Ninety-three percent of travelers say they highly trust AI for travel information. Only 2% would let it book the trip for them.

That gap is the most important number in travel right now — and it won’t stay that wide for long.

At NAVIGATE Phoenix 2026, 200+ hoteliers, 50+ partners, and dozens of Revinators descended on The Wigwam in Phoenix to work through what the AI shift actually means for their operations. The message was consistent: the industry is moving beyond manual software management, and the hotels that get there first will have their data in order when it counts.

Five themes kept surfacing, regardless of whether the room was talking about marketing, reservations, or loyalty.

The CDP isn’t a nice-to-have anymore

The highest-attended session of the conference — the Omnichannel Roadmap, 85% full — made the foundational case: AI is only as good as the data it runs on.

A name and an email address don’t give AI enough to work with. Stay history, outlet spend, call notes, booking patterns — that’s what turns AI from a general tool into something that can make real decisions on your behalf. But most hotels aren’t capturing that data in one place yet.

The question that kept surfacing across sessions: how do we close the guest data gap? The answer that kept coming back: connect the systems you already have, complete the profiles, and make sure what you’re collecting is actually actionable.

Room spend is only part of the picture, too — a guest whose golf spend outpaces their spa spend may be worth more to one outlet than another, and allocating resources around that requires data most hotels aren’t currently capturing in one place. That’s exactly the problem Revinate Guests is built to solve.

The voice channel isn’t dying. It’s changing what it’s for.

Guests used to call to ask the “what” — amenities, policies, rates — and all of that is online now, findable in seconds without picking up the phone. What they call for now is the “why.” Why your hotel over the one down the road? That’s a different conversation — and it requires agents who can make a connection, not just recite details.

The “Coaching for Conversion” session drew 60–70% of its room and centered on exactly that shift. The line that stuck: coach the behavior, not the data. If conversion drops, the answer isn’t to lead every coaching session with that metric. It’s to understand what the agent is actually doing on the call.

And the relationship between manager and agent has to come first. Agents who feel comfortable being coached perform better. That comfort doesn’t happen in the coaching session — it has to be built before you ever get there.

Automate the best, not the most

One line from the “Giving Innovation a Voice” session is worth keeping: the winners will be those who automate best, not the most.

AI is improving fast — but it isn’t ready to handle the complex, nuanced guest interactions that require judgment, empathy, and context that only comes from years of working in hospitality. What it is ready for is the transactional work that eats up time without requiring a human touch — scoring calls, answering repetitive questions, surfacing the right data for an agent who’s already on the line.

Automated call scoring was the feature attendees kept coming back to. Not because it replaces coaching, but because it gives managers back the time to actually do it. Thirty hours a month is a real number — and the people who’d get that time back know exactly what they’d do with it.

Deploy AI to the parts of the job nobody wants to do. Keep your people on the parts that matter.

If you’re waiting for clarity on AI, stop waiting

Ryan Mann, Partner at McKinsey & Co., put it plainly: the future of how people search for and book travel is genuinely uncertain. There are scenarios where OTAs win the AI shift. There are scenarios where hotels do. The ones that come out ahead won’t be the ones who waited for a clear picture — they’ll be the ones who planned for multiple scenarios and moved.

Hotels have an advantage OTAs will never have: supply-side data. Deep, specific knowledge of guests built over years of stays, calls, and transactions. OTAs have never had access to that. When it’s structured in a way AI can read and act on, hotels stop competing on OTA terms.

Getting ready for AI isn’t a technology project. It’s a data project — and for a lot of hotels, the work is already closer to done than they think.

Loyalty that makes guests feel seen compounds over time

Ajeet Anand and Marc Winchell from Pacific Hospitality Group shared the results from The Meritage Collection’s Stay Golden Rewards program. The numbers are worth pausing on.

Loyalty members show a 61% higher lifetime value than non-members, cancel 44% less often, and the program has generated more than $12 million in direct revenue. Those aren’t loyalty metrics. That’s a revenue strategy.

But the architecture wasn’t the point. The shift was in what the program was trying to do — moving from accumulation to recognition. Guests were rewarded with experiences from their first stay that reflected what they actually care about.

The question that built it wasn’t “how do we design a points system?” It was “how do we make this guest feel seen?” Those are different problems. They lead to very different programs. If you want to understand how guest data drives loyalty outcomes, that reframe is the place to start.

About NAVIGATE

NAVIGATE 2026 brought together more than 200 hoteliers from independents and groups across North America — spanning Reservations, Marketing, Revenue, and Commercialization — alongside 50+ Revinators and 21 sponsoring companies. Sessions ranged from vibe coding to making your hotel more visible in AI search.

Wednesday night, the group traded conference badges for disco attire. Wonderbread 5 played, the outfits delivered, and the conversations that started in the sessions kept going on the dance floor.

But the thing attendees kept saying wasn’t about a session or a product announcement. It was about the room itself — a group of hoteliers working through the same problems and willing to talk openly about what’s working and what isn’t. That’s harder to find than any single takeaway.

Photos from the event are here.

NAVIGATE 2027 is already in the works. Sign up for the Revinate newsletter to be the first to know where we’re headed next. In the meantime, you can revisit the NAVIGATE Phoenix 2026 event page for the full agenda, speakers, and session details.

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Frequently asked questions

What is a hotel CDP, and why does it matter for AI?

A customer data platform (CDP) collects and unifies guest data from all your systems into a single profile — stay history, outlet spend, booking patterns, call notes. AI tools are only as useful as the data they run on. Without a CDP organizing that data, AI has too little context to make decisions that actually help your hotel.

How is AI changing hotel reservations and the voice channel?

Guests no longer call to ask about amenities or rates — that information is online. They call to make a connection. That shift means agents need to be coached on converting conversations, not reciting details. AI handles the transactional work, like scoring calls, so managers have the time to do that coaching.

What is automated call scoring?

Automated call scoring uses AI to evaluate reservation agent calls against defined criteria — greeting, rate presentation, closing technique, and so on — without a manager listening to every recording. It surfaces the calls that need attention and gives supervisors back an estimated 30+ hours a month that would otherwise go to manual review.

What is NAVIGATE?

NAVIGATE is Revinate’s annual customer conference for hoteliers across Reservations, Marketing, Revenue, and Commercialization. It’s traveled through London, Miami, and Austin before landing in Phoenix for 2026 — each year bringing together independent and group hotel operators to work through the real operational challenges facing the industry. NAVIGATE 2027 is already in the works.

How should hotels prepare for AI search and booking?

McKinsey’s Ryan Mann noted the outcome of the AI booking shift is genuinely uncertain — but hotels that act now will be positioned for more scenarios than those who wait. The first step is clean, connected guest data. Hotels with structured data have a supply-side advantage OTAs cannot replicate, and that advantage grows as AI tools mature.