Starwood CIO: AI Is the First Tech I Never Had to Explain

Brent Hayhurst, VP at Curator Hotel and Resort Collection, won't look at a new technology until he knows what KPI it's supposed to move. 💸 Labor is the largest line item on any hotel owner's balance sheet, and that's the number Curator's tech decisions chase. 🏚️ Curator skips the big splashy booths and goes straight to the fringes of the show floor, where the new ideas show up first. 🧪 A pilot that fails isn't wasted. Hayhurst treats it as proof the team needs a different approach entirely. ☎️ AI is already pulling phone calls off the front desk so staff can focus on the guest standing in front of them. More from the show floor at HITEC. #NoVacancyNews Unifocus, Workforce Management Redefined. Visit unifocus.com. Want the weekly roundup of news, videos, and what you might've missed from #NoVacancyNews? Text HOTEL to 66866.

Steven Moore, CEO at Actabl, says you shouldn't need to log in to answer your owner's question. 💬 Altitude, Actabl's new product, lets you have conversations with your data instead of clicking through dashboards and pulling reports. 📊 Instead of logging in, finding the right sheet, and comparing — "What were my labor expenses last two weeks?" takes a conversation. 👥 The payoff: get property managers off screens so staff can focus on what only they can do — physical interaction with guests and the building. 💰 The goal is profitability (down from pre-pandemic levels) without sacrificing guest or associate experience. The tools that do that create lower turnover and better engagement. From HITEC. #NoVacancyNews Want the weekly roundup of news, videos, and what you might've missed from #NoVacancyNews? Text HOTEL to 66866.

Keryn McNamara, CIO at Aimbridge, told me AI fails the moment it replaces a human instead of freeing one up. 💰 She's bringing a labor productivity and forecasting tool to market within weeks, built on Aimbridge's scale and data. 🚪 Her go-to comparison: elevator operators disappeared, but new jobs replaced them. She thinks the same thing happens with AI in hotels. 🚩 Her test for separating real AI from marketing AI: ask partners who they're integrated with and who they actually know. ⚡ Her prediction for agentic AI hitting property management systems and point-of-sale: six months, not a year. Unifocus, Workforce Management Redefined. Visit unifocus.com. Want the weekly roundup of news, videos, and what you might've missed from #NoVacancyNews? Text HOTEL to 66866.

Denise Walker, CIO at Starwood Hotels and Resorts, started her career on a TRS-80. Thirty years later, she told me AI is the first technology she's never had to explain to anyone — people already see why it matters. 🏨 Smaller hotel companies can move faster than legacy chains that placed big AI bets last year, before pricing models and guest expectations shifted again. 🔐 Fear keeps guest data handled right and security practices tight — Walker calls it a good fear. 🛎️ Starwood wants AI to feel invisible, the way good technology always has. You don't think about water coming out of a pipe. ⚙️ Code written by AI still needs the same quality checks a floor full of developers used to run by hand. Catch the full conversation from the show floor at HITEC. #NoVacancyNews Unifocus, Workforce Management Redefined. Visit unifocus.com. Want the weekly roundup of news, videos, and what you might've missed from #NoVacancyNews? Text HOTEL to 66866.

At HITEC, I talked with Michael Grove of HotStats, which is now part of Duetto, about why hotel performance has to move beyond rooms revenue. Michael came with actual numbers on profitability, but the conversation went quickly into how owners and operators should read the business. Demand and rate only tell part of the story. Profit depends on where revenue comes from, what it costs to capture it, and which parts of the operation deserve more attention. We got into U.S. profitability, global travel shifts, food and beverage pressure, wellness, golf, ancillary revenue, and why Michael likes the phrase "performance engineering." I like that phrase because it gets closer to how owners and operators actually need to think. Revenue is one piece. Profitability tells a much fuller story. Want the weekly roundup of news, videos, and what you might've missed from #NoVacancyNews? Text HOTEL to 66866.

Hotel operators don't lack AI options. They lack a clear way to evaluate them. At HITEC, I talked with Shannon McCallum, VP of Operations at Resorts World Las Vegas, about the HFTP AI Collective and how operators can make smarter decisions around AI tools, robotics, chatbots, reporting, and vendor partners. 🤖 Robotics came up, from food prep to concierge support. 📊 Back-of-house reporting came up as a more realistic starting point for some hotels. 🏨 Resorts World Las Vegas already uses AI and chatbots, and Shannon says agentic AI comes next. 🛎️ Resorts World Las Vegas handled more than 459,000 AI-driven interactions last year across 3,506 rooms and three brands. Shannon also made a practical operator point: guests still need choice. Some want technology. Others want a person. #NoVacancyNews covered this at HITEC with support from Unifocus. Check them out at unifocus.com for labor solutions built for hospitality. Want the weekly roundup of news, videos, and what you might've missed from #NoVacancyNews? Text HOTEL to 66866.

During HITEC in San Antonio yesterdayn, I talked with Robert Matsuoka of Duetto about Duetto Labs and how AI could change the daily work of hotel revenue teams. Revenue managers already spend too much time pulling data from different systems, building reports, checking forecasts, and trying to figure out what needs attention first. Robert's view is that AI should cut through that noise so smart people spend more time making decisions and less time fighting spreadsheets. We also talked about forecasting, pricing, profit data, and how Duetto is thinking about the next phase of revenue management technology. Want the weekly roundup of news, videos, and what you might've missed from #NoVacancyNews? Text HOTEL to 66866.

I'm at HITEC in San Antonio today and tomorrow, and I talked with Stephen Katsirubas, CIO of Pursuit Collection, about AI that's already doing real work for guests and operators. Pursuit has a lot more going on than rooms and room nights. They're dealing with lodging, attractions, retail, boating, gondolas, sky trams, and all the guest questions that come with those experiences. Stephen isn't talking about AI in some vague "future of hospitality" way. He's talking about using it now so guests get faster answers and teams spend less time buried in the same basic questions. One example got my attention: Pursuit cut call volume by more than 30% in one area by helping guests get answers about hours, parking, pet rules, and other basics before they need a person. Thanks to Unifocus. Workforce management redefined. Visit unifocus.com. Want the weekly roundup of news, videos, and what you might've missed from #NoVacancyNews? Text HOTEL to 66866.

I talked with Harry Javer, Founder and Producer of The Lodging Conference, and Dr. Producer Suzanne Bagnera about why this event keeps pulling people back year after year. I've been going for about 25 years. Suzanne's coming for the first time. That gave us two very different ways into the same conversation. The Lodging Conference brings the industry conversations people need right now: finance, construction, development, AI, adaptive reuse, conversions, residential hotels, and the dealmaking that shapes what comes next. I'll also be back on the main stage hosting one of the general session panels, so I wanted to hear directly from Harry about what's shaping this year's event. But the event also has the thing most conferences can't manufacture: people actually relax. The lazy river race helps. The duck race definitely helps. So do the morning activities, the evening events, and the way the property takeover keeps people running into each other all week. That's what makes the conversations different. People still talk deals, capital, brands, development, and strategy. They just do it in an environment where everyone feels a little more human. Harry also shared what first-timers should know, why the event keeps selling out, and why registering before June 30 matters. And yes, I fully intend to defend my title as king of the lazy river race. Want the weekly roundup of news, videos, and what you might've missed from #NoVacancyNews? Text HOTEL to 66866.

On No Vacancy, I talked with Charif Zahrane, Managing Partner at M7 Services, about the hotel technology mess sitting underneath the AI conversation. Everybody wants to talk about AI. Charif wants hotel operators to look at what sits below it first. Data. Infrastructure. Security. System connections. The unsexy stuff that decides whether the shiny new tool actually works or turns into another headache. That's where this conversation gets useful. Hotel operators can't just throw AI on top of messy systems and expect magic. They need a cleaner foundation, a better understanding of what they're connecting, and partners who understand how hospitality actually runs. Charif also gets into why the old "break-fix" IT model doesn't match where hotels are headed. This one's for anyone trying to figure out what hotel tech should look like before AI makes the whole thing even more complicated. Want the weekly roundup of news, videos, and what you might've missed? Text HOTEL to 66866.