Hotels are reporting significantly higher adoption of general-purpose artificial intelligence (AI) tools than AI features offered by their existing technology providers, according to research conducted for Destination AI.
Its survey of hotel leaders found that 72% of brands get their AI capabilities from AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot. Forty-one percent report building or customizing their own solutions in-house, while smaller shares are adopting AI features from existing hotel software vendors (33%) or buying from AI-first startups (16%).
The findings are based on an online survey of 107 hotel company leaders conducted in August and September. The research was released in conjunction with the group’s Destination AI Forum, held September 29-30 in Washington, D.C.
When asked how hotel AI is likely to impact spending with hotel software providers over the next 12 months, expectations varied. Twenty-seven percent of hotel leaders expect to buy somewhat or significantly more, while 33% anticipate spending about the same and 17% plan to spend somewhat/significantly less.
Beyond technology purchasing decisions, the research also highlights a gap between individual AI use and organizational strategy.
Nearly two thirds of respondents (63%) said they use AI regularly as part of their work, but only 13% indicated their organization has a clear strategy, formal governance and scaled execution across functions. More commonly, strategy and governance are defined, but execution is fragmented (30%). More than a quarter said their organization has no formal strategy at all but is engaging in ad hoc experiments (26%).
The research also found that AI success for hotels is more often driven by individual experimentation than executive directives. One third of respondents (32%) said bottom-up innovation is driving success and 34% cited experimentation culture. Top-down approaches, including a dedicated AI lead (24%) and executive mandates (14%) were less widespread.
Where hotels are seeing benefits
Nearly four in 10 hotel leaders (38%) cited operational efficiency, including cost savings and improved productivity, as the area where AI has delivered the strongest results. Twenty-eight percent reported the biggest gains in commercial performance.
Measuring the financial impact of AI remains a challenge, however.
More than a third of respondents (35%) said their organizations do not currently measure return on investment (ROI), while just 14% use defined performance indicators measured before and after deployment.