Regular artificial intelligence (AI) updates over past 18 months make it difficult for technology leaders and travel suppliers to stay on top of what’s happening.
A session at Phocuswright Europe 2026 with panelists from Cendyn, HomeToGo and Penta Hotels focused on how hotels and vacation rentals are navigating this landscape.
Simon Matthews, HomeToGo’s group CTO, said the rapid evolution is “getting slightly exhausting” as the company tries to separate hype from value creation.
Panelists also discussed the importance of getting the basics right, a challenge many travel executives have stressed in recent weeks.
“We need to look at how do we help hotels navigate this new reality, right? It starts with the basics,” said Fritz Müller, SVP enterprise growth for EMEA and APAC at Cendyn. “It’s being discoverable. But I think fundamentally we have to think about what does it mean also operationally.”
Ksenia Tarasova, customer relationship management and loyalty lead for Penta Hotels, agreed and said that while hotels want to use AI, they are not ready for it.
“My kind of goal, normally, when I work with hotels, is to make them first clean the past errors before we jump into the whole AI area, because otherwise it's like driving a Ferrari in a field. Build the foundation first.”
The discussion also touched on how brands need to cater for two audiences now, convincing AI as well as human's of their strengths.
See the full session below with Phocuswright’s Lorraine Sileo.
Product marketing in an AI first world