting, a UK-based hospitality consultancy, highlights the challenges faced by hotel management teams when handling IT-based projects in-house, and how engaging external consultancy services can offer cost-effective and efficient solutions.

Motel One celebrates the opening of its 100th hotel in Munich, a key moment in its development. At the same time, the brand continues to expand in Europe and the United States, with several upcoming projects, notably in France, the UK and Portugal.

Minor Hotels has announced the debut of its NH Hotels & Resorts brand in Copenhagen. The new hotel will be added to the portfolio on April 10th, 2025, expanding the presence of the NH brand in Denmark. This addition complements the group’s existing NH Collection Copenhagen, further solidifying its position in the city.

Holiday Inn Express & Suites has expanded its presence in Switzerland with the opening of Holiday Inn Express & Suites Sion. This new hotel, developed in partnership with Cycas Hospitality, marks the debut of the brand in Switzerland and is part of a major urban development project in the region.

Hotel experiences have become increasingly tailored. Preferences remembered, services preempted, journeys smoothed out by systems that learn as guests move. AI and data analytics make all this possible, but they also raise an unavoidable question: what’s the cost of personalization?

Recently, I wrote an article about the customer service farce. One of several examples I shared was the line we often hear when calling customer support: “Your call is very important to us.” When we hear it, we hope it’s true. We hope it means that the company is going to respect our time, that someone will pick up the call quickly (versus being put on hold for an unreasonable amount of time), and that the agent we talk to will have the knowledge and skills to answer our question or resolve our complaint, and we’ll not have to repeat our story again and again.

Hyatt Hotels Corporation (NYSE: H) today announced plans to further strengthen its leadership position in the lifestyle hospitality segment across Europe, Africa and the Middle East (EAME), with the planned opening of 14 new lifestyle hotels by 2027.

This viewpoint explores the growing scarcity of human labor in hospitality and how automation, robotics, and AI (especially agentic) may redefine the nature of service. The paper argues that human workers could evolve into a luxury feature in an increasingly automated environment by drawing on examples from art, spirituality, and emerging workplace trends. Three potential hospitality models—technocentric, anthropocentric, and hybrid—are identified, each defined by the proportion of human labor versus agents, digital workers, synthetic or automated solutions. The findings highlight how, far from becoming obsolete, human labor may assume a premium status as personalization, authenticity, and empathy become highly sought-after commodities.