146 - ITB, Platforms, AI and Revenue Mgmt
What I saw at ITB, the platforms, the AI and what I thought. ChatGPT doesn't want bookings, Reddit reviews, Dubai exaggerations.
Hello,
I had a bit of time to look at what I saw at ITB. It a bit hard to summarize, because there is just so much. But I did my best to give my impressions below.
Best, Martin
Klairhaus, the perfect employee and customer gifts. Quality, crafted, every day items for the office. Find out more ➛
No more shopping in ChatGPT
OpenAI appears to be scaling back its plan to integrate shopping directly into ChatGPT. I’ve commented on this before they will not want to own the cancellations, over-bookings and all the other problems related to bookings and shopping. I think the best predictor of AI is Google and Hotel Ads, they’ll want to operate as a meta-search. Markus Busch has written a great analysis on Google’s work here.
CHATGPT COMMERCE + GOOGLE TRIED THIS BEFORE
About me: I'm a fractional CMO for large travel technology companies helping turn them into industry leaders. I'm also the co-founder of 10minutes.news a hotel news media that is unsensational, factual and keeps hoteliers updated on the industry. AI at ITB Berlin
AI dominated the conversation at ITB Berlin this year. Operators are increasingly exploring AI for operations, marketing, and productivity, but there’s discussion that we’re loosing the human side of hospitality. I don’t think that’s a problem yet, but considering some hotel chains - we shouldn’t ignore the possibility. See more in my column.
AI IN HOSPITALITY
Reddit’s Influence on Hotel Bookings
Reddit has become a powerful, influence on hotel bookings. The candid peer conversations are shaping brand reputations in ways that traditional marketing cannot touch. That sounds like TripAdvisor 20 years ago ;-) but this time it is super unstructured. Reddit ads aren’t cheap - but could be good for top level inspiration, I wonder how many agencies are using it despite the inevitable complaints about ROI.
REDDIT TRAVEL INFLUENCE
Data vs Marketing
Digital marketing promised perfect measurability, and in many ways it delivered. But it also led to an over-reliance on data where people spend more time number crunching than creating great ideas. With AI this is going to accelerate. Every decision will be based on A/B tests, creativity will become secondary. The content will become the same for everyone. We’re going to go back to blue logos on white background?
DATA DRIVEN MARKETING + META CREATIVE STRATEGY
Dubai
The rumors of Dubai’s rapid demise are greatly exaggerated in my opinion. The proximity to Iran was never a secret. The risk existed for some time, in fact it was one of the primary risks related to real-estate investments in the city. There are very valid concerns and there are attacks. For an area which was known as one of the safest, the shock is real. But to say the dream is shattered is pushing it.
DUBAI HOTEL NEWS
Regulators and Hotel Data Sharing
UK regulators are investigating whether major hotel groups used benchmarking data from STR to indirectly coordinate pricing behavior. All it would take is one call to one RMS provider to understand that, if they’re not using STR data they’re scraping online data and they’d be surprised to see how much pricing FOMO happens in our industry. I wonder how they pick their battles.
HOTEL DATA REGULATION
Long Serif Fonts = AI startup?
There was a beautiful trend in typography this year: Long serif fonts. It gave some humanity to this magical yet opaque world of AI. But this is the problem with design trends. Everybody gets on the train and now we have a stereotype style. Grainy gradients and long serif fonts have become the trademark of early 2026 AI startups. At least it is easy for brand positioning.
VOICE AI STARTUP
The proof that names don’t matter
I’ve often argued that the name of your company doesn’t matter, as long as you are comfortable with it, that’s enough. The rest is a problem of branding. The evidence of this is the car industry. Literally the worst names, yet those companies became huge global brands that are recognized by kids (who wont own one for another 15 years). Bayerische Motoren Werke is not a good name, neither is Build Your Dreams, the list goes on.
MOST VALUABLE CAR BRANDS
“Boring” Innovation?
Putting POS, Spa and PMS on iPads isn’t new. Lots of people have done it at least individually. Selling solutions on Ipads isn’t new either. Though most prefer custom hardware. Building payment solutions within mobile devices isn’t new either. But maybe combining all of these boring things, into an eco-system might be the non-sexy innovation that our industry needs.
IPADS AND PMS⁺
Opinion
ITB, Still the best show
Every year, when I walk into ITB Berlin, I have the same thought: this is the show of our industry (especially when the weather was like this year). Its a reminder that hospitality and travel are more than just businesses, its people who genuinely love the industry. You can even feel it in the subway on the way to the show.
Of course, this year again (like everywhere else) AI was unavoidable.
You see it on almost every stand, in almost every pitch, in almost every conversation. Some companies are doing genuinely impressive work. Interestingly, the most practical use cases I saw were in revenue management and analytics. That’s where AI seems to be moving beyond buzzwords and actually helping people make better decisions. Next step we need to bring in all the hotel’s data, CRM, F&B, Finance etc etc.
Also a lot of the AI labels are what I would call “investor AI”. Adding “AI” to your story is a requirement to attract funding. The problem is that investors and customers are not the same audience. Investors want to hear that your technology stack is cutting-edge. Customers, on the other hand, couldn’t care less if your system runs on AI, React, JavaScript, COBOL, or something invented last week.
They care about one thing: does it solve their problem? And these two narratives get mixed up, companies end up using their successful investor decks to try to sell to customers, and customers can’t figure out why the solutions matters.
Another trend that stood out to me is the continued rise of platforms. Multi-solution companies are clearly becoming dominant service providers in the hospitality tech ecosystem. Many companies are building an “all-in-one” solution or aggregating multiple products into a single platform. And I think this is a good thing for the customer.
But, it’s becoming harder and harder to understand what these companies actually do.
You walk up to a stand and hear something like: “We optimize your hotel’s performance through a unified ecosystem of intelligent AI solutions.” That sounds great, but I still don’t really know what you do.
Maybe we need a new version of Simon Sinek’s talk, but instead of Start With Why, we need Start With How. Sometimes simply explaining what and how you do it is really practical.
Then there was quite a few revenue management solutions, some new ones, some just had bigger stands. A conversation with a long-time industry friend made me reflect on RM as a discipline. It can sometimes feel like a tribal and somewhat idealistic world, full of deeply held beliefs about how pricing should work. Each convinced to have their own secret sauce that is the right way. Apparently there are approx 70,000 revenue managers in the world, HSMAI has nearly 5000 members. It’s not a huge TAM. Of course one can say one will grow that, but will we really?
For many non-experts, the obvious question is, if great RMSs exists, why hasn’t pricing been fully automated yet? Is it technology? Culture? Ego? Fear of losing control, or losing jobs?
I noticed that halls are starting to cluster around solutions, 8.1 is revenue and marketing, 10.1 is becoming the payments tech. Tech is becoming a big part of ITB. It used to be just a hall 8.1 now there are 3-4 halls.
My biggest regret at ITB, as always, is the number of people I didn’t manage to see. The deeper conversations that never quite happened. I had several, but there simply isn’t enough time.
But I’ve come to realize that maybe ITB isn’t really about that. ITB is where we remind each other that behind all the articles, the newsletters, the Linkedin posts, we are still very real people.
• 100 Years of Solitude: AI and Hotel Commercial Optimization - Link
• The inspiration guide for hospitality - Link⁺
• Invisible Apps Designing Brands for the Agentic Era - Link
• Death of Spotify? - Link
• The comment section of Netflix Paramount deal - Link
Did you know: The word "platform" comes from the Old French "plateforme," meaning "flat form or ground." The word is made up of "plat" (flat) and "forme" (form, shape). It was first used in English in the 16th century to describe a flat, raised surface, and its meanings expanded over time to include political, technical, and digital uses. Defined using Lomar Dictionary⁺
This especially resonated with me, Martin.
Maybe we need a new version of Simon Sinek’s talk, but instead of Start With Why, we need Start With How. Sometimes simply explaining what and how you do it is really practical.