I did not know what to expect walking into HITEC 2026 in San Antonio. I should have prepared myself better. More than 5,000 attendees. More than 500 exhibitors. Four days. All of it centred on one industry: hospitality technology.

It was a lot to take in. But after the noise settled, a few things stood out clearly. Here is what I took away, and why I think it matters for hotels here in Australia, New Zealand & Southeast Asia right now.

The one thing that united every session, every booth, every conversation at HITEC was AI. It was inescapable. And honestly, that is both exciting and a little overwhelming, because the signal-to-noise ratio was low.

If you went in looking for a broad overview of AI in hospitality, you would leave with a lot of concepts. If you went in looking for specific, actionable answers to specific problems, you had to work harder to find them. The expert sessions were where the real value was. The three I want to talk about here were genuinely outstanding.

Michael J. Goldrich delivered what was probably the most practical session I attended. He opened with data, and the data was striking.

U.S. travellers using traditional search for trip research: 51% in 2024. 36% in 2025. One year. A 15-point drop.

That is not a gradual shift. That is structural change happening in real time. And it is being driven by AI. Extensive AI use for trip planning has doubled in the last year alone. 84% of users say they would book what AI recommends. 78% already have.

So here is the question every hotel in that room had to sit with: when AI makes a recommendation, are you in it?

Goldrich also pulled apart the hotel AI apps inside ChatGPT, including those from Accor and IHG. The verdict was clear. Too many steps. Too much friction before a guest even begins to discover your property. The concept is sound, but the experience is not there yet.

What actually matters is something simpler and more fundamental: your content. Your property needs to be the definitive source of truth that AI can read, trust, and cite. Because when AI answers a travel question, it is pulling from somewhere. The hotels winning this era are the ones making sure they are that source.

Here is something I found genuinely surprising. Across all 500-plus exhibitors, not one was talking about AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) or GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation). Not one.

Sessions showed clearly how significant the shift in search behaviour is. The data was there. The direction was obvious. But no one on the floor was addressing how hotels could actually take advantage of it. No one was talking about how to become the answer AI returns. How to be the citation. How to own your position in an AI-driven discovery environment.

That is a significant missed opportunity, both for the exhibitors and for hotels who left without a clear path forward.

This is exactly where we come in at OmniHyper. Getting your property machine-readable, building your content as a genuine hub that AI can trust and reference, optimising for AEO and GEO so you become the answer rather than hoping to be included. That is how direct bookings are generated in an AI world. And that opportunity is available right now, not in 2030.

One of the most thought-provoking sessions I attended looked further ahead, and it reframed how I think about hotel distribution entirely.

The projection: by 2030, 80% of hotel bookings could be made by AI agents. Not influenced by AI. Made by AI. An agent that knows your preferences, your travel history, your loyalty programmes, your budget, and your schedule. That agent negotiates with your hotel’s agent and makes the booking without you lifting a finger.

Think about what that means for a few things we take for granted today.

Distribution costs. Think about the App Store model. For its first decade, Apple took 30% of every app sale. If AI agent platforms become the new intermediary between hotels and guests, the cost structure could make OTA commissions look manageable. No one knows the number yet. But it is worth planning for a range of outcomes.

Loyalty programmes. They were built for humans. AI agents are not loyal. An agent will simultaneously enrol in every programme, compare every benefit, and select the best deal in milliseconds. The emotional attachment, the status psychology, the habit of returning to a brand because it feels familiar? Irrelevant to an agent. This is a structural threat to major chains. And potentially a significant opportunity for well-positioned independents.

Rate strategy. Agents do not search once and book. They search continuously, right up until the guest walks in the door. Rate fences and last-minute holds were built for a different era of traveller behaviour.

The consistent advice from this session: start now. Make your website machine-readable. If an agent cannot see it, interpret it, and interact with it, you do not exist in their world. AEO and GEO are not future preparation. They are the foundation you need to be building today.

The main stage panel was one of the most candid conversations I have seen at a conference. The range of views was wide. Some said AI will change nothing. Others said it will change everything. Both were on the same panel, and neither was dismissed.

A few things landed hard.

AI is already reducing headcount. This was not debated. The disagreement was about scale and speed, not direction.

Scott Strickland from Wyndham went further than most are willing to say publicly: fully autonomous hotels with no human staff. He could see at least a couple of brands adopting this model. Whether that is five years away or fifty, the fact that someone at that level is saying it out loud changes the conversation.

The CIO and CTO titles are quietly fading, being replaced by Chief AI Officer and Chief Innovation Officer. The role is not disappearing. It is being redefined around AI leadership rather than technology management.

And Keryn McNamara from Aimbridge offered a perspective I keep coming back to: AI will deliver a better, more customised experience for the guest. But the real opportunity is what it frees up. More time to offer a genuinely better human experience. The hotels that use AI to elevate human moments, rather than simply remove them, are the ones worth watching.

Beyond the sessions, two things on the exhibitor floor genuinely caught my attention.

The first was Nilo. A robot that can work as your concierge or even your front desk. Nilo can interact with guests, answer questions, solve problems, and move through a hotel like a person can. It is already operating in three hotels in the United States. Is it a bit gimmicky right now? Honestly, yes. But given how fast the technology is moving, I am very curious what it looks like in 6 to 12 months.

The second was a company that has taken Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses and adapted them for hospitality. When a staff member wears them, the glasses capture a brief look at a guest’s face, cross-reference the data, and then display that person’s name, where they are from, where they have travelled from, and relevant details about their stay, all on the lens. Imagine being on the front desk and being able to greet Michael by name the moment he walks in, knowing exactly where he has come from and what he might need. That kind of personalised, effortless welcome used to require years of relationship-building. This makes it instant.

Both of these still have a way to go. But they point clearly in a direction that is genuinely exciting for the guest experience.

HITEC 2026 was a great event. Four days, an enormous amount of information, and a clear signal that the industry is in the middle of something significant.

AI is not a future story. It is a right-now story. But it is also vast, and you need to find your specific entry point. The guest discovery journey, and specifically how hotels show up in AI search, is where I believe the most immediate and actionable opportunity sits for properties across Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia.

The shift from traditional search to AI-driven discovery is already well underway. The hotels building for that now, becoming machine-readable, owning their content, becoming the citation AI relies on, will be the ones reducing their reliance on OTAs and driving direct revenue in the years ahead.

That is the opportunity. And it is very much available today.

If you want to talk about where your hotel sits right now and what a practical first step looks like, reach out. We would love to help.

With 25+ years in hotel digital marketing, Michael has driven success for Accor, IHG, and Marriott worldwide.