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Circa 2009. Late September. I’m the regional controller for five hotels. Sitting at my desk minding my own business, doing my own work when the phone rings.

For centuries, hospitality has been rooted in a simple but powerful principle: make people feel welcome, valued, and understood. From a handwritten note waiting in the guestroom to a concierge remembering a favorite table at dinner, the industry has long relied on human connection as its defining strength. But today, the way hotels deliver that sense of personalization is quickly and permanently evolving.

Now firmly in the back half of the 2020s, one megatrend that we’re all aware of is how the experience economy has caused a mushrooming of luxury hospitality. There are now innumerable brands in this space, so much so that to wrap our heads around it we’re niching luxury into traditional, experiential, uber, ultra, wellness and other modifiers.

Colorado Springs has long stood as one of Colorado’s most popular drive-to leisure destinations during the peak summer months. Government entities and related contract business have also supported strong lodging dynamics. While disruptions within the government segment over the past year have resulted in uncertainty for the near term, the long-term outlook remains optimistic.

Over the past few years, like to 3 to 5 years, conversations about generational differences in the workplace have grown noticeably more charged. What once felt like manageable tension has turned into open and public frustration, with leaders and teams often speaking past one another instead of engaging productively. These challenges are frequently attributed to differences in values, work ethic, or even expectations, yet that explanation overlooks what I consistently see on the ground: a leadership education that has not kept in pace with the workforce that is now expected to lead.

Today’s travellers expect to move fluidly between inspiration, research, and booking. They might discover a hotel on social media, validate it using AI tools or OTAs, and then book directly when the experience feels clear, valuable, and easy.

Modern sales leadership must rethink talent, incentives, and team design to scale revenue in 2026.

Let’s talk about a silent problem that’s costing hotel groups thousands of hours a year, and quietly strangling their ability to scale.

The hotel sector in Minneapolis–St. Paul continues to evolve and recover from pre- and post-pandemic oversupply and demand changes. Leisure and event-driven travel have returned with renewed energy, but not yet at the scale needed to fully offset the region’s corporate travel losses.

It’s been the recent talk of the industry. We’ve been sensing it for a while, and now it’s getting clearer: AI is slowly but surely disrupting online travel discovery, search and possibly booking. Markus Busch recently broke this down in one of the better hotel industry pieces I’ve read lately. And Thomas Reiner has an excellent take as well. Here’s my take (which is a slightly more detailed version of the post I shared).