Aimbridge Hospitality's Balanced Build vs. Buy Tech Framework
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.
Impact and considerations
The framework offers hotel IT and operations leaders a decision boundary between building and buying, and shows how labor forecasting tools can directly affect GOP margins and operational efficiency.
Key points
- Aimbridge launched S.P.A.R.K., an operational audit platform, and LIFT, a labor forecasting tool, within three months.
- LIFT ingests PMS and time-and-attendance data such as UKG and applies AI-driven predictive modeling to recommend daily staffing, accounting for contract labor, brand cleaning requirements and length of stay.
- Initial rollouts yielded productivity gains in high-volume departments like housekeeping and laundry and narrowed the gap between planned and actual labor hours.
- LIFT was built inside the daily software platform operators already use, eliminating extra logins and manual spreadsheets.
- For non-differentiating back-office systems such as ERP and procurement, Aimbridge buys market-leading platforms, migrating ERP to SAP Public Cloud and procurement to Coupa.
- Aimbridge manages hundreds of properties across more than 80 global lodging brands, and that multi-brand data density was the main reason for building LIFT in-house.
- Next steps include expanding AI models into Food & Beverage and pursuing automated schedule publishing with human oversight.
Sources and time
- Primary source
- Hospitality Technology
- Other sources
- 0
- First source publication
- 15 Sept 2026, 22:35
- Page published
- 16 Sept 2026, 00:04
- Last updated
- 15 Sept 2026, 22:35
- Original links
- Hospitality Technology：Aimbridge Hospitality’s Balanced Build vs. Buy Tech Framework (opens in a new tab)Primary source · en · Published 15 Sept 2026, 22:35