We just wrapped the 18th Hotel Data Conference last week in Nashville. Whether you've attended 18 of them, 14 (like me), one or none, if you work in the field of travel data and analytics, you know that the only constant is change.
I have planned the event's content for the last four years, which is about how long we've had artificial intelligence-related topics on the conference menu. I'll tell you my best indicator of the enormously growing power of AI in the field of hotel data: The first year it was on the agenda, I put the session in a small breakout room and it didn't get a lot of attention from attendees. This year, both AI-related sessions were standing-room-only affairs.
It's my job to predict and even sometimes manifest what topics will be top of mind for our audience once August rolls around every year, and I want to tell you why this is such a difficult yet rewarding task.
It's because the hotel data audience is insatiably curious.
Every year, I am knocked over by the questions you all come up with for our hotel-industry speakers, for our president, for our analysts. Even as the conference grows larger, I see the conversations every year that start with, "I was wondering if you've ever looked at the data this way" and "But did you try slicing it that way?"
I never know which breakout room will be the most full, or which speaker will get the most buzz. That's fantastic.
I see the curiosity in the analysts who share data at the event. I see it in the practitioners in breakout sessions. I see it as attendees chat over dinner and in networking sessions.
As much data as we give you, you always want more and you want to look at it in different ways.
That curiosity will never be manufactured by AI. I absolutely believe — as do the speakers on those two standing-room-only panels last week — that AI will help you process the answers to that curiosity. But it won't replace it.
Please don't ever let it! Trust me as the person who vets audience questions for Hotel Data Conference speakers behind the scenes — your questions are always better.
So my takeaway from this year's event is to let AI help you, but trust that your curiosity should always take the lead when you form the question.
I want the task of "what topics should be on next year's HDC agenda?" to always be the most difficult job I have all year because I have to satisfy your curiosity about what the data can show us, what trend is over and what trend is just emerging. Let's always continue to think that way.
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