Hotelier Perspectives

If Oracle were to exert sustained influence over TikTok’s U.S. operations - while continuing to dominate global hotel operations through platforms such as Oracle OPERA Cloud - hospitality would be confronting a structural shift that goes far beyond technology.

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.

Luxury has always presented a paradox for ambitious businesses: the more popular something becomes, the less special (and therefore, luxurious) it feels.

In hospitality, time is everything. And yet, too much of it is spent on the wrong things. Admin overload, repetitive reporting, fragmented systems… it all adds up. That’s where automation steps in, not to replace people, but to give them back time, so they can connect, think, serve. In this article, I want to share what we’re seeing in the field: the real impact of AI and Automation on hotel teams, and why the future of hospitality is more human than ever.

Hospitality is at an inflection point. 2026 is not just any other year, but a year when everything could change – and yes, AI is at the heart of it.

It seems every day there’s another announcement surrounding some preternatural feat that artificial intelligence (AI) has accomplished. Within the hospitality world, the number of technology vendors introducing (or claiming to introduce!) AI products and features is also mushrooming. It’s all a bit overwhelming.

“But professor, will this be useful in real life?”

For years, we have treated robotics and Artificial Intelligence as separate workstreams. AI was “Soft”—it lived in the cloud, processed data, and generated text. Robotics was “Hardware”—it lived in the warehouse, moved boxes, and required expensive coding.