AI-powered insights promise measurable ROI—but are hotels prepared?

For hoteliers aiming to attract guests, convert inquiries into confirmed stays, and boost revenue in a highly competitive market, advanced data intelligence is essential. Yet, unless property teams consolidate system data into a unified, smart, and interconnected framework, commercial departments risk struggling—unable to deliver tangible returns.

Hospitality operates in one of the most intricate sectors, where every operational detail matters, and guest satisfaction is paramount. Beyond creating memorable experiences, there’s the upkeep of facilities, balancing budgets with steady expenses and unpredictable income, all while remaining agile amid evolving consumer behaviors and volatile economic conditions.

Whether a standalone boutique hotel or part of a large chain, each property functions as its own business. On the surface, guest experiences may appear consistent, but behind the scenes, properties must adapt to an entirely digital ecosystem. Guests are sourced through numerous third-party platforms, reservations arrive via multiple booking channels, and reputations constantly hang on online reviews and social feedback.

In such a fast-paced environment, structures, workflows, and team arrangements can quickly become outdated, creating friction when trying to adapt to shifting market trends or maximize revenue.

Tackling industry fragmentation
Modern technology is increasingly addressing this challenge. Well-designed hotel technology ecosystems, linking property management systems (PMS), customer relationship management platforms (CRM), and central reservation systems (CRS), allow hotels to operate more efficiently. By reducing time spent on repetitive administrative tasks and leveraging shared data, teams gain deeper insights into guest behavior, enabling smarter targeting and service.

However, even today’s integrated systems often fail to provide a fully centralized dataset, limiting hotels’ ability to analyze commercial performance across all touchpoints and optimize strategies continuously.

In reality, many hotel teams still work in silos across disparate platforms. Reports may come separately from digital marketing tools, CRS dashboards, or CRM systems—each showing a partial view of campaigns, seasonal trends, or guest behavior, but offering no comprehensive perspective.

We’re working to change that.

From a human perspective, commercial, marketing, and revenue teams need closer alignment, recognizing the interdependence of their efforts. Technologically, data from all these domains must converge, enabling better-informed decisions and more strategic growth.

Simplified access to data and reporting
The hospitality sector is overflowing with data. Marketing alone provides insights from email campaigns, social media, display ads, and branded promotions—tracking clicks, engagement, bookings, promo code performance, and influencer collaborations. Yet to be truly actionable, these insights must be connected to ROAS for high-value guest profiles.

By analyzing guest preferences, interests, behaviors, and booking patterns, teams can interrogate their own datasets. Access must be intuitive, helping staff build analytical skills and act on insights efficiently.

Teams need to link information from across systems. Nearly a third of hoteliers in the h2c Hotel Direct Booking study reported insufficient reporting from their internet booking engines, a concern that continues to grow. Consolidating data across all departments would provide a much clearer picture of trends, patterns, and results across the organization.

The necessity of consolidated data
Breaking down silos is crucial. Hospitality professionals need a full understanding of their data landscape, transcending individual functions like sales, marketing, or revenue.

The solution lies in integrating these disciplines within a unified analytics platform powered by business intelligence (BI) and AI. This enables sales, marketing, and revenue teams to access the same data, each through their own lens, simplifying analysis. Consolidated data allows deeper exploration of patterns and precise identification of what drives guest acquisition, bookings, and revenue growth.

Instead of isolating clicks from a single marketing campaign, an integrated platform reveals the campaign’s impact on booking behavior and revenue per guest—a capability previously unavailable.

Driving increased revenue
E-commerce strategies are expanding rapidly in hotels, linking directly to upselling and ancillary revenue opportunities. The h2c Hotel Direct Booking study suggests that potential ancillary revenue often exceeds actual results, highlighting an area hoteliers are eager to optimize.

Research from McKinsey & Company also demonstrates that integrating multiple data sources helps guide strategies for cross-selling, unbundling services, and tailoring experiences to travelers’ desires—what they call “the future of travel.”

Enhanced analytics tools make this achievable for hotels.

AI’s evolving role
Hotels are still exploring AI’s potential. Use of AI in booking engines is projected to roughly double in the coming years, with personalized booking solutions expected to grow fivefold. Broader applications of AI, particularly in data analysis, could prove transformative.

Hospitality is inherently human-centered. AI should support goals, not hinder them. While data is traditionally numerical and rigid, AI can translate insights into more understandable, human-friendly formats, helping teams interpret trends and act strategically.

We anticipate that AI-powered, all-in-one analytics dashboards will become indispensable. Rather than relying on generic AI models, we overlay AI learning directly onto operational data, providing robust, actionable insights.

 

We are integrating these technologies into intelligent analytics platforms. By combining data science, AI, and machine learning, we offer a centralized system delivering prescriptive insights—identifying factors driving campaign success and revealing which audiences to target.

As analytics capabilities advance, hotels will gain granular visibility: understanding peak search times, conversion rates, and the impact of pricing or marketing strategies. These insights guide adjustments to campaigns, pricing, and overall strategy.

In a competitive landscape with rising operational costs, every commercial decision—from marketing campaigns to room rate adjustments—must be informed by reliable, interconnected data, leaving no margin for guesswork.

For hoteliers focused on attracting guests, securing bookings, and growing revenue, breaking down data silos through technology is the path to lasting results.