6 October 2026
Last week I had a lovely afternoon and evening at Mar Hall with friends and colleagues at the Institute of Hospitality dinner. Kevin Keenan who is the IOH chair was kind enough to invite me to the round table before, where we discussed the implications of AI in hospitality.
Gordon Cartwright presented a fascinating white paper asking the inevitable. As we move into the AI age, and our industry becomes more reliant on it will there be tax implications. These were the asks of the people round the table:
1. If some AI-driven labour displacement occurs, what are we trying to protect: every existing job, human value in work, or the tax base?
2. At what level of actual labour substitution does AI become a material Treasury issue?
3. Should tax policy discourage AI adoption, remain neutral, or actively accelerate responsible adoption?
4. How much of hospitality’s margin problem can productivity address, and how much remains structural, such as VAT?
5. Is hospitality’s existing digital architecture capable of producing trustworthy AI intelligence
A terrifying group of questions as you can imagine and probably some that were too big for the table. So as expected, we descended into general AI feeling, use and sentiment. I won’t go into the depth we did, but here are some of my takeaways:
AI is still understood by most as the large language models such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Anthropic. Majority of hoteliers are unaware of the AI they already have at their fingertips.
AI in recruitment is a particularly hot topic. One speaker at the table was talking about how they had tried to use AI to filter through applicants with mixed results, and had found the AI discriminating on age and career gaps.
AI IS BEING USED FOR MARKETING (this is the one that really blew my mind). What in the six fingered people are we thinking? On reflection I understand that it’s easy for the smaller operators and cost effective. What in human connection do we lose though through non organic images and forced copy? I’m still firmly in the no camp for this.
AI in revenue management was a really fascinating conversation. Kevin and John from Effective Hospitality Management were quick to raise the implication of AI talking to AI and how that can skew the market and compset, quickly diluting rate. What they’re seeing is AI working together to pull rates down. Worth bearing in mind next time you wake up in the morning and click all the “yes” boxes on your RMS. Need to find the rogue property that’s dragging down the compset.
This, as with most discussions in hospitality, ends up getting talked about at the luxury end of the market. Not to bemoan the incredible luxury propositions we have around Scotland, but it’s worth pointing out that these are not the be all and end all of hospitality. It exists just as much in a £2.50 cup of coffee as it does in a £400 hotel room, and let’s be honest less than 3% of the hotel market is 5 star. I feel like we need to be talking much more about the other 97% as that’s where most people are actually experiencing hospitality.
What was disappointing, was I didn’t feel like we had enough time to hear from Michael Jones. As part of the leadership team at Profit Room he’s a man at the front of tech so I will be looking to pick up the conversation with him, hopefully over a glass of something sparkling.
Want to talk AI or something else? Drop me a message on my contact page and let’s make it happen.