AI tipping point: Mews warns 2026 is make-or-break year for hotel transformation

AMSTERDAM, Dec. 10, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- By 2035, most hotel discovery and booking will happen through a single AI conversation, at least half of back-office tasks will be automated, and the majority of routine guest requests will be handled by AI agents. Human staff will be left to do what algorithms cannot: create emotional, high-impact moments.

That is the future outlined in the new 2026 Hospitality Industry Outlook from Mews, the operating system for hospitality and shared spaces – and it comes with a clear warning: 2026 is the make-or-break setup year.

The report argues that the next 12 months are a narrow window for hotels to get systems, data and teams AI-ready before conversational search, AI-powered booking and autonomous agents move from experiments to everyday guest expectations.

Drawing on the perspectives of eighteen industry experts, the Outlook tests a series of future scenarios through in-depth surveys, asking leaders to rate each by likelihood, impact and desirability. Across these scenarios, there is strong consensus that AI will compress the guest journey from search to stay, shift a large share of operational work to agents, and sharply raise expectations of what "personalized service" means.

"Hospitality is at a tipping point," said Wouter Geerts, Director of Market Research at Mews. "Hotels that treat 2026 as a planning year will lose ground. The ones that use it to clean up data, content and systems will be the ones AI can actually find, trust and send business to."

What will change: five shifts that redefine the hotel business

• Discovery and booking go conversational: Generative AI is on track to turn fragmented search and booking into one continuous conversation. Hotel visibility will hinge less on ad spend and more on structured content, connectivity and open APIs.
  
  
• A chance to reclaim the guest relationship: AI assistants could either cement OTA dominance or spark a reset in favor of direct channels. Hotels with connected systems and rich, AI-ready content will be best placed to win both guest loyalty and algorithmic trust.
  
  
• Agentic AI starts behind the scenes: The first big wins are expected in back-office operations, guest communications and housekeeping, as agentic AI handles routine tasks, coordinates across systems and surfaces insights for teams.
  
  
• Staff roles evolve, not disappear: Transactional processes – check-in, payments, routine questions – are likely to be increasingly automated. Leading hotels will redesign roles around soft skills, empathy and brand storytelling, not admin.
  
  
• 2026 as an inflection point: The next year is framed as a preparation phase: aligning tech stacks, cleaning up data and piloting supervised AI use cases so hotels are not caught off-guard as guest expectations and AI platforms accelerate in the late 2020s.

What hotels need to do in 2026: the AI readiness checklist

These changes will unfold over time, but 2026 is the year hotels either build the foundations for AI – or watch better-prepared competitors pull ahead. To support this, the Outlook includes a four-step AI readiness checklist that shows how properties can move quickly without taking reckless risks:

1. Assess tech stack and data
   Hotels map core systems such as PMS, CRM, messaging, housekeeping, POS and payments, then identify silos, data gaps and integration opportunities. The checklist stresses the need to understand which vendors are building towards AI-driven features and open APIs – and which are not.
   
   
2. Get content AI-ready
   Clean, structured, consistent content becomes the entry ticket to AI-driven search and booking. The report calls for a single source-of-truth factsheet and concise Q&A content for common guest questions, kept in sync across all channels so AI systems can represent the property accurately and confidently.
   
   
3. Run one small, supervised AI pilot
   Rather than broad, unfocused transformation, hotels are urged to start with a narrow, measurable use case – for example, handling routine pre-arrival questions or summarizing guest feedback – within existing systems. Clear guardrails are set, impact is measured over a few weeks and the workflow is refined before any expansion.
   
   
4. Build governance and team buy-in
   Cross-functional working groups, defined ownership and staff training on new workflows and handoffs are highlighted as non-negotiable. The aim is to keep service personal and accountable even as more work is automated behind the scenes.

Each step links back to deeper sections of the report that examine generative AI, agentic AI and automation in more detail, turning high-level scenarios into concrete next actions anchored to 2026.

About the research
The 2026 Hospitality Industry Outlook is based on a Delphi-inspired research method, widely used for business forecasting. In September 2025, Mews convened eighteen experts from across hospitality, technology, investment, consulting and media. The panel completed two rounds of surveys, first scoring fifteen future scenarios on likelihood, impact and desirability, then exploring points of consensus and disagreement in more depth.

The report also summarizes emerging trends in AI-driven search, booking and operations, and outlines what hotels should expect from their tech stack as generative and agentic AI mature.

The full 2026 Hospitality Industry Outlook is available for download at https://www.mews.com/en/resources/research/trends-report-2026.

About Mews
Mews is the leading platform for the new era of hospitality. Powering 12,500 customers across more than 85 countries, Mews Hospitality Cloud is designed to streamline operations for modern hoteliers, transform the guest experience and create more profitable businesses. Customers include BWH Hotels, Strawberry, The Social Hub and Airelles Collection. Mews was named Best PMS (2024, 2025) and listed among the Best Places to Work in Hotel Tech (2021, 2022, 2024, 2025) by Hotel Tech Report. Mews has raised $410 million from investors including Goldman Sachs Alternatives, Kinnevik and Tiger Global Management to transform hospitality. 

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SOURCE Mews