The RMS team spent two days at AHICE 2026 in Adelaide listening to operators, technologists, and hospitality leaders talk honestly about where the industry is heading. Across the sessions we attended, five themes kept surfacing - in different rooms, from different voices, but pointing in the same direction.
Fragmented data is the root of most problems
Ask hoteliers what's holding them back and the answer, underneath everything, is data. Reputation management platforms that don't connect to the PMS. Guest history in one system, feedback in another, operational notes somewhere else. No single picture of who the guest is or what they need.
The appetite for hyper-personalization - guest profiles that genuinely inform every touchpoint - is real and growing. I recently heard a story where a hospitality journalist arrived at a resort he'd last visited over 10 years ago. When he walked in, he was welcomed back. Surely, they didn't have a note from that long ago, knowing he was in fact a return guest? He later discovered that the resort had an arrangement with the taxi drivers. The drivers would chat with you and when they'd drop you off, as you walk in, they give staff a thumbs up (return guest) or thumbs down (new guest).
While this arrangement worked for this resort, the infrastructure to support personalization at a large scale isn't usually available. Until systems talk to each other, that gap stays open. And as Anthony Stevens put it plainly: you need machine-readable data. AI can't do anything useful with information locked in inconsistent formats or siloed platforms.
AI earns its place by removing work, not adding it
There was a sharp test offered for whether an AI implementation will actually get used: does it take a task away? Eloise Rankin put it simply - AI that removes a task will stick. AI that adds a new thing to manage, monitor, or maintain won't.
This distinction matters differently depending on the size of the property. The challenges a small hotel faces are not the same as a large one. Tools built for complex enterprise operations can introduce friction rather than reduce it. For a smaller team, the bar is basic: does this make tomorrow easier than today?
The more sophisticated version of this is prioritization. Anthony Stevens described AI's value not just as automation but as helping teams understand what to focus on - and in what order. That kind of support, quietly working in the background, is where AI starts to earn real loyalty from the people using it.
Guests expect to be met where they are
Personalization isn't only about knowing a guest's room preferences. It's about reaching them in the right language, on the right channel, at the right moment.
Carol Nesbitt highlighted two practical examples: AI-powered translation making it possible for hotels to communicate naturally with non-English-speaking guests, and the growing adoption of WhatsApp as a guest communication channel. Phone calls are declining. Guests want to message, and hotels are increasingly enabling that. Meeting people where they already are isn't a nice-to-have - it's quickly becoming a baseline expectation.
Booking engines are another missed opportunity. A guest confirms a room and the conversation ends - no prompt for the restaurant, the Saturday golf package, or the fishing charter. The ancillary revenue that could flow from that moment simply doesn't. AI can change that by surfacing the right offer at the right time, without friction for the guest or extra work for the team.
Strategy leads. Technology follows.
One of the clearest messages from the day came from Emma Fraser: "AI is there to enhance the strategy - not replace it." And beneath that: "We are a human industry. We deal with people."
The hotels getting technology right aren't the ones chasing the latest capability. They're the ones who start with a clear problem; a specific friction to remove, a revenue stream to unlock, a guest experience to improve, and then find the right tool to help. That order matters. Technology chosen without that clarity tends to add noise rather than remove it.
The same logic applies to buying decisions. Operations and finance teams are increasingly in the room when technology gets evaluated. Their questions are different: will this make day-to-day work simpler? What does it actually return? When evaluating technology, the advice from the room was consistent: lead with value, not price.
Trust has to be earned and shown
Security came up directly: technology providers working in hospitality need to hold themselves to a higher standard, and that means external validation rather than internal assurances. AI-driven penetration testing and third-party security audits are becoming the expected baseline for responsible vendors. Hotels are trusting providers with sensitive guest data. That trust needs to be demonstrable.
On the AI transparency question - the panel's advice was practical. Carol Nesbitt suggested a straightforward rule: when AI enters a conversation, let it introduce itself. Anthony Stevens argued guests should always have the option to opt out of AI-assisted interactions. And Emma Fraser offered the frame that ties it together: "AI should be invisible to the guest, invaluable to the hotel."
Invisible in the best sense - working in the background, reducing effort, improving the experience - but never hidden when a guest wants to know.
What this adds up to
The conversation at AHICE this year are a reflection of the conversation's we're seeing across the tech landscape. Less debate about whether AI belongs in hospitality, more focus on how to implement it well - at the right scale, for the right problems, with trust built in from the start.
The through-line across all of it: connected systems, frictionless operations, and people kept firmly at the center.
Want to talk about how RMS can help your property? Get in touch.
