GMH Hotels: Hilton’s AI Planner, Airline Fare Risk & Mouse Mid-Flight

On this week’s Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast, Hotels Edition, Sarah Dandashy and Steve Turk break down how AI is quickly becoming a bigger part of hotel strategy, from Hilton’s new AI travel planner to analysts predicting that years of hotel tech investments could finally start delivering real earnings gains.

They also examine how rising oil prices could push airline fares higher and how government shutdown pressures are already creating TSA staffing shortages and longer airport security lines across the U.S.

Watch This Podcast Episode

Sarahʼs Global Travels

Bom dia!

Bom dia! Good morning, Sarah. Where are you coming from?

You don’t look like you’re at home.

I am not at home. Good morning, everyone, or good afternoon, wherever you’re joining us from. I’m actually in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Brazil, if you’ve been following along, yes, I was indeed in Berlin last week. Now I’m in Brazil. The week before that, I was in Mexico, so we’re just counting off like a whole bunch of.

Berlin, Brazil.

Look at you, Sarah, you’re a traveler. You’re taking a break. I feel like you weren’t traveling and now, bopping across the globe like Sarah Dandashy.

We’re back at it.

So what’s going on in Brazil?

What are you doing in Brazil?

Well, I happen to be here with my good friend Alice, who actually has a PBS show.

Hold on. Are you looking at her? Is she in the room?

I’m Alice.

You should come make an appearance here. Here you go. Come on.

There we go. Can you squeeze in?

Good to see you.

Good to see you guys.

Yeah.

What is the trip you guys are doing? What’s happening over there, Alice? Fill us in on what’s going on today.

We are here filming an episode for my TV show, all about conservation, the region of Iguacu.

So we’re going to be filming here in Brazil, but also getting to go to Paraguay and Argentina, going to a bunch of national parks, and today we interviewed one of the guys from Ancari Safari, who’s actually helping reestablish the population of

My gosh.

Did you just get any jaguars, or you just interviewed them?

Not yet, but hopefully this week.

Hopefully this week, exactly. So talk about being out here in the field, in the real deal.

So, Alice, somebody wants to follow along or connect with you, what’s the best way they do that? Where are they following along?

Yeah, they can go to YouTube and look me up, Alice Ford, or they can find me on PBS, on the app, or on a lot of the local stations. My show is called Alice’s Adventures on Earth.

So cool. I got to get some merch now, Alice. I got to start driving.

All right, back to your show.

Oh my gosh.

So this is what’s happening out here in the streets of hospitality. We’re taking over Brazil, where we’re going out into nature.

I mean, it’s very cool.

It’s very cool.

All right, now I feel a little jealous and I’m feeling some FOMO. Viewers, listeners, I need a travel partner now. Who’s coming with me?

Let’s go. Who has a Facebook? I need to.

That would be so much fun.

Oh my gosh.

3:01

Viya Resort Progress

Oh, man.

All right. So we’re doing all those fun things. You know, there’s a lot going on.

Listen, we’re building Viya. Our tropical landscape resort is in full swing now.

We’re assigned demolition papers, knocking down all the structures, signing all these deals for all the things to get built now and doing a little fun things, which I love, by the way.

If you’re a vendor, I’m looking for really unique things that are sustainable, compostable, has a sustainability story. Let me know. I’m getting so many cool products to test out and try out.

We really want to make this a really special place. And it comes down to working with the great vendors that are passionate about stuff, so always love it. Always love seeing all of you out there.

So that’s what I’ve been focusing on.

I love it. Well, look, it’s coming together. And it’s like we all know it doesn’t happen overnight.

It’s definitely. But it’s so cool. It’s so cool.

Did it like Bricks by Brick type thing?

You know, by brick, I think we found something cool. I posted today about a yoga mat. So watch it after.

I know you do some yoga and Pilates and other things. Let me know if you like this mat. OK, it’s a big deal.

It’s going to be one of the things in the room that we sell as well. So every little thing we want to make sure is thought of.

And I think this is a great room. It’s all about the details. And you’re getting to make those choices and those decisions with the details.

So I love that.

Yeah, it’s a lot of fun. So I’ll start traveling again a couple of more weeks. I’ll be out on a cruise and then going to Moab, Utah and a wedding in Savannah, Georgia.

So a lot of different places coming up in the next four weeks.

OK, this is good. Well, I will be in Miami next month. So we’ll have to make sure that we’ll have to, we’ll have to get the gang back together.

Let’s do it.

4:41

Hotel AI Impact

Yes.

Well, I don’t know, should we hop into some topics? I’m sure you guys want to hear the news, what’s going on in the world.

Yeah, let’s do it.

Yeah. So this is interesting. Hilton has launched an AI travel planner.

They’ve launched an AI powered trip planner designed to help travelers discover destinations and plan their stays. Now, what’s cool, we’ve talked about this a lot with AI.

Obviously, this whole idea of building in the trip planning into the conversation. So it’s a conversational tool. It suggests itineraries, also hotels, based on sort of travelers prompts, their interests.

And again, we’ve seen this before, but really trying to capture travelers in the discovery phase of travel planning. So, yeah. It’s interesting.

I think it’s the light version of what I think they will get to.

I think they’re testing it out, because you get to the Hilton page, and you type in, I’m going to Brazil in Sao Paulo, looking for a place close to Iguazú Falls, and it serves you up some properties, but it’s not booking it for you yet, and it’s

getting hard to filter through, like, all right, how can I use my points best? How can I personalize this a little bit more? Just in the early tests of playing with it is where I think it needs some more work that way.

Like, you have your profile, it reads your profile, and serves up like, oh, you’ve been to these places, here’s what it would look like. That’s where I think it’s gonna get to.

But I like that Hotels now, you know, we talked about Marriott and their app, trying to make the Bonvoy app where everyone starts their journey. Hilton, you know, they’re always this lock and step.

These two are really trying to figure out how do we get people onto our platform and make it sticky.

Make it sticky, because if not, they’re going to be going to ChatGBT and Claude and Gemma and I still, like that’s how I’m still starting my exploration of places. So it’s going to be interesting to see what hotels are going to do.

I just call me Miss Analog because I just take a globe, spin it, spin it and go. And then I, oh, that’s where we’re going. OK, perfect.

It sounds like your week has been like that.

I know.

You just keep it. You keep it fun. So it is what it is.

But what’s interesting, by the way, with what’s going on with this is like AI is kind of this sort of turf war between.

So we know that this is obviously the place where travelers are discovering and kind of putting together their sort of trip itineraries and ideas. Now you’ve got the hotel brands that are like, OK, can we capture the direct bookings?

But also the OTA is very much being like, can travelers then basically book through the OTA? So it’s like a new space to play in. There’s also talks that Chad GPT will not be basically become a new platform to book in.

But so it’s trying to stay neutral, but it’s going to be challenging.

No, it’s going to be interesting to see where hotels go. You’re going to have to have it. And every hotel will have it at some point.

It’s going to be, how do you use the best? I think it has to go back to your profile. What do you like?

What do you like best? Those are the ones that are really going to do a good job. And I know they’re thinking of that in these hotels.

But let’s see. Let’s see where they continue to go. You know, AI has taken over the world little by little.

You know, I know we have two stories on it today. And I think they kind of tie to each other.

Yeah, absolutely. Making sure, by the way, let me know if my audio sounds funny. I’m kind of roughing it.

You’re fine.

You’re traveling. We’ll enhance it after.

All right. Well, famous last words. Well, let’s go ahead and get on here to our next topic.

This is interesting. So, Hotel AI Investments are set to deliver earnings. Sorry.

Earnings pay off this year. So, it’s interesting. So, analysts basically for 2026 say that this might be the first year that Hotel AI Investments are actually translating into measurable earnings improvements.

This is big because everything’s been projected up until this point. And now, now it’s not, now we’ve got numbers.

They’re experimenting, right? They are, they were experimenting 2024, 2025 when we started talking about this, all these hotel groups. Now they’re starting to see, all right, these are the tools that worked.

Let’s start to implement these things. And you’re seeing it really take effect.

You know, Wyndham said that they’ve increased their reservations significantly because they have AI agents taking reservations where maybe that phone call would have got missed. It wouldn’t have been answered.

Now, they have people answering those things. You have the sales teams, the group sales teams.

I think it was, which major brand it was, but have increased 20% their productivity using AI because they’re now able to reach out and personalize proposals, get back to people faster in these big group settings.

And so now you got group business that’s starting to increase at these places and you’re making people way more, we say you’re giving them more tools to be able to do things faster. So they’re just becoming way more efficient in doing their jobs.

But we are starting to see some people getting laid off as well using these tools. So the payoff is now labor costs are going down. You’re bringing in more money because you have people that are way more efficient.

So it’s interesting to see how this continues through the rest of the year. But it’s starting to pay off all the investments they’re doing.

Oh, definitely. Well, I mean, I think if anything, it’s just it’s going to be very clear what’s working, what isn’t. And businesses will be making direct decisions based off of this.

I mean, they actually now have the numbers to back it up.

Yeah, I just did an interview with the CEO of a tech company. And he was saying they’re going all in on AI agents. So AI agents for the front of the house, back of the house, for revenue management.

And one of the tools that I didn’t even think about was in the world of hotels, is that you have ads popping up that look like you’re a hotel. So it may say like the Fontainebleau, Miami Beach, but it’s really not the Fontainebleau, Miami Beach.

It’s an ad for someone that has an OTA, and they’re trying to get that booking on there. And so these AI agents are going in, scanning that all day and reporting it to Google, saying these ads are illegal. And so that’s one way that they’re doing it.

So they’re getting more direct bookings that way. So it’s just things that you couldn’t do as a human, scanning every single ad all day, every day. It’s just interesting to see how this starts to take effect.

But all these other things are paying off.

Well, it’s nice, yeah. And again, it’s going to continue to sort of skyrocket from here. I mean, obviously, I was just at ITB last week.

Oh yeah.

Very much.

I mean, definitely, even though it was everything from destinations to airlines, to you name it, but there was a whole, there was a lot of tech players there and big tech players. So the landscape is changing very, very rapidly.

And then again, just with more of these numbers, I think it’s just going to kind of like everything’s going to just increase exponentially.

Look, I think you really like this. If a company is making more money and saving money on payroll, it’s going to keep getting doubled down on over and over.

Yeah.

Listener, viewer, I don’t know if you’re seeing it in your world live in the hotel, but I’d love to see if you’re using a new AI tool or your hotel has implemented something that is new this year. Let us know here in the comments.

We’ll love to hear what you’re seeing out there.

Yeah.

11:55

Rising Oil Prices

Definitely let us know. All right. Let’s talk about this next one here.

This is going to affect a lot of people. Oil prices. So fun.

Everybody loves to talk about oil. Oil prices, basically, they’re rising and that as a default or basically will ultimately, it’s going to increase airfare.

It’s interesting because they did a study and it’s basically now over $100 a barrel, I think is what it was saying.

Let’s see what it is today.

Yeah, exactly. That could add about $24 billion in jet fuel costs for US airlines. How does that translate to travelers?

Well, airfares are going to go up about 10 percent. Now, what’s interesting is the price today is not the price tomorrow. The price today, think about what is it going to be in November.

People are generally not buying fares today to fly today. They’re flying, they’re buying tickets today to fly in June, August, November. So, yeah.

So, what’s going on?

I’m just looking here live on CNBC. So, as we are doing live, this is called journalism we’re doing here, listeners.

Live journalism.

IEA, the International Energy Agency, just agreed this morning to release 400 million barrels of oil to address the supply distribution triggered by the Iran War.

So, they’re really seeing, all right, we got prices going way up, way more expensive to travel right now. If you’re in business, that affects everything in hospitality. You have all the trucks delivering supplies, food.

Even people getting to work is getting more expensive. It’s just a lot of things that go into this that affect not only our industry, but the global economy. And so, it’s going to be interesting to see if we can get these prices back down.

Because I know just for myself, to fill up my truck was way higher today when I had to go do it this morning versus two weeks ago. And so, I can only imagine it for everybody else. And I have one truck.

Imagine all the airlines, all the people that are doing this every day. I laugh, but it’s true. The ultra wealthy feel it too.

And their yachts, usually it costs $200,000 to fill up a yacht. I’m sure today it’s $300,000 to $400,000, depending on the size. So for everybody, everyone’s feeling that.

So let’s see how the government reacts to it. Looks like they realize that they’re releasing more oil and hoping that really helps because the stock market took a hit yesterday.

And hopefully this is a short term head and we can get this under control.

I’m just ready for some good news, huh?

I know. I started following some good news pages on Instagram to really cleanse my feed here. And so there are some good news out there.

No, no, no, that’s good.

I definitely, I actually changed up my social media because on Instagram you can actually filter out and be like, I don’t want to see news on XYZ topics. And I just did that. I mean, I will obviously get the news in other ways.

I can still stand top of things, but I don’t necessarily need it in my feed.

Every single day, yes.

No, but I mean, it’s just getting hard out here.

It’s hard on the streets. But for people watching live, I see a lot of you here live. How is it for you?

Are you seeing it at your gas stations? I’m curious to see what you’re seeing, because most of you all work in hospitality too.

And it really does affect a lot of the people that are the housekeepers and the stewards, the servers and the bartenders, even the manager, everybody is affected.

How much is it for you in Miami?

When I looked this morning, premium was at $4.50 a gallon.

Coming from California, Los Angeles, and those were glory days when it was that much. Five, six, or what are you at now? Eight.

Whoa, that’s a big one.

It’s like living in another country, it’s crazy.

That’s why you went to your Tesla.

That’s why I mean, yeah, that’s definitely why.

So, good.

Get away under control, government. Let’s do this.

16:01

Travel Security Tips

Yeah, let’s talk about more exciting things, huh?

Speaking of the government, just doing great things. The shutdown triggers TSA staffing shortages. Now, this is interesting because you’ve got a lot of people saying long airport lines, whatever.

You’ve been following me. I have not been at home. I’ve been out there in airports.

But I have to say, so yes, I saw the TSA lines long. TSA pre-check is still working. Global entry is not.

The times that I’ve come in on global entry, both from Mexico as well as from Europe, took not even two minutes to get through. I used the mobile passport control app. I will use that coming back from here as well.

But that’s been pretty streamlined. I mean, people talk about long lines. Yes, there’s long lines, but also, and I highly suggest that people do this, especially if you’re traveling a lot.

I travel with Delta, so I have a thing called Touchless. I have TSA pre-check, but I also have Touchless. There’s like three people on that line.

There might even be a huge line for TSA pre-check, and I can just walk straight to the line of Touchless. They take a photo. Everybody’s got a photo of me.

I exist. It’s fine, and then I go right through, so obviously.

I don’t have Touchless. How would someone like us, let’s do some teaching today. How would we get Touchless?

With the airline that you are flying with, they should give you a prompt to be like, do you want to?

Delta is called Touchless. The other airlines are called different things. I don’t remember what it is exactly.

Each airline is slightly different but similar concept. When you’ve got your flight in your app, it should give you the option for an upcoming flight to be like, do you want to enroll in Touchless or whatever their version is?

Got it. Yeah.

You can do that.

I got two flights coming up, so I’ll check it. Yeah.

Check it out because I found that that makes it super simple and streamlined. Also, the big thing with this article is that there are lines. The challenge is you don’t know what you’re going to get.

For example, Atlanta Airport, you might go and it’s fine. Then the next day you might go and it could be the difference between a Tuesday and a Wednesday, like nothing crazy, not like a weekend or anything.

You can go the next day and things are crazy, they’re crazy backed up and it takes an hour to get through. That’s the part.

You got to be prepared, use all the tools available to you. But we’re getting some comments from our last story.

We can come on the screen already, but Jason said slight bump in Texas on gas, always cheaper than most states as they pump a lot of gas there. Paul Manze can’t believe it. Up in Minnesota, they’ve never seen $8 gallons of gas.

Pierre Brown says, gas is still pretty low where I am. Pierre, let us know where you’re at. I’m curious to know where you’re at today.

That’s good to know.

18:57

Unhinged Mouse Story

A lot going on here in our world.

We flew through these stories, but we have our Unhinged Story of the Week.

Oh, wow.

You may be willing to do a drum roll.

Let’s do it. I’ll make a drum roll. Unhinged Story of the Week.

Oh, my gosh.

This is good.

All right. Oh, I love it. We got sound effects.

We got sound effects.

We’re so professional here. So this is interesting. An SAS flight from Stockholm to Malaga turned around mid-flight after passengers spotted, get this, a mouse on board.

The plane reversed course and returned to Stockholm so the aircraft could be inspected. Rodents, by the way, in case you didn’t know, were taken very seriously in aviation. Why?

Because they can damage wiring or aircraft systems. Can you imagine? Can you imagine?

I can’t, as you’re just sitting there and you feel something on your toes wiggling, you look down and there’s a mouse running around.

Are you one of these that would be screaming, Sarah, or would you pick it up and say, what should I do with this mouse?

No, I would not be screaming, but I would not be touching it. We don’t need to scream about mouse, insects, we’re fine. If they touch you, there might be a little bit of a jump and a scream.

But, no.

Well, that’s where we need the other side of this, where you need the snakes on the plane. No. I think we’ve talked about that once in the Samuel L.

Jackson movie.

I will have to say, after reading the story, this makes me think so much more differently about it, because I just had a cheese plate on a plate. So, the mouse probably ended up on the plate. I was like, hey, I’m in heaven.

I got cheese plates, I’m good.

Mouse I’d be all right with. The one that would get me are definitely spiders. Spiders get me.

Spiders, bugs.

Yeah, I don’t like spiders.

I’m okay with a lot of bugs. Spiders for whatever reason. I think my dad had me watch Rachnophobia when I was little, that movie back in the early, late 80s, early 90s, and now it’s always in my head.

It’s things that you’re in the, you’re going into the Amazon today where the tarantulas are at.

Yeah, there’s bugs, there’s insects. I don’t know. I’m fine, just so long as they don’t touch me.

That’s all. Like, I mean, if they touch me, I might be like, okay, well, poop, just flick it off.

Yeah, we see Malik talking and saying, gas is high in Middle East these days too. Wow. All right, Malik, thanks for reporting from the Middle East.

It’s good to see what’s going on globally here with our audience.

That’s so low in Texas, Jason. Oh my God. I don’t know when I’ve paid that little for gas.

They’re pumping it there.

I like this that we’re getting a picture of what’s going on around the world. At our Unhinged Story, no one beating each other up, no one smashing anything, just some little ratatouille mice running around looking for food.

Ratatouille.

But I did have to learn. Yeah, I didn’t realize why it was such a big deal. You have to turn around.

If they bite some of the wrong wires, that plane is going down. So they took it serious, get safety serious, making sure they got back to where they had to come from.

Well, then my question is, and I’m sure that’s also their question, is like where there’s one, are there others?

For sure. For sure.

For sure.

Yeah. Have you not seen Ratatouille where they are all hanging out in the roof?

Oh my gosh. I love that we’re referencing Ratatouille, by the way.

That’s funny. One of the best movies ever of Cooking is Ratatouille.

That’s great. That’s definitely-

22:25

Hospitality Shout-outs

The best hospitality movies out there.

That’s too crazy.

All right. Why don’t we go into a real-time recap here? What’s happening on the streets of hospitality for you, sir?

In the streets of hospitality.

Well, I will tell you this. I had a great dinner with my family at a restaurant called Earls here in Miami this past weekend.

Service on point, manager came by, touched the table, food runners smiling, everyone in a good mood, good music, everything is just a good vibe overall. It’s a new area in Miami called World Center, where they have several restaurants set up.

Then after, we had the old school analog bowling. We went to Lucky Strike Bowling.

We did some bowling, played some arcade games where the kids used the old claw machine and actually won, pulled something out and you’re good when you have that mix of good service, good quality entertainment where everyone’s happy and really

helping, places are clean, no friction, everything easy to do. Those are the kind of days I look forward to. So good job to those two establishments, Earls and Lucky Strike at World Center.

Like the good old days.

Like the good old days, go get a meal, get some bowling, have some good old analog fun.

I love it. I love it. So I have to do a shout out to the team here at the Intercontinental Sao Paolo.

You know, this has been just a reminder just over the past couple of weeks and every time I’ve just travel. So I walk in and we kind of booked this on the fly for a lot of different reasons.

We’re normally a little bit more planned out ahead of time, but we were booking on the fly. Walk in and I actually know the concierge here. And she was fantastic.

We arrived super early. They switched some things around. They got us a room.

They have a club level. Like everything’s been fantastic. And it was like this reminder of you can be, I mean, we’ve never been to Brazil before.

This is very much new territory for us. We’ve got a lot of work going on behind the scenes as well as what we’re doing here. We’re not traveling just, it’s not vacation.

Like we’re here on a mission and we have other missions that are still happening in the background. And so to be able to come someplace that, you know, and just be welcomed and just have everything be so easy. So huge shout out to the team here.

Everybody’s been so wonderful. They sent us coconuts yesterday. We’ve had amazing fruit, that whole Brazilian flair and Renata at the concierge desk, Le Clé d’Or, she’s actually high up in Le Clé d’Or.

So this was a wonderful treat to see her when I walked in through the doors. It’s like always like a family member in another country and this did not disappoint. So it’s been awesome.

Shout out to Intercontinental Hotels, one of my favorite brands.

Always solid everywhere. I’ve stayed with them.

Totally. The pillows are just so good.

Well, it’s great. Like we had a great show today. We covered a lot of things very quickly here today.

And for listeners, listen, if you found some good value in this show, make sure to share them with somebody else.

If there’s topics that you want to hear about, like today we cover a lot of AI, government and travel, but if there’s something you want to hear about, let us know in the comments. We could always dive deep into that topic as well for you. Love that.

And of course, if you haven’t followed your friend Alice, right? Make sure to follow along and follow her in her PBS show and what’s going on out there. Yes.

Who knows? Maybe we’ll see Sarah on the show over at Iguazu Falls today.

Maybe. We’ll plant that seed. I love it.

I love it. Good times. Well.

Until next week, everybody.

Stay hospital.

Stay hospital.

Stay right. Get home point here.

It sounded right to me.

All right. See you next week, everybody.