LOS ANGELES — Changes in consumer behavior and emergent technology such as artificial intelligence are driving a shift in commercial strategy for the world's largest third-party hotel operator, Aimbridge Hospitality.
Speaking during a session at the Americas Lodging Investment Summit, CEO Craig Smith talked about how Chief Commercial Officer Allison Handy has brought a fresh perspective during this moment when the company is trying to get a handle on how AI will affect it.
"What Allison said was very true," he said. "It's a tech change, but it's also a behavioral change. You have to figure out how do you marry those two and how do you prepare for it going forward."
He compared the shift to consumers' heavy use of AI for travel planning to other sea change moments for the industry — like when more bookings moved online or to mobile channels.
Handy said the first shift for any hoteliers should be using generative AI to get a better handle around how it works, along with employing people who understand the technology at a deeper level than business leaders possibly can.
"I may be a little closer to the transformation of this [than Smith], but I still know that I need to be surrounded by people smarter than me that are closer to it," she said. "So we just keep hiring great talent that is closer and closer and closer to the ground level of this transformation to make sure that we are prepared and our hotels are set up for success."
She said the company has also had a shift in thinking around AI, going from broad planning on how to adapt to the technology to more specifically dissecting how it affects specific functions.
"We were going to our IT team and saying 'What are we going to do about AI? What's our AI roadmap?'" Handy said. "Then we quickly pivoted to say, 'I have a business problem I need to solve in my discipline' like "I need to figure out how to write better content on websites to be able to drive more relevant search through AI.'"
She also noted one other major change for the industry is a persistently shrinking booking window, which has required for some major planning changes at the corporate level.
"The 90-day forecast is no longer reliable," she said. "It's not actionable because the booking window is so short and the volatility is so great that it took me a long time [to convince Smith] that we need to be focused on a time frame that is going to have the greatest propensity to drive performance and success."
Smith said he was immediately impressed with Handy's ability to directly share her opinions when he took over as CEO, and that's why she's been promoted multiple times since he took over.
The hotel industry "has these green shoots of phenomenal talent. The Allisons are out there," he said. "As a leader, you have to try to find people that think different than you. If everybody thinks like Craig, you've got a problem in the organization."