BERLIN — Succeeding in hospitality in 2026 requires a higher degree of creativity and innovation than in years past, according to a panel of experts.
Focus on streamlining guest experience, overall efficiency and bringing hospitality-like service to all forms of commercial real estate are vital.
Speaking during the 2026 International Hospitality Investment Forum EMEA, Yotel CEO Phil Andreopoulos said his company's North Star is always making things simple for travelers, which is evidenced by their use of check-in kiosks to allow guests to bypass a typical front desk experience.
"We were the pioneer there," he said. "We have robots delivering room service. We have all sorts of guest-facing tech that just works really well, and our guests love it. We are trying an AI assistant to help guests with their stay. So like a personal assistant. We are still in the test phases."
He said there are also back-end AI applications to explore, including "for building maintenance and for keeping track of my heat, light, power."
Vincent Mezard, global head of residential and hospitality for BNP Paribas Asset Management, said there are lots of ways hoteliers can employ data in operations, and the overarching themes should revolve around making the complex more understandable. He said that's equally true across all the commercial real estate he oversees.
He said any conversation with "a tenant or operator has to start with sharing data in a very open way."
He said that data then must be distilled in a way that empowers their people to make better decisions.
Tugdual Millet, CEO of Covivio Hotels, said he also sees potential for connectivity between hotels and other forms of real estate, and bringing more hospitality-inspired service to other asset classes, particularly offices, has been a big opportunity for his company. He said the company's own Paris headquarters is a showcase of this philosophy. That building's terrace-level meeting space is designed to compete with anything hotels can offer.
"Here is where hospitality is really adding value to the real estate," he said. "It's adding much more complexity in the way you are addressing your customers. We are not serving just the head of real estate at a company when we let an office. We are also addressing each of the people working in that building and putting more events and services in to make it really alive during the week."
Gilles Clavie, CEO of Essendi, agreed that the operational lessons from hospitality need to grow to support other commercial real estate classes.
"More and more, real estate owners are interested in [focusing on] operations to enlarge value creation," he said, adding it's key for owners to have a better understanding of the hotel operating model.
The more people are in tuned with operations, the more they will see the value in overall efficiency, he said. And panelists agreed that artificial intelligence could be a great enabler of overall efficiency in operations.
"We look at food margin, and you can easily improve it by paying attention to food wastage," he said. "When everyone is conscious of this, you can put in some with artificial intelligence, have the team put in place daily routines then suddenly you start to see improvement. ... We have done this where we have reduced food waste by more than 40%, which is huge in creating additional value."
Andreopoulos noted the lessons across commercial real estate can go both ways, and he believes more hoteliers should focus on profit per square meter as a key performance indicator.
"This is a much, much better metric where it makes us think very carefully in the design stage about how many keys we can put in and how profitable we can make this space versus the amount of space it's taking," he said.