ROUNDTABLE
DATA MATTERS
AI WON’ T FIX BAD DATA. HOTEL EXECUTIVES SAY THE FOUNDATION COMES FIRST.
By HOTELS EDITORS
Artificial intelligence may dominate hospitality technology conversations, but hotel executives say the industry’ s biggest challenge is far less glamorous: getting its data in order.
During a roundtable discussion— entitled“ How Data Powers the Future of Hotel Operations”— hosted by HOTELS Magazine in partnership with hotel management software provider Otelier, hoteliers recognized the enormous potential of AI, in particular its ability to improve hotel profitability by impacting everything from revenue management and labor scheduling to food-and-beverage operations and asset planning. Still, one sentiment was shared universally among participants of the roundtable: AI is only as effective as the quality and accessibility of the data behind it.
DATA DELUGE Hotels have never had more data at their disposal— guest reviews, service calls, maintenance logs, loyalty profiles, pointof-sale transactions, labor schedules and procurement invoices. The challenge is turning it into meaningful insights.“ We’ ve got more [ data ] now than we’ ve ever had,” said Nick Clark, SVP of operations at Remington Hospitality.“ Hopefully, with AI, the future is going to be the data pulling through better so we can make better decisions, rather than having all this data we can’ t go through in a reasonable time. AI narrows it down so we can act on it.”
Rather than embracing AI as a silver bullet, the roundtable repeatedly returned to a more fundamental question: Do hotels have the foundation in place to make AI work?
Matthew Bright, SVP and head of IT at Davidson Hospitality Group, put it plainly:“ AI is only as good as the data. Having a really strong foundation in your data and understanding the processes around it is critical,” he said.“ You can’ t just throw AI on top of data and expect it to come back with some kind of revolutionary information.”
EARLY DAYS Consensus among the hoteliers was that AI in hospitality— at least the in-house, buildit-yourself variety— remains in its infancy. Though third-party technology providers have moved faster, operators building their own capabilities are still laying out the groundwork.
Dana Cariss, SVP of revenue strategy at CoralTree Hospitality, was forthright about where things stand.“ Some thirdparty partners have moved quicker and are making things available, but doing things in-house is still pretty early,” he said.
Where Cariss does see promise is in AI’ s ability to make data more accessible.“ That’ s been one of the biggest hurdles in making smarter decisions. It’ ll cut out the noise, sift through the data and hopefully get us quicker to action,” he noted.
64 hotelsmag. com September 2026