As AI Reshapes Travel Discovery, Where Will Hotel Brands Create Value?

A panel of current and former leaders from Wyndham, Aimbridge, CitizenM, and Accor debate whether AI will amplify existing hotel brands or force reinvention.

At HITEC 2026, a panel of hospitality leaders convened to discuss artificial intelligence and ended up debating something far more consequential: the future value of hotel brands themselves.

The discussion was moderated by Scot Campbell, Principal Advisor at Integrated Resorts Advisors. Panelists included:

1. Lennert de Jong , CEO of Another Star (formerly CEO of CitizenM)
2. Scott Strickland , Chief Commercial Officer, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts
3. Floor Bleeker , Consultant at In2 Consulting (formerly CTO of Accor)
4. Keryn McNamara , CIO of Aimbridge Hospitality

All four agreed that AI will transform hospitality. Where they diverged was on what that transformation means for the industry's traditional competitive advantages — and whether AI will reinforce or erode them.

If Everyone Has the Same Tools, What Makes a Hotel Different?

The panel's most provocative argument came from Bleeker, who suggested AI could fundamentally redraw the competitive landscape.

"If everybody has access to the same revenue management or everybody has access to the same distribution platform, something else needs to happen — and it has to be the guest experience."

It's a deceptively simple point, but one that strikes at the core of how hotel companies have historically created value. For decades, brands have differentiated through scale, distribution power, loyalty programs, technology investment, and operational expertise. AI threatens to make some of those advantages widely accessible.

Bleeker drew a parallel to cloud computing, just as it democratized technology infrastructure for businesses of all sizes, AI could do the same for distribution, loyalty management, and revenue optimization in hospitality.

"The customer will win big time. The big brands will have to think differently. They have to do something else besides distribution."

That "something else," he argued, is delivering meaningfully better guest experiences — and helping hotels operate more efficiently to get there.

Guest Experience as the New Differentiator

Both Bleeker and de Jong made the case that AI could accelerate a shift already underway: as technology becomes more accessible, execution becomes the differentiator.

De Jong pointed to the industry's long-standing failure to meaningfully improve the guest experience despite decades of technology investment. Bleeker echoed this bluntly:

"Most hotel experiences are disappointing."

The argument isn't that technology matters less — it's that technology will matter so universally that it ceases to be a differentiator on its own. If every hotel can access sophisticated revenue management, AI-powered customer service, and advanced personalization, the competitive battleground becomes the quality of the experience itself.

For hotel technology leaders, this has real implications. Years of effort have gone into building digital capabilities, integrating systems, and modernizing infrastructure. In an AI-driven future, the measure of success may increasingly be how directly those investments improve what guests actually feel.

Why Loyalty May Be Harder to Disrupt Than It Appears

Not everyone on the panel agreed that AI weakens traditional industry advantages.

Strickland offered a counterargument: AI will likely become another channel through which guests interact with brands — not a replacement for brand relationships. He described a future where travelers use AI assistants that already understand their preferences, loyalty memberships, and travel habits.

"Your AI assistant is going to know you. It's going to know your loyalty program."

In that scenario, AI doesn't eliminate loyalty — it reinforces it. Instead of manually searching hotel websites, a traveler asks an AI assistant to find accommodations matching their preferences. The assistant factors in brand affiliations, loyalty status, and past behavior before making recommendations. The booking experience becomes more seamless, but not necessarily less brand-centric.

This is an important distinction. AI may change the interface. It doesn't automatically change the underlying economics of customer acquisition and retention.

A Debate Shaped by Geography

One of the panel's most nuanced threads was a geographic divide on the value of loyalty.

De Jong, who has operated across both European and U.S. markets, argued that loyalty programs carry far greater weight in America.

"Loyalty is much more valuable in the United States than it is elsewhere in the world because it's distributed so much."

He illustrated this with a story from CitizenM's early U.S. expansion. During a stay at a Marriott-affiliated Moxy property, he found himself talking with American business travelers who were genuinely excited about CitizenM's concept — until they learned it wasn't affiliated with a major loyalty program.

"Their response was basically, 'Never going to stay there.'"

American travelers have spent decades accumulating points, earning status, and building habits around major hotel programs. Disrupting those behaviors may prove far harder than AI optimists anticipate.

AI's Biggest Impact May Be Behind the Scenes

McNamara brought a different lens to the conversation entirely — operational transformation.

Rather than centering the debate on distribution or loyalty, she pointed to where AI is already delivering measurable results at Aimbridge: labor productivity and forecasting accuracy.

"We're taking great strides and steps using AI to create labor productivity tools."

For operators navigating persistent labor pressures and tight margins, these use cases may prove just as transformative as any guest-facing innovation.

McNamara also sees AI enabling a level of personalization that has long been an industry aspiration but rarely achieved at scale.

"I think AI is just going to enable a better customized experience. It's going to know that when I travel with my family, I like something completely different than when I'm traveling by myself."

The shift she describes is from predefined guest journeys to genuinely adaptive experiences, built around individuals rather than segments.

The Bigger Question for Hotel Technology Leaders

The panel never reached a consensus — and that's precisely what made the conversation valuable.

The debate wasn't really about AI. It was about competitive advantage.

Bleeker and de Jong see AI lowering barriers to sophisticated technology, distribution, and revenue management — forcing brands to reimagine what they offer and compete on execution and experience.

Strickland and McNamara see AI strengthening existing advantages, making loyalty, personalization, and operational efficiency more powerful rather than less relevant.

The reality will likely fall somewhere in between.

But the conversation surfaces a question every hotel technology leader should be sitting with right now:

If AI makes many capabilities easier to access, where will your organization create value that competitors can't easily replicate?

The answer may define the next decade of hospitality.