7 days ago
Exclusive: How APAC hotels are adopting AI & automation for growth
Hotels across Asia Pacific are urgently rethinking their digital strategies in response to the prominence of online travel agencies (OTAs) and mobile-first consumers.
According to Klaus Kohlmayr, Chief Evangelist and Chief Development Officer at IDeaS, the market is seeing unprecedented competition and a technological arms race as properties strive to stand out in an increasingly digital world.
"There's a real danger when you have too much reliance on your OTAs or OTA channels," he warned, during a recent interview with TechDay.
Kohlmayr observes that many hotels, especially independent operators and those outside global distribution networks, may find themselves trapped in a dependency on OTAs because their primary markets are often far away.
"It's all about having the right balance between your indirect channels, your direct channels, and your direct sales and marketing efforts for your own people," he adds. The imperative, he argues, is to invest in technology that allows for direct engagement with guests-platforms with modern booking engines and seamless connectivity across systems.
The pressure to adapt is intensifying as mobile devices become travellers' primary planning and booking tools. Yet, Kohlmayr believes the next disruption is right around the corner. "Mobile is the dominant way of searching and exploring and dreaming right now, and also booking in many places. I think that's going to be replaced through AI chat bots fairly quickly."
With the rise of generative AI, from tools like Gemini to ChatGPT, the hotel discovery process is starting to shift; consumers are now asking AI assistants for travel recommendations, and hotels need new strategies to ensure they appear in these AI-driven results.
"For hotels, it's really, really critical to be AI optimised, not just search engine optimised or mobile optimised. The next wave of conversations... is about how do you AI optimise your business?"
This transition requires a major rethink of hotel technology architecture. The traditional patchwork of systems-property management (PMS), central reservations (CRS), customer relationship (CRM), marketing platforms, and revenue management (RMS)-too often fails to operate as an integrated ecosystem.
Kohlmayr points to a common mistake: "Sometimes decisions are made based on price, maybe, and on other factors than how well [systems] connect and how well they're future-proofing the hotel… Sometimes decisions are being made in isolation, and it's actually moving the business backwards instead of forwards."
The consequences of this fragmentation are immediate and costly.
Competitive hotels now expect fully connected tech stacks; lack of integration translates into missed opportunities and an inability to react to market shifts. "A typical hotel needs to make about 5 million pricing decisions, for example. And those pricing decisions need to happen all the time, day and night, weekends and weekdays."
When systems aren't properly connected, not only is the guest experience undermined, but revenue lags behind competitors with more modern infrastructure.
"We've seen people that had the right technology ecosystem in place were able to react much, much faster to changes in booking markets than people that didn't have that in place, and maybe were not even focused on if their rates aligned with current booking conditions because something changed on the weekend or during periods when people were not at work."
Evidence points to the business case for integrated, automated revenue management technology.
Kohlmayr references BYD Loft Hotel in Thailand, which has reported a 15% increase in revenue since adopting revenue management technologies.
More broadly, research indicates system-driven approaches can lift net operating profits for owners by 4% to 15%.
"There is a lot of data out there that proves that having the right technology in place and having the right tech stack in place that's connected... can significantly increase not just the top line, but also the bottom line."
Beyond the back-office, automation is transforming the guest journey. With consumer expectations shaped by mobile-first brands and digital-native platforms, hospitality is under pressure to deliver speed, convenience and personalisation at every stage.
"Automation enables me to select my room and enables me to bypass the front desk. It enables me to go through my entire journey without actually having to, if I don't want to, talk to a person when I'm on a business trip," says Kohlmayr.
He believes that contactless check-in and mobile key access are "no longer futuristic and are becoming standard among global brands", further raising the bar for digital guest experience.
This expansion of digital guest touchpoints brings a new challenge: personalisation across the many stages of the customer journey, from pre-booking to post-stay.
Successful hotels, according to Kohlmayr, are those that map expectations to distinct phases-dreaming, decision, pre-arrival, arrival, in-stay, and post-stay-and use data to anticipate needs. "The best example of that is if you arrive at a hotel and you're walking through the doors, and when you come to the front desk, somebody greets you by name and already knows who you are before you have even mentioned your name, right?"
However, he acknowledges that the industry is still catching up, particularly in delivering robust recognition and tailored service for loyal guests.
Looking ahead, Kohlmayr highlights three forces set to redefine the industry: merchandising beyond room sales, the next generation of integrated tech stacks, and the infusion of artificial intelligence throughout the guest experience.
"Everyone wants to merchandise and retail more than just the room... becoming more of a retail experience, not just a room stay experience, is a key objective. Digitising that and making it available online to pay and book these services online is going to be critical. And then, how do you infuse that with AI? How do you generate an experience that is enabled or enhanced through AI?"
The convergence of digital integration, data-driven automation and artificial intelligence is reshaping not just competition, but customer expectations across hospitality.
"If we're not able as an industry to cater to that, then guests will just vote with their feet and select the company or the hotel company that enables them to meet their expectations in digital journeys."
