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Let’s Talk About the One Thing Hotels Keep Ignoring

Hotel operators know how to manage tight margins. We optimize labor. We track guest satisfaction. We adopt systems that help us stay agile across brands, properties, and markets. But there’s one area most hotels still manage like it’s 1995 — and it’s quietly costing the industry millions.

In the modern hospitality tech stack, hotel booking engines and reservations systems are often bundled together—but functionally, they serve different roles, interface with different users, and offer different strategic value. For hoteliers evaluating solutions or optimizing operations, understanding these differences isn’t just academic—it impacts how you drive direct revenue, integrate your systems, and manage your guest journey end to end.

There have been a lot of headlines that traditional Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is dead due to the rise of AI Search via the generative AI platforms. Some experts herald the end of Google’s monopoly on search and claim that traditional SEO practices are obsolete. Others believe that SEO based on best practices is required not only for increased revenues from the direct online channel, but to ensure good positioning of the hotel website in AI search results as well.

By now, hoteliers aren’t just talking about personalization—they’re actively rolling out new strategies to make it happen. In 2025, personalization is the baseline. Guests expect experiences tailored to them—and the hotels that deliver are already seeing the payoff.

The hospitality industry is fiercely competitive. In a world of online travel agents and review sites, it’s more important than ever for hotels to stand out. And where better to do that than on social media?

Hotels across the globe made a remarkable recovery in 2024, reaching a record-high contribution of $11.1 trillion to global GDP. But beyond the numbers, what’s driving this transformation? Hospitality is evolving fast, with guest expectations, AI-driven insights, and online reputation management reshaping the landscape.

I have been teaching with metrics for a long time. Before teaching, I worked for a consulting firm and was immersed in the world of hospitality metrics. Prior to that, as a restaurant manager on both coasts, I focused, for managers and owners, on food and labor costs. In the old days, restaurants were very food-cost oriented. I can calculate food cost percentage, but it reminds me that unless you lock the front doors of your restaurant and serve no one, the restaurant will incur food costs as a function of the food they sell.

As we see time again, the story of a hotel is the story of the people working at the hotel. This is especially true for the luxury hospitality segment where service excellence, exclusive amenities and personalization are hallmarks of an experience worthy of the term ‘luxury’. With so much buzz around personalization these days, what is often missed is the precision of service delivery necessary to execute this attention to detail at scale, for which there’s no truer form of expressing this precision than through customization of the guest journey in a seamless blend of meticulously curated experiences.

In the heart of a bustling city, a boutique hotel prided itself on personalized service and a unique guest experience. Yet, despite their dedication, they faced mounting challenges: overbookings during peak seasons, manual errors in reservations, and a front desk overwhelmed with paperwork. These operational inefficiencies strained the staff and began to tarnish the guest experience they so valued.