NEW YORK—On the final day of the New York University International Hotel Investment Forum, four technology experts gathered to discuss how artificial intelligence is affecting hotel investment and operations at the property level.
Moderated by Hotel Management Magazine Executive Editor Esther Hertzfeld, the panel examined what investors need to know as AI transitions become material inputs to valuation, performance and long‑term competitiveness.
Umar Riaz, managing director at EY, said that he sees “a tremendous opportunity” to add value at the hotel level and at the corporate level using AI. While many may use the technology to boost productivity and lower costs by a few percentage points, he sees a bigger benefit in “imagining end-to-end processes using agentic AI.” As such, the team is working with companies to define multiyear plans that can reduce their costs by 30 to 50 percent. This, he added, requires a “complete rethink” of processes, not merely incremental opportunities. “That's what's going to unlock a lot of value, both at the hotel and as a program.”
Technology and Booking
In May, Choice Hotels International launched a new set of AI-powered programs to help secure new bookings and streamline operations. To that end, Anna Scozzafava, Choice’s chief data, AI and technology officer, said the team is focusing on “discoverability” and making sure hotels in the system can be booked through AI searches. “You've got to make sure that you're working with the right booking platforms, because as you are starting to see the evolution into agentic commerce, if you don't have the infrastructure and the investments already in place,, you're going to get left behind.”
Hilton Chief Information Officer Michael Leidinger said that his own family plans trips with ChatGPT and Claude. “It's really important, I believe, for hospitality companies to be as present as possible in these channels,” he said. Hilton, to that end, is working with Bluefish to better understand how the company appears in large language model searches. “How often are we being surfaced in results? What's the overall favorability?” With that knowledge in hand, the company is able to drive and influence those rankings in the LLMs.
Hilton’s AI Planner, launched in March, is a generative AI–powered digital concierge to help guests plan their stays. “We built it on top of Anthropic’s model, and it is trained on all of our property data,” Leidinger said. For example, if a couple searches for a cycling trip across California’s Sonoma region in September, it will begin curating a trip with localized experiences—and showing several nearby Hilton properties in the background. The properties change as the trip takes shape, so the guest has a range of ideas before booking is finalized. “That is a great opportunity to really blend the rich property content—the area we deserve to own—with all those great local events [and] attractions,” he continued.
Connecting Categories
Last week, hotel technology provider Mews launched a series of platform updates introducing new capabilities across revenue management, distribution, guest communications, workflow automation and accounts-receivable segments. During the panel, Mews Founder Richard Valtr said that AI “steps over categories” rather than remaining in one proverbial lane. “You don't want to just say, ‘Well, this is what we use for property management, this is where we hand it off for the restaurant, and this is where we hand it off for the customer information, and this is where we hand it off for the housekeeping solution,’” he said.
Many guests still want to be welcomed by a human being when they arrive at a hotel, Valtr continued, but said the initial check-in conversation can be facilitated through technology and focused more on what the guest wants to experience.
Going forward, Valtr expects AI to affect the “middle layers” of businesses, consolidating coordination across teams and expediting demands. “That middle layer will probably collapse quite a bit, but it should actually open up the biggest opportunities,” he said.