Finance, Op Planning & Forecasting

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).

Accrual accounting for hotels is essential for modern hotel financial planning and analysis. Unlike cash accounting, which only records transactions when money changes hands, accrual accounting captures revenues and expenses when they are incurred. This provides a more accurate view of a hotel’s performance and helps operators, asset managers, and owners make informed decisions.

If you run an independent hotel or B&B, you know what it means to wear too many hats.

Last week in Linz, the ÖHV Congress once again brought together Austria’s hospitality industry. This year, the focus was clear: artificial intelligence, simplification, and the future of the sector. But between the keynote speeches and the conversations during coffee breaks, a very real tension became visible.

There was a time when continuity in hospitality lived in people.

Conversion is one of the most important drivers of hotel performance, yet also one of the least understood. In the hotel context, conversion rate reflects the share of potential guests who move from browsing to actually completing a reservation. Although conversion matters across all channels, it is particularly critical for direct bookings on a hotel’s own website, where the property has the greatest control over the guest journey and the greatest ability to influence outcomes through pricing, messaging and booking conditions.

For a long time, stability was the goal.

For most hoteliers, seasonality means fluctuating demand and shifting rates. For Arctic SnowHotel & Glass Igloos in Finnish Lapland, seasonality defines the business. The team rebuilds an entire hotel from snow and ice every winter, only for it to melt away again in spring.

The complexity introduced by digital platforms, cloud, and digitised systems, isn’t a sign of failure or lack of planning. It comes down to how platforms have struggled to keep pace with the speed at which business operations are changing. The converging forces of AI disruption, the volatility of global economies, geopolitical shifts and increased pressures on the regulatory and environmental fronts are forcing companies into a state of continuous reinvention. Over the past two years, enterprise leaders aren’t asking whether cloud and AI matter, but rather what they can implement that will reduce friction across the business while still keeping it ahead.

You have approved every request for new sales automation systems, because salespeople report being overwhelmed with inbound leads. Now RFPs are responded to promptly, just like all those hotel technology salespeople said was the number one way to close more bookings. You’ve added AI-powered drip campaigns so that all buyers receive so-called “personalized” follow-ups.