US: A report from the NYU School of Professional Studies (NYU SPS) Jonathan M. Tisch Center of Hospitality and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) shows how AI is shaping hotel distribution and operations.
The report – AI-First Hotels: Faster to Build, Leaner to Operate, and Richer in Customer Experience – highlights how AI is impacting customer acquisition. OTA commissions and the limited access to guest data may be compounded as AI-based assistants aggregate and weigh content from a broader range of sources, surfacing only a fraction of recommendations.
Hotels will therefore compete for inclusion in a traveller’s AI-generated shortlist. For hotels to remain discoverable, recommendations include:
- Machine-readable digital content that answers traveller questions consistently across platforms.
- Distribution readiness for AI-driven environments, where prominence and relevance in recommendations are increasingly tied to new fee and placement models.
- More dynamic revenue management that continuously adjusts pricing and channel allocation as demand shifts.
“AI is changing how hotels are discovered, chosen, and booked – and it’s also changing how hotels run day to day,” said Tom McCaleb, partner and managing director BCG, and coauthor of the report. “As AI assistants take on more of the shopping and planning work, hotels will need to shift from optimising for pages and ads to optimising for algorithmic relevance and ensure their operations can deliver on more personalised guest expectations at scale.”
In North America, 65 per cent of hotels reported staffing shortages in 2025, alongside an 11.2 per cent year-on-year increase in labour costs.
Deployment of AI has shown early operational results. This includes 20 per cent faster room cleaning and preparation through AI-synchronised housekeeping schedules aligned with checkouts and staff availability. In the kitchen, AI-enabled waste-tracking tools that provide real-time analytics have yielded roughly 50 per cent food waste reduction within eight months.
Nearly half of hoteliers reported difficulty accessing critical information, and many spend significant time stitching together reports to see a complete picture of the business.
In the travel and tourism workforce, 2.9 per cent of full-time employees possess AI skills compared with 21 per cent in tech and media. AI-skilled hospitality roles are growing nearly five per cent year-on-year.
Nicolas Graf, chaired professor and associate dean at NYU SPS, and coauthor of the report, said: “Hotels are under pressure to do more with less while still delivering distinctive experiences. AI can help remove friction from back-office work and routine tasks, freeing teams to focus on higher-value guest moments – provided the right data foundations and operating model are in place.”
The full report can be read here.
Highlights:
- AI in hospitality is transforming hotel discovery, booking and operations, shifting focus from website optimisation to algorithmic relevance in AI-powered travel search.
- Hotels must invest in machine-readable, structured digital content to improve visibility across AI assistants and generative search platforms.
- AI-driven hotel revenue management systems are enabling continuous price optimisation and smarter channel allocation based on real-time demand data.
- Early AI adoption in hotels is delivering measurable operational gains, including 20 per cent faster housekeeping turnaround and 50 per cent food waste reduction.
- Labour shortages (65 per cent of North American hotels in 2025) and rising costs are accelerating AI adoption, but data fragmentation and AI skills gaps remain key barriers.
