BITAC Owners 2025 Panel: AI and the Guest of 2030, Part 2

By Jim Nelson | July 1, 2025

Our executive event-producing sister company, BITAC, hosted its annual Owners event recently, which was attended by a select group of hoteliers. A key panel discussion, focused on the widely discussed topic of AI, was skillfully moderated by Jenn Parks, vice president of Curator Resort & Hotel Collection; her panelists included distinguished speakers Cody Adent, president/CFO of Vibrant Management; Ron Pohl, president of WorldHotels and International Operations for BWH Hotels; Sondra Storm, principal of Embarcadero Hospitality Group; and Russ Urban, CEO/principal of Electra America Hospitality Group.

In part one of this article, we learned how AI platforms can use guest data to enhance guests’ experiences by anticipating and fulfilling their needs before requests are even made and that despite this, the hospitality industry is nevertheless behind customer expectations compared to retailers like Amazon. We also learned that small and independent properties can leverage AI for virtual management and guest communication, saving on payroll and differentiating themselves from larger brands, and that AI can simplify guest communication in multiple languages.

JP: How can AI help properties understand guest sentiment and behavior, and how can this influence your marketing strategies or loyalty programs?

CA: I think that goes back to the business intelligence. Ron was so right about Amazon and even Instagram — whatever you’re talking about — you open it and it’s “Oh, here’s this thing that I wanted.” And I think that’s the next step for us; to use all of those trends, and then take those trends, not just in how we interact with the guests when they’re on property, but how we get them to get back to the property, and using that business intelligence to market the people that are wanting what we have, and we need to get in front of them, just like those other big E-commerce retailers do.

RP: We have to remember, we’ve got five generations of travelers today, and we tend to put them into buckets — the boomers want this, millennials want this — and they’re all as different within the categories as anybody else. We can’t assume that, even within the generations, they want to connect with us in the same way. So, it’s really about understanding that data and recognizing if we’re communicating with them through a chat and they’re not responding, record that, because otherwise you’re just going to irritate people by saying, “I don’t want to message you.” That’s what we’re investing a lot, especially for the WorldHotels brand — which is primarily a soft brand — is how do we just use that technology to hyper personalize each of the guests’ expectations and experiences so we don’t make the same mistake twice, or we engage them at a very high level.

JP: It even can be the same person but traveling for different reasons with different preferences. I find if I’m traveling for business, I just want to go right to my room; I don’t want to talk to anybody. But if I’m traveling for leisure with my family, I’m more apt to want to engage with the staff at the hotel and have that human interaction. Knowing all of that ahead of time really helps too.

RP: And encourage them to book a lot of that stuff prearrival. The number one complaint of spas is, “When I get to the property, I can’t book it because it’s sold out.” And wellness is a growing trend — top 5 in the industry right now — so, how do we avoid those same type of things where people want to schedule wellness treatments, or those amenities, that they don’t get frustrated?

CA: Akia just added a feature where now it will tap into your PMS, and if a guest is staying and the room is available tomorrow, it’ll reach out to them and say, “Great news: You can extend your stay if you’d like.” You can predetermine what your offer wants to be, but that cost of acquisition is obviously so low because you already have them. That’s such low-hanging fruit that we were completely missing the boat on.

SS: That’s a great example, Cody, and one I relate to. We use Canary [Messaging] for guest communication and upselling; there’s this touch point with the guests, email and text communication offering them opportunities to book or add things to their reservation. Also, there’s a guest review component, so they have the opportunity to give you a quick review. You can set it up, if it’s a great review, that it prompts them to go to TripAdvisor or Google reviews. All of this is happening in an automated way, but it’s a lot of really great information for us too, and you can synthesize that information and see what themes may be coming up in terms of guest reviews. I love Cody’s example because of your previous question about how does AI help us be competitive? We had that exact experience where we were manually looking at people who were checking out on Sunday, manually reaching out to guests who were departing on Sunday, sending them emails until we were able to get an automated message going to them with this offer to stay an additional night; it’s been very successful for us.

RU: All of this is true, and AI is becoming more and more a part of the whole guest satisfaction metrics. But the problem you’re going to all have, and this is why speed-to-delivery is so important, is that the expectations of a guest are also rising at every level of our hotels. Guests expect, “They should know what kind of room I would like to stay in, what kind of pillow do I like, do I like breakfast, do I use room service?” All the things that we should now be able to track and know about a guest, they’re going to expect you to know that. So, it raises the expectation of guests at every level of the hotel.

JP: How do we stay ahead of the curve for the next 5, 10 years?

CA: You just have to be willing to test all the software. We’ve got this ranch property in the middle of Utah; it’s really beautiful and they have these really unique, old school keys. A guest returned the keys and said, “We dropped the keys off at the lobby. Thank you so much. We had a great stay,” and our AI responded, “Typically, you just leave the keys in the room,” and the guests are like, “We’re so sorry, we can go put them back,” and then a human jumped in and fixed it. It’s not going to be perfect. So, you have to be willing to still test it. When we signed up with Duetto five years ago, one of the things they really sold us on was this AI revenue management, and that was probably an oversell at the time, but that’s okay because we still needed it, and it was such a great tool for us. I think you have to be willing to test it before it’s perfect, so that way you can give them the feedback; all of these tech companies are so willing to evolve with you. We got on call with Akia, and we said, “The thing that’s frustrating for us is that there’s certain things we can’t do in the app; we have to log into the computer, and we just need it to be able to be done in the app.” And they said, “We’ll fix that.” They can really tailor their software to work for you. So, be an early adapter, and don’t be afraid to get started.

RU: We just need to watch and observe our children as they travel, because they are the ones that are setting the bar for the future traveler. Could be your children or your grandchildren; watch what they like, ask them what they think about their restaurant stay or their hotel stay, and what they want, because they are going to be our guests.

SS: It’s important not to lose the core of what our business is, which is a human-based business. It’s about hospitality. It’s about human connection. It’s about taking care of people. It’s about people feeling seen when they come in. I think if we can stay connected to that core mission of what we do and not be fearful of these tools because these tools are going to help us achieve that if we’re able to use them in the right way. If we have at the core what our values are, it helps us to really shape and use these tools and not lose sight of, “Is this exciting new toy delivering what we want it to deliver? Is it helping our staff? Is it creating this experience for guests?” I think if we return to that question, it will help guide us into the future.

RP: I don’t know that you can stay ahead of it. I think we need to keep a reasonable pace in what’s happening because guests expect that. But 10 years ago, Alexa was going to be the saving grace of room service, and within a year everybody’s using Alexa as a timer to remind you of something and that was about it. So, I think the technology has certainly changed and is going in a really cool direction, but we don’t have to try to be everything to everybody. It’s a huge investment to make these things happen, so we have to focus on what’s most important; for us as a brand, the loyalty program, the data, and the booking engines that we provide are most important, because that drives loyalty; it drives revenue to the hotels. So, we make sure that we invest in those technologies, first and foremost.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I was at a legal event last week, and because everybody’s using ChatGPT or some sort of AI tool like Copilot, or Gemini if you’re using Google workspace, my first statement is what I learned last week in the legal panel was that it’s super important that you’re not using a personal edition of any of those platforms, that you’re making sure that there’s some sort of corporate subscription in place, so that you’re not uploading data from your clients into the public cloud.