Presto Phoenix Inc., which provides a voice AI solution for QSR drive-thrus, has raised $10 million from Remus Capital-affiliated investors and other existing investors. The capital will be used to expand deployments, technology, and customer impact. The round follows Presto's recent integration with Toast and other AI partners including ElevenLabs and Bluejay, and continued expansion of deployments with existing and new QSR customers.
AI商业智能平台Ladera宣布与云原生PMS供应商Stayntouch实现直接集成，为酒店管理公司及多物业商业团队构建统一分析层。该集成通过只读API将Stayntouch的运营、房价及多物业绩效数据接入Ladera引擎，支持自然语言组合查询与自动化商业报告，并可整合销售、营销、渠道盈利等外部数据流，无需系统迁移或数据仓库重构。
酒店科技媒体Hospitality Technology报道，MGM Resorts International游戏、商业与数据技术高级副总裁Hemant Salvi将在今年酒店科技论坛（11月17-19日，拉斯维加斯Red Rock Resort）首日炉边对话中，分享MGM在物业满负荷运营期间替换核心企业系统的经验，以及在餐饮业务中测试人工智能的实际做法，包括真实宾客反馈和哪些工具最终被永久采用。Salvi拥有25年工程领导经验，曾管理超过250名工程师和产品开发人员。
Hapi CEO Jeff Bzdawka指出，酒店业在追逐AI差异化时跳过了AI就绪的基础。MIT研究显示95%的生成式AI项目未达目标，RateGain 2026年分销报告显示仅10%的酒店AI投入实现预期价值。他将决策速度定义为三个相互依赖的变量：获得答案的时间、对答案的信心、与行动的距离。酒店资产由住宿、餐饮、水疗、活动与零售等业务组成，常堆叠10至20个专用系统，且依赖隔夜批处理，数据割裂。他主张将数据层与核心交易系统解耦，通过API与归一化管道汇入云端湖仓。案例显示，某大型连锁通过自动化VCC验证与入账，将VCC交易失败率从30%降至1%以下。
云酒店管理平台Cloudbeds加入Preferred Hotels & Resorts的联盟伙伴计划，成为其推荐的统一酒店管理技术供应商。Preferred旗下覆盖80多个国家、超过625家豪华独立酒店、度假村及公寓。合作内容包括与Preferred自有预订引擎的专项API集成，以及Cloudbeds核心PMS、渠道管理器和收益自动化模块的对接，实现前台、收益管理和宾客营销渠道之间的实时数据共享。此举被视为Cloudbeds向传统由遗留PMS厂商服务的高端独立奢华资产市场扩张的信号。
留存营销平台Kubbly推出RCS Brand Preview工具，帮助营销人员评估富通信服务（RCS）消息在其品牌中的应用。RCS被视为传统短信的升级，具备已验证发送方品牌标识、交互按钮和媒体能力。Kubbly将这些功能整合以支持双向客户沟通，为酒店运营商和消费品牌提供预订、点单和客户咨询的直接消息通道。该工具针对多门店和大型酒店集团在中央与区域团队协调中常见的营销执行延迟问题，通过自动化部分营销活动开发并利用RCS基础设施，基于实时客户活动发送情境化沟通。Kubbly还跨Google Messages、Apple Messages和WhatsApp等渠道集成，由自动化代理处理客户咨询、预…
Skift与Aven Hospitality联合举办网络研讨会，探讨AI如何改变旅行者的酒店发现与预订方式。研讨会将发布覆盖美国、英国和澳大利亚4000名近期酒店住客的消费者研究，分析旅行者如何在整个酒店旅程中使用和信任AI、当酒店信息不准确时会发生什么，以及这些体验如何影响预订决策。Aven Hospitality首席营收官Noreen Henry与朗廷酒店集团战略、技术与创新高级副总裁Sean Seah将参与讨论。会议还将探讨酒店如何确保信息准确、完整、最新且一致，以便被AI系统理解和检索，并提升直接预订竞争力。
On September 23, Meituan announced that its hotel AI product "Jibai" has been upgraded to a flagship edition. The previously free Lite edition mainly helps hotels handle daily data queries, reviews and operational issues; the flagship edition targets high-star and chain hotels, connecting to PMS systems with merchant authorization to help revenue staff make judgments based on hotel conditions and market status. Meituan data shows Jibai AI covers 140,000 merchants with over 300,000 weekly consultations; deep users saw weekly exposure rise over 50% and RevPAR up an average of 11%. The flagship edition has been deployed with an initial 12 high-star and chain hotels, achieving 98% diagnostic re…
Hyatt Chairman, President and CEO Mark Hoplamazian said at Skift Global Forum that Hyatt has been the largest owner of its own hotels for 67 of its 70 years, shaping a different set of decisions. He said Hyatt replaced four core systems at once — central reservations, property management, revenue management and point-of-sale — delivering 40% savings on the property management system, with Hyatt absorbing the entire cost and passing none to owners. He also said Hyatt's leisure mix rose from about 35% in 2017 to closer to 55% by 2025, driven in part by the $2.7 billion acquisition of Apple Leisure Group during COVID.
Hawaii-based management company Castle Resorts & Hotels rebuilt its enterprise digital platform, CastleResorts.com, using an AI-assisted development model to aggregate its multi-property portfolio under a single direct-booking architecture. Its core technical approach is a unified booking interface that queries and routes guest searches across five distinct reservation systems spanning 20 properties in Hawaii, Reno and Auckland. The project bypassed traditional software agency models, completing the build in under four months for a low five-figure sum ($10k-$50k range), versus the typical 12-month timeline and high six-figure budget. The platform also structures its architecture and schema…
On September 23, Meituan announced an upgrade to its hotel AI product Jibai with the launch of a flagship edition targeting upscale and chain hotels, offering full-chain AI support spanning market insight, operational diagnosis and performance review. With merchant authorization, the flagship edition can connect to hotel PMS and other local operating systems to consolidate data scattered across channels. Meituan said the flagship edition has been co-built with a first batch of upscale and chain hotels, achieving 98% diagnostic accuracy and a 20% gain in full-chain management efficiency; merchants deeply using Jibai saw RevPAR rise an average of 11%.
Zhang Ye, deputy general manager of Poly Hotels Management, disclosed to TravelDaily the R&D path and industry enablement plan for its hotel vertical large model. Poly argues general-purpose LLMs struggle to reach core hotel operating decisions due to data-security risk and prohibitive private-deployment costs. Its approach applies hotel-specific reinforcement learning on a general model base, then distills and compresses it into a lightweight small model retaining over 95%-98% of core capabilities, with deployment cost of only RMB 200,000, or even under RMB 100,000. The model is in internal testing for business analysis and is planned for external release in October or November.
On September 23, Meituan released the full solution for its hotel AI product Jibai, covering the entire operating chain including business diagnosis, market assessment, pricing reference, budget management and review reporting. The solution includes the Jibai Lite edition for single-channel small and mid-sized hotels and the Jibai Flagship edition for multi-channel high-star and chain hotels, with built-in "AI expert teams" handling data analysis, diagnosis and recommendation generation, while final decisions remain with merchants. Jibai Lite launched in June 2025 and now covers 140,000 small and mid-sized hotel merchants.
Accor announced on September 24, 2026 that its ALL Concierge conversational AI companion has moved beyond pilot to full-scale rollout, making it the first hospitality group to deploy an end-to-end conversational AI companion at scale. It covers the journey from travel inspiration and hotel comparison to booking management and post-stay support, available 24/7 on ALL.com, the ALL Accor app, WhatsApp and iMessage, in 11 languages, with responses in under a few seconds and seamless handover to human agents. The pilot began in July 2025 and logged more than 1 million guest conversations. Accor also launched The Butler, an AI companion for hotel teams.
Digital check-in provider Virdee announced an expanded integration with smart access vendor Salto that lets hotel guests receive room keys directly in Apple Wallet and Google Wallet. Using NFC, guests can tap phones or smartwatches against Salto door locks without unlocking the device or opening a native app. The integration connects key issuance with Virdee's automated check-in pipeline covering ID verification, credit card authorization, registration and room assignment, and wallet keys remain usable for hours after a phone battery dies via power-reserve features. Access permissions also sync across guest rooms, elevators, fitness centers and perimeter doors without physical keycard creat…
Hospitality Technology rounded up developments in hotel mobile and digital keys. Virdee and Salto expanded their integration, connecting ID verification and check-in workflows directly to Salto smart locks to provision app-less NFC room keys into guest mobile wallets. PPHE Hotel Group deployed Hudini across 17 European properties, unifying mobile wallet keys, web apps, self-service kiosks and staff messaging. Canary Technologies acquired OpenKey to expand mobile key capabilities. easyHotel now lets guests use iPhone and Apple Watch as room keys at its London and Paris hotels. Separately, dormakaba will feature Resorts World's Google Wallet key rollout and a cloud security suite at HITEC 202…
Former Remington Hospitality CEO Sloan Dean launched AI Hospitality Group (AIHG) on Monday, describing it as the "first AI-native hotel operating company." Proprietary AI agents work across a hotel's existing PMS, POS, revenue, labor, finance and sales systems to run back-of-house functions autonomously, while a fully human team handles guest-facing operations. Rather than licensing software to existing operators, AIHG signs the hotel management agreement and takes responsibility for the P&L, charging a percentage of profit. It launched with design partnerships at The Ameswell Hotel in Mountain View, California, and two Parable Hospitality properties, backed by $7.5 million in seed funding.
Tongcheng Travel's Elong Hotel Technology held its Elong brand family showcase in Shenzhen on September 16, presenting five brands: Elong International Hotel, Elong Hotel, Elong Anyue Hotel, Elong Yitang Hotel and Elong E-sports Hotel. The five core brands have signed over 500 properties and opened more than 250. The Elong Hotel 2.0 product cut construction cost from RMB 130,000 to 105,000 per unit and raised development efficiency by 30%. Four hotel PMS systems have integrated AI large models, lifting labor efficiency by 50%, while platform procurement cuts hotel purchasing costs by 30%.
On September 16, 2026, Elong Hotel Technology held its Elong brand family showcase in Shenzhen. Five brands span high-end, upper-midscale, midscale and niche segments, with over 500 signed and more than 250 opened properties. Elong Hotel has nearly 200 signed and nearly 100 opened, with 2025 RevPAR 8.4% above the industry upper-midscale tier and OCC 4.9 percentage points ahead. Elong ranked 7th among domestic hotel groups and 17th globally in 2026. Overseas, nearly 20 properties are signed across seven countries.
Virtual payment technology provider Conferma is advancing its global "Ditch the Fax" initiative, having switched off fax-based virtual credit card (VCC) delivery across more than 100 countries in Africa, the Middle East and South America. Non-fax channels now represent roughly 95% of payment communications across Conferma's global travel network, and early data from regions where fax has been retired shows about a 2% increase in virtual card payment completion rates. The replacement is API-based delivery ("Connect Direct") straight into hotel property management systems (PMS), secure digital vaults and encrypted email. The US market is the final phase, scheduled for full completion by the e…
Short-term rental operating system Hospitable has rolled out native Split Payouts for Vrbo and direct booking channels, automating revenue distribution between property managers and asset owners at check-in. The feature splits gross booking proceeds at the payment gateway layer, routing owner shares and management commissions directly to separate bank accounts, replacing manual end-of-month trust transfers and statement validation. The automated payout mechanics were previously exclusive to Airbnb's built-in payment engine and now extend to Vrbo and direct engine bookings. It is deployed on Hospitable's Mogul plan for US bank accounts, with a UK rollout planned next.
Hotel back-office platform Inn-Flow launched a native integration between its Accounting and Procurement modules, embedding real-time budget availability, open PO tracking and AI-powered cart optimization into the hotel buyer's purchasing workflow. The system calculates remaining spend capacity in real time (forecast minus actual spend minus open PO commitments) before an order is placed, and automatically matches vendor invoices against open purchase orders to avoid double-counting. An AI cart optimizer recommends order adjustments pre-checkout and automatically maps line items to the appropriate chart of accounts. The company also announced a Q4 beta for a native inventory tracking module.
Swiss access-control giant Dormakaba has agreed to acquire Alliants, a UK-based hotel technology company behind digital keys, guest messaging, check-in, payments and concierge tools used by major hotel groups. Financial terms were not disclosed, and the deal is expected to close later in 2026 following regulatory approval. Alliants' latest reported annual revenue is less than half of 1% of the buyer's sales, underscoring a capability acquisition rather than a revenue acquisition. Dormakaba generated CHF 2.79 billion (about $3.4 billion) in revenue in the year through June 2026, with CHF 449 million (about $546 million) in adjusted EBITDA and a 16.1% margin.
Ahead of Skift Global Forum, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts CEO Geoff Ballotti said the company feeds real-time rates, inventory, guaranteed room types and loyalty perks directly into LLMs including ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, and uses AI to monitor long-form searches and adjust the data it supplies. Under its "Owner First" approach, Wyndham Connect is live at more than 5,000 hotels, generated over $11 million through upsells in 2025, and Wyndham AI Concierge converts 35% of calls into bookings.
Access-control hardware maker dormakaba signed a binding agreement to acquire guest-experience platform Alliants, merging physical lock infrastructure with guest messaging, contactless check-in, concierge and agentic AI software. Alliants' digital key engine delivers room keys directly to Apple Wallet and Google Wallet without requiring guests to download a native hotel app. Both vendors pledge ongoing API interoperability, letting hotels pair dormakaba locks or Alliants software with third-party PMS, access-control or guest-engagement platforms. Alliants currently powers guest engagement and digital key workflows across more than 100,000 hotel rooms worldwide.
Hospitality platform Apaleo and revenue management vendor IDeaS announced an expanded two-way API integration delivering real-time data synchronization and advanced automated revenue controls. Apaleo streams live reservation, stay and inventory data to IDeaS, while IDeaS returns real-time pricing, forecasting and demand recommendations and pushes complex yield controls — including Last Room Value, overbooking limits and minimum length-of-stay restrictions — directly into Apaleo's PMS. The integration is available via Apaleo's marketplace and the IDeaS partner ecosystem, targeting multi-property portfolios and enterprise operators.
Workforce technology provider Unifocus launched Unifocus Claira, an AI-native platform that unifies labor management — forecasting, budgeting and scheduling — with daily hotel operations such as housekeeping, inspections and maintenance under a single operational system. Targeting select-service and enterprise operators, it includes a natural-language 'Ask Claira' assistant that delivers real-time recommendations for schedule optimization, compliance checks and task reassignments based on live demand signals, plus above-property dashboards for labor cost efficiency, productivity metrics and task completion across portfolios.
RateGain, the NYU SPS Tisch Center of Hospitality and HEDNA released The State of Distribution 2026 report, analyzing operational and commercial tech data across 270 hotel brands and 58,000+ properties to evaluate AI adoption, reporting efficiency and distribution performance. Findings: over 50% of hotels have adopted or are procuring generative AI tools, but under 10% report a >30% reduction in manual labor; over 80% of commercial teams spend 1–2 days weekly manually compiling reports across siloed systems, while fewer than 30% have invested in dedicated business intelligence software; and 55% of hotels have made minimal or no updates to distribution strategies for AI-driven zero-click dis…
Hospitality management platform Cloudbeds announced the launch of Cloudbeds RMS, an embedded revenue management engine built natively into its core hospitality management platform on a unified 'Signals' data architecture. The system draws real-time data from reservations, booking pace, length of stay, channel behavior, competitor rates, and market demand to generate automated pricing recommendations, with 'Autopilot' executing rate adjustments within user-defined pricing limits and strategy guardrails while retaining manual override. Rate updates execute instantly across the Cloudbeds PMS and Channel Manager without external API syncs or third-party middleware. Occupancy forecasts can also…
Aimbridge Hospitality launched two proprietary platforms within three months: S.P.A.R.K., a global operational audit platform, and LIFT (Labor Insight & Forecasting Tool). CIO Keryn McNamara describes a balanced philosophy: build where unique operational data creates competitive advantage, and buy best-in-class commercial vendors for core commodity infrastructure. LIFT ingests PMS and time-and-attendance data such as UKG and applies AI-driven predictive modeling to recommend daily staffing, yielding productivity gains in housekeeping and laundry. The company is also migrating its ERP to SAP Public Cloud and updating procurement to Coupa.
Singapore-based ZUZU Hospitality is piloting Kea, a new AI platform for independent hotels, in Queenstown just seven weeks after the idea was first pitched in July. The platform runs customized AI solutions on top of a hotel's existing systems and data. The pilot is backed by Technology Queenstown and involves roughly 15 Queenstown-Lakes hoteliers over about six months. ZUZU currently works with around 3,000 hotels across Southeast Asia and plans to expand across its Southeast Asian and New Zealand client base after the pilot, with global rollout as the longer-term goal.
Hospitality Technology published an interview with travelsnap CEO Victor Nikonets on how hotels can turn guest video feedback into direct-booking tools. The article argues video and text feedback serve different jobs: video captures subjective sensory experiences, while text remains the higher-volume channel for operational detail. Enterprise pipelines need object storage, event-driven transcription, a metadata layer, and a separate feature layer, plus ASR tuned for accented and multilingual speech, noise suppression, speaker diarization, and domain-specific entity extraction. Entities below a confidence threshold should route to human review, and extracted signals should sit in a candidate…
Hospitality software provider Journey announced the wider release of its Experience Management System (EMS), a cloud-native spa, wellness, and activity management platform positioned as a modern replacement for legacy on-premise systems such as CORE by Premier Software. EMS offers hotels running Premier Software a cloud upgrade path and provides bi-directional integrations with major PMS platforms including Oracle Opera, Mews, and Guestline, syncing guest profiles, room charges, and central reporting in real time. It also features a centralized live scheduling engine for staff schedules, treatment rooms, equipment, and facility capacity, and integrates with Journey's direct booking engine a…
Hospitality Technology's forthcoming 2027 AI Impact Study finds that 29% of restaurant brands let team members use AI tools with no guardrails, standards, or training. Restaurant technology expert Chris Munz said on a recent HT webinar that stores run 20 to 25 systems with hundreds of integrations, so an ungoverned tool can halt a brand, with an outage potentially costing millions of dollars in lost revenue. The risk often starts with a manager improvising during a dinner rush, with staff feeding store operational data, schedules, or unvetted code into public AI models. Munz recommended drafting a clear AI policy, fitting security into operations, auditing vendor access, cleaning up old per…
The Asian American Hotel Owners Association (AAHOA), procurement tech provider Folio, and GPO Avendra International officially launched the AAHOA Marketplace, a free digital procurement portal available to AAHOA's 20,000 members. The platform combines Avendra's negotiated GPO pricing with Folio's automated procure-to-pay software, offering self-service onboarding, linking up to five existing suppliers and placing orders within minutes, AI-powered invoice coding, a centralized cart and order-tracking dashboard, and mobile management of purchasing approvals, digital invoices, and vendor payments via ACH or virtual cards. HT notes enterprise procurement software usually demands months of imple…
Hospitality solutions provider wi-Q launched Guest Directory, a web-based digital guest folder integrated into its mobile ordering platform. Guests access property information, spa and event booking links, and local guides through in-room QR codes without downloading a native app. The directory also links room-service ordering with housekeeping systems so guests can request items such as extra towels directly, and it translates directory information into 27 languages.
Atlanta independent restaurant Ruby Chow's selected SpotOn as its restaurant technology partner, adopting SpotOn's POS platform, reporting and capital financing. Leadership cited faster customer support, more detailed reporting and lower financing costs as reasons for the switch. Ruby Chow's moved from Toast to SpotOn; General Manager and Partner Brian Seo said SpotOn provides a dedicated account manager with faster support, deeper reporting tools, and automated tip calculations that save about 90 minutes each night. The restaurant also used a SpotOn Capital loan to consolidate existing debt into a single payment, with repayment adjusting to sales. According to the National Restaurant Assoc…
The article argues that while 'vibe coding' can turn prompts into PMS integrations faster, AI-generated code can introduce API breaks and security vulnerabilities in hospitality environments. The author recommends establishing machine-readable specs and steering documents, adopting independent testing and validation rather than letting the coding agent grade itself, and treating security testing as a mandatory control. AI-generated changes should be treated as untrusted until validated.
The article argues that bloated front-desk interfaces and month-end reconciliation pain in hotel PMS stem from the same architectural defect: business logic written into the UI layer rather than behind it. This causes menus to multiply and leaves no canonical event log, so each connected system keeps its own partial copy of the truth. Conversational and agentic interfaces expose this flaw because agents need structured, documented, permissioned APIs. The fix is to separate the domain model from the presentation layer, with an event-sourced record and versioned API.
Walmart is expanding its restaurant delivery business through a collaboration with Inspire Brands, allowing customers to order Dunkin' items alongside groceries via the Walmart app or website. Dunkin' will launch first via its 150 in-store locations, with plans to expand to the majority of its 10,000 locations nationwide. Walmart has stores within 10 miles of approximately 90% of the U.S. population and offers delivery options including 30-minutes-or-less and one-hour-or-less.