{"id":49356,"topic":"ai","source":"Forbes","title":"How AI Will Turn Hotel Stays Into Connected Guest Journeys - Forbes","url":"https://www.forbes.com/sites/jefffromm/2026/07/29/how-ai-will-turn-hotel-stays-into-connected-guest-journeys/","url_hash":"9d03e1582021d18124c034e40f6510ead6fd4d33","author":"","summary":"How AI Will Turn Hotel Stays Into Connected Guest Journeys Forbes","content":"For decades, hotels have focused primarily on selling rooms.\nSpas, restaurants, cabanas, children’s programs and other experiences often operated as separate businesses, each with its own reservation system—or, in some cases, no digital booking system at all.\nThat fragmented model is beginning to change.\nAs travelers increasingly value experiences and expect greater personalization, hotels have an opportunity to manage the entire guest journey, not simply the room reservation.\nShawn Tarter, CEO of RealTime Reservation, believes the industry’s next phase will combine guest preferences, ancillary bookings and artificial intelligence in a single connected platform.\n“When we started out, we said, ‘Why can’t I plan my vacation and have a cabana waiting for me, the spa booked, the kids at the kids club and the restaurant reservations already done?’” Tarter said in a recent interview.\nThe technology to deliver that experience is becoming more attainable. However, achieving it will require hotels to connect systems, improve their data and convince travelers that sharing their preferences will produce meaningful value.\nThe Problem With A Fragmented Hotel Experience\nRealTime Reservation began in 2014 with a focus on ancillary revenue and operational efficiency. Tarter saw hotels relying on manual processes to reserve services beyond the guest room. As specialized platforms emerged, they generally addressed individual categories such as restaurants, spas or recreational activities.\nThat digitized some experiences without necessarily connecting them.\nA guest might book a massage through one system, reserve a restaurant through another and call the hotel to request a cabana. The traveler is left managing multiple confirmations, while employees may lack a complete picture of the guest’s plans.\nRealTime Reservation has spent years building reservation capabilities across several categories. Its combination with hospitality guest-experience platform STAY expanded the company’s reach to approximately 2,500 hotels globally, according to Tarter. STAY’s technology focuses on the guest’s on-property experience, including mobile applications, messaging and housekeeping requests.\nThe larger objective is to combine pre-arrival planning and the on-property experience within one ecosystem.\nTarter compares the desired experience to an Amazon shopping cart: Guests should be able to select multiple activities, see them on one itinerary and complete one checkout rather than visit several independent platforms.\nPre-Arrival Planning Creates Value For Guests And Hotels\nMany travelers still arrive at a resort and ask what activities are available. By that point, the most desirable options may already be booked.\nA popular cabana, spa treatment, fitness class or restaurant can fill well before check-in. Other experiences require advance preparation. A hotel may need two days to create a custom birthday cake or several days to arrange an appearance by a tennis instructor, chef or local expert.\n“We want to get the guests involved in the journey before they get there,” Tarter said. “The more we can get the guests involved before they arrive, all their planning is handled in one place.”\nFor travelers, the benefit is less friction and less fear of missing out. For hotels, earlier engagement creates additional time to sell experiences, manage inventory and coordinate outside providers.\nIt can also help hotels move beyond a narrow focus on occupancy and room rates. Two hotels with identical occupancy may have very different ancillary-revenue opportunities based on who is staying there. A property filled with conference attendees, for example, may have unused pool and spa capacity that could be made available to local day guests.\nIn this model, yield management extends beyond the room to the restaurant, spa, cabana and other revenue centers.\nClean Data Comes Before Artificial Intelligence\nAI could eventually make hotel planning far more intuitive. A traveler might tell a hotel that he prefers an early workout, a healthy breakfast at 8:30 a.m. and an afternoon massage. The system could then recommend—or potentially reserve—an itinerary based on availability and the guest’s prior behavior.\nTarter views that as a realistic direction for the industry, but he repeatedly emphasized that AI depends on accurate, connected data.\n“Data has to be perfect,” he said. “The data lake being perfect, the reservation engines being the same—you put a layer of AI on top of it, and now you’re finding every opportunity that can exist.”\nA hotel might identify an early riser and recommend morning activities rather than late-night entertainment. AI could also improve operations behind the scenes. Tarter offered the example of a restaurant using ordering patterns to predict how long a table will remain occupied. Certain shared appetizers may add time to the meal, allowing the host stand to give walk-in guests more accurate wait estimates.\nSome of these applications may resemble advanced analytics more than futuristic AI. The important change is the speed and scale at which hotels can identify patterns and act on them.\nPersonalization Still Requires Permission And Judgment\nConnected personalization creates an unavoidable question: How much information will travelers share?\nTarter said RealTime Reservation keeps hotel and brand information separate and follows GDPR requirements, including procedures for deleting guest data. At the same time, he sees more travelers opting to retain or share their profiles when doing so makes future bookings easier.\nThat trade-off will be central to hospitality personalization. Consumers may be willing to share when the payoff is obvious: fewer forms, more relevant recommendations and a trip designed around their needs.\nHotels must also avoid over-personalization. A guest’s previous behavior may reflect the preferences of a former travel companion rather than the guest. Automatically referencing a favorite drink, restaurant or activity without context could create an awkward experience.\nThe strongest systems will likely recommend thoughtfully, confirm preferences and give travelers control rather than making assumptions.\nFrom Selling Rooms To Curating Time\nThe bigger opportunity is to redefine what a hotel sells. Travelers are not merely purchasing a place to sleep. They are purchasing a limited number of vacation days with family and friends.\n“When I go on vacation with my family, I want this to be the best vacation ever,” Tarter said. “I have seven days, my kids are getting older, and I have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. If I knew I could have ordered that, I would have done it six months earlier.”\nThat perspective changes the role of ancillary revenue. A cabana, private lesson, children’s activity or special dinner is not simply an upsell. Properly timed and personalized, it can become a defining part of the trip.\nThe future Tarter describes removes intake forms and scattered confirmations. Guests communicate their interests, receive a curated itinerary, make one payment and arrive with their plans already organized. They can then modify or cancel activities through a single interface.\nHotels that create this connected journey can potentially increase revenue, improve operating efficiency and deliver a better guest experience at the same time. AI will help, but the competitive advantage will come from using it to give travelers something more valuable than another recommendation: more control over their time.","image_url":"https://imageio.forbes.com/specials-images/imageserve/6a623bed1659d0327cbee420/0x0.jpg?format=jpg&height=900&width=1600&fit=bounds","lang":"en","published_at":"2026-07-30T01:14:32+00:00","fetched_at":"2026-07-30T02:15:05+00:00","status":"read","starred":0,"extract_state":"ok","summary_auto":"Spas, restaurants, cabanas, children’s programs and other experiences often operated as separate businesses, each with its own reservation system—or, in some cases, no digital booking system at all. As travelers increasingly value experiences and expect greater personalization, hotels have an opportunity to manage the entire guest journey, not simply the room reservation.","cluster_id":null,"extract_retries":0,"extract_error":null,"contract_version":"news_item.v1","format_contract_version":"news_item_formats.v1","dedup_url":"https://www.forbes.com/sites/jefffromm/2026/07/29/how-ai-will-turn-hotel-stays-into-connected-guest-journeys/","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 7519 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":7519,"summary_length":374,"usable_text_length":7519,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":7519,"summary_length":374}},"news_item":{"id":49356,"canonical_url":"https://www.forbes.com/sites/jefffromm/2026/07/29/how-ai-will-turn-hotel-stays-into-connected-guest-journeys/","source_url":"https://www.forbes.com/sites/jefffromm/2026/07/29/how-ai-will-turn-hotel-stays-into-connected-guest-journeys/","title":"How AI Will Turn Hotel Stays Into Connected Guest Journeys - Forbes","source_name":"Forbes","author":null,"published_at":"2026-07-30T01:14:32+00:00","locale":"en","topic":"ai","tags":[],"rss_summary":"How AI Will Turn Hotel Stays Into Connected Guest Journeys Forbes","full_text":"For decades, hotels have focused primarily on selling rooms.\nSpas, restaurants, cabanas, children’s programs and other experiences often operated as separate businesses, each with its own reservation system—or, in some cases, no digital booking system at all.\nThat fragmented model is beginning to change.\nAs travelers increasingly value experiences and expect greater personalization, hotels have an opportunity to manage the entire guest journey, not simply the room reservation.\nShawn Tarter, CEO of RealTime Reservation, believes the industry’s next phase will combine guest preferences, ancillary bookings and artificial intelligence in a single connected platform.\n“When we started out, we said, ‘Why can’t I plan my vacation and have a cabana waiting for me, the spa booked, the kids at the kids club and the restaurant reservations already done?’” Tarter said in a recent interview.\nThe technology to deliver that experience is becoming more attainable. However, achieving it will require hotels to connect systems, improve their data and convince travelers that sharing their preferences will produce meaningful value.\nThe Problem With A Fragmented Hotel Experience\nRealTime Reservation began in 2014 with a focus on ancillary revenue and operational efficiency. Tarter saw hotels relying on manual processes to reserve services beyond the guest room. As specialized platforms emerged, they generally addressed individual categories such as restaurants, spas or recreational activities.\nThat digitized some experiences without necessarily connecting them.\nA guest might book a massage through one system, reserve a restaurant through another and call the hotel to request a cabana. The traveler is left managing multiple confirmations, while employees may lack a complete picture of the guest’s plans.\nRealTime Reservation has spent years building reservation capabilities across several categories. Its combination with hospitality guest-experience platform STAY expanded the company’s reach to approximately 2,500 hotels globally, according to Tarter. STAY’s technology focuses on the guest’s on-property experience, including mobile applications, messaging and housekeeping requests.\nThe larger objective is to combine pre-arrival planning and the on-property experience within one ecosystem.\nTarter compares the desired experience to an Amazon shopping cart: Guests should be able to select multiple activities, see them on one itinerary and complete one checkout rather than visit several independent platforms.\nPre-Arrival Planning Creates Value For Guests And Hotels\nMany travelers still arrive at a resort and ask what activities are available. By that point, the most desirable options may already be booked.\nA popular cabana, spa treatment, fitness class or restaurant can fill well before check-in. Other experiences require advance preparation. A hotel may need two days to create a custom birthday cake or several days to arrange an appearance by a tennis instructor, chef or local expert.\n“We want to get the guests involved in the journey before they get there,” Tarter said. “The more we can get the guests involved before they arrive, all their planning is handled in one place.”\nFor travelers, the benefit is less friction and less fear of missing out. For hotels, earlier engagement creates additional time to sell experiences, manage inventory and coordinate outside providers.\nIt can also help hotels move beyond a narrow focus on occupancy and room rates. Two hotels with identical occupancy may have very different ancillary-revenue opportunities based on who is staying there. A property filled with conference attendees, for example, may have unused pool and spa capacity that could be made available to local day guests.\nIn this model, yield management extends beyond the room to the restaurant, spa, cabana and other revenue centers.\nClean Data Comes Before Artificial Intelligence\nAI could eventually make hotel planning far more intuitive. A traveler might tell a hotel that he prefers an early workout, a healthy breakfast at 8:30 a.m. and an afternoon massage. The system could then recommend—or potentially reserve—an itinerary based on availability and the guest’s prior behavior.\nTarter views that as a realistic direction for the industry, but he repeatedly emphasized that AI depends on accurate, connected data.\n“Data has to be perfect,” he said. “The data lake being perfect, the reservation engines being the same—you put a layer of AI on top of it, and now you’re finding every opportunity that can exist.”\nA hotel might identify an early riser and recommend morning activities rather than late-night entertainment. AI could also improve operations behind the scenes. Tarter offered the example of a restaurant using ordering patterns to predict how long a table will remain occupied. Certain shared appetizers may add time to the meal, allowing the host stand to give walk-in guests more accurate wait estimates.\nSome of these applications may resemble advanced analytics more than futuristic AI. The important change is the speed and scale at which hotels can identify patterns and act on them.\nPersonalization Still Requires Permission And Judgment\nConnected personalization creates an unavoidable question: How much information will travelers share?\nTarter said RealTime Reservation keeps hotel and brand information separate and follows GDPR requirements, including procedures for deleting guest data. At the same time, he sees more travelers opting to retain or share their profiles when doing so makes future bookings easier.\nThat trade-off will be central to hospitality personalization. Consumers may be willing to share when the payoff is obvious: fewer forms, more relevant recommendations and a trip designed around their needs.\nHotels must also avoid over-personalization. A guest’s previous behavior may reflect the preferences of a former travel companion rather than the guest. Automatically referencing a favorite drink, restaurant or activity without context could create an awkward experience.\nThe strongest systems will likely recommend thoughtfully, confirm preferences and give travelers control rather than making assumptions.\nFrom Selling Rooms To Curating Time\nThe bigger opportunity is to redefine what a hotel sells. Travelers are not merely purchasing a place to sleep. They are purchasing a limited number of vacation days with family and friends.\n“When I go on vacation with my family, I want this to be the best vacation ever,” Tarter said. “I have seven days, my kids are getting older, and I have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. If I knew I could have ordered that, I would have done it six months earlier.”\nThat perspective changes the role of ancillary revenue. A cabana, private lesson, children’s activity or special dinner is not simply an upsell. Properly timed and personalized, it can become a defining part of the trip.\nThe future Tarter describes removes intake forms and scattered confirmations. Guests communicate their interests, receive a curated itinerary, make one payment and arrive with their plans already organized. They can then modify or cancel activities through a single interface.\nHotels that create this connected journey can potentially increase revenue, improve operating efficiency and deliver a better guest experience at the same time. AI will help, but the competitive advantage will come from using it to give travelers something more valuable than another recommendation: more control over their time.","excerpt":"Spas, restaurants, cabanas, children’s programs and other experiences often operated as separate businesses, each with its own reservation system—or, in some cases, no digital booking system at all. As travelers increasingly value experiences and expect greater personalization, hotels have an opportunity to manage the entire guest journey, not simply the room reservation.","extraction":{"state":"ok","confidence":0.9,"error":null,"explanation":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 7519 characters.","diagnostics_url":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.forbes.com/sites/jefffromm/2026/07/29/how-ai-will-turn-hotel-stays-into-connected-guest-journeys/","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 7519 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":7519,"summary_length":374,"usable_text_length":7519,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":7519,"summary_length":374}}},"display_formats":["compact","card","full","digest_section","json"]},"daily_stack_record":{"title":"How AI Will Turn Hotel Stays Into Connected Guest Journeys - Forbes","url":"https://www.forbes.com/sites/jefffromm/2026/07/29/how-ai-will-turn-hotel-stays-into-connected-guest-journeys/","summary":"Spas, restaurants, cabanas, children’s programs and other experiences often operated as separate businesses, each with its own reservation system—or, in some cases, no digital booking system at all. As travelers increasingly value experiences and expect greater personalization, hotels have an opportunity to manage the entire guest journey, not simply the room reservation.","source":"Forbes","date":"2026-07-30T01:14:32+00:00","content":"For decades, hotels have focused primarily on selling rooms.\nSpas, restaurants, cabanas, children’s programs and other experiences often operated as separate businesses, each with its own reservation system—or, in some cases, no digital booking system at all.\nThat fragmented model is beginning to change.\nAs travelers increasingly value experiences and expect greater personalization, hotels have an opportunity to manage the entire guest journey, not simply the room reservation.\nShawn Tarter, CEO of RealTime Reservation, believes the industry’s next phase will combine guest preferences, ancillary bookings and artificial intelligence in a single connected platform.\n“When we started out, we said, ‘Why can’t I plan my vacation and have a cabana waiting for me, the spa booked, the kids at the kids club and the restaurant reservations already done?’” Tarter said in a recent interview.\nThe technology to deliver that experience is becoming more attainable. However, achieving it will require hotels to connect systems, improve their data and convince travelers that sharing their preferences will produce meaningful value.\nThe Problem With A Fragmented Hotel Experience\nRealTime Reservation began in 2014 with a focus on ancillary revenue and operational efficiency. Tarter saw hotels relying on manual processes to reserve services beyond the guest room. As specialized platforms emerged, they generally addressed individual categories such as restaurants, spas or recreational activities.\nThat digitized some experiences without necessarily connecting them.\nA guest might book a massage through one system, reserve a restaurant through another and call the hotel to request a cabana. The traveler is left managing multiple confirmations, while employees may lack a complete picture of the guest’s plans.\nRealTime Reservation has spent years building reservation capabilities across several categories. Its combination with hospitality guest-experience platform STAY expanded the company’s reach to approximately 2,500 hotels globally, according to Tarter. STAY’s technology focuses on the guest’s on-property experience, including mobile applications, messaging and housekeeping requests.\nThe larger objective is to combine pre-arrival planning and the on-property experience within one ecosystem.\nTarter compares the desired experience to an Amazon shopping cart: Guests should be able to select multiple activities, see them on one itinerary and complete one checkout rather than visit several independent platforms.\nPre-Arrival Planning Creates Value For Guests And Hotels\nMany travelers still arrive at a resort and ask what activities are available. By that point, the most desirable options may already be booked.\nA popular cabana, spa treatment, fitness class or restaurant can fill well before check-in. Other experiences require advance preparation. A hotel may need two days to create a custom birthday cake or several days to arrange an appearance by a tennis instructor, chef or local expert.\n“We want to get the guests involved in the journey before they get there,” Tarter said. “The more we can get the guests involved before they arrive, all their planning is handled in one place.”\nFor travelers, the benefit is less friction and less fear of missing out. For hotels, earlier engagement creates additional time to sell experiences, manage inventory and coordinate outside providers.\nIt can also help hotels move beyond a narrow focus on occupancy and room rates. Two hotels with identical occupancy may have very different ancillary-revenue opportunities based on who is staying there. A property filled with conference attendees, for example, may have unused pool and spa capacity that could be made available to local day guests.\nIn this model, yield management extends beyond the room to the restaurant, spa, cabana and other revenue centers.\nClean Data Comes Before Artificial Intelligence\nAI could eventually make hotel planning far more intuitive. A traveler might tell a hotel that he prefers an early workout, a healthy breakfast at 8:30 a.m. and an afternoon massage. The system could then recommend—or potentially reserve—an itinerary based on availability and the guest’s prior behavior.\nTarter views that as a realistic direction for the industry, but he repeatedly emphasized that AI depends on accurate, connected data.\n“Data has to be perfect,” he said. “The data lake being perfect, the reservation engines being the same—you put a layer of AI on top of it, and now you’re finding every opportunity that can exist.”\nA hotel might identify an early riser and recommend morning activities rather than late-night entertainment. AI could also improve operations behind the scenes. Tarter offered the example of a restaurant using ordering patterns to predict how long a table will remain occupied. Certain shared appetizers may add time to the meal, allowing the host stand to give walk-in guests more accurate wait estimates.\nSome of these applications may resemble advanced analytics more than futuristic AI. The important change is the speed and scale at which hotels can identify patterns and act on them.\nPersonalization Still Requires Permission And Judgment\nConnected personalization creates an unavoidable question: How much information will travelers share?\nTarter said RealTime Reservation keeps hotel and brand information separate and follows GDPR requirements, including procedures for deleting guest data. At the same time, he sees more travelers opting to retain or share their profiles when doing so makes future bookings easier.\nThat trade-off will be central to hospitality personalization. Consumers may be willing to share when the payoff is obvious: fewer forms, more relevant recommendations and a trip designed around their needs.\nHotels must also avoid over-personalization. A guest’s previous behavior may reflect the preferences of a former travel companion rather than the guest. Automatically referencing a favorite drink, restaurant or activity without context could create an awkward experience.\nThe strongest systems will likely recommend thoughtfully, confirm preferences and give travelers control rather than making assumptions.\nFrom Selling Rooms To Curating Time\nThe bigger opportunity is to redefine what a hotel sells. Travelers are not merely purchasing a place to sleep. They are purchasing a limited number of vacation days with family and friends.\n“When I go on vacation with my family, I want this to be the best vacation ever,” Tarter said. “I have seven days, my kids are getting older, and I have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. If I knew I could have ordered that, I would have done it six months earlier.”\nThat perspective changes the role of ancillary revenue. A cabana, private lesson, children’s activity or special dinner is not simply an upsell. Properly timed and personalized, it can become a defining part of the trip.\nThe future Tarter describes removes intake forms and scattered confirmations. Guests communicate their interests, receive a curated itinerary, make one payment and arrive with their plans already organized. They can then modify or cancel activities through a single interface.\nHotels that create this connected journey can potentially increase revenue, improve operating efficiency and deliver a better guest experience at the same time. AI will help, but the competitive advantage will come from using it to give travelers something more valuable than another recommendation: more control over their time.","confidence":0.9,"diagnostics_url":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.forbes.com/sites/jefffromm/2026/07/29/how-ai-will-turn-hotel-stays-into-connected-guest-journeys/","quality_bucket":"high","failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"quality_reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 7519 characters.","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 7519 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":7519,"summary_length":374,"usable_text_length":7519,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":7519,"summary_length":374}},"tags":[]},"fallback_formats":["markdown","json","html"],"actions":{"read":"/item/49356","export_markdown":"/api/items/49356/export?format=markdown","export_json":"/api/items/49356/export?format=json","diagnose":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.forbes.com/sites/jefffromm/2026/07/29/how-ai-will-turn-hotel-stays-into-connected-guest-journeys/"},"formats":{"full":{"id":49356,"title":"How AI Will Turn Hotel Stays Into Connected Guest Journeys - Forbes","url":"https://www.forbes.com/sites/jefffromm/2026/07/29/how-ai-will-turn-hotel-stays-into-connected-guest-journeys/","source":"Forbes","author":null,"published_at":"2026-07-30T01:14:32+00:00","locale":"en","topic":"ai","tags":[],"excerpt":"Spas, restaurants, cabanas, children’s programs and other experiences often operated as separate businesses, each with its own reservation system—or, in some cases, no digital booking system at all. As travelers increasingly value experiences and expect greater personalization, hotels have an opportunity to manage the entire guest journey, not simply the room reservation.","full_text":"For decades, hotels have focused primarily on selling rooms.\nSpas, restaurants, cabanas, children’s programs and other experiences often operated as separate businesses, each with its own reservation system—or, in some cases, no digital booking system at all.\nThat fragmented model is beginning to change.\nAs travelers increasingly value experiences and expect greater personalization, hotels have an opportunity to manage the entire guest journey, not simply the room reservation.\nShawn Tarter, CEO of RealTime Reservation, believes the industry’s next phase will combine guest preferences, ancillary bookings and artificial intelligence in a single connected platform.\n“When we started out, we said, ‘Why can’t I plan my vacation and have a cabana waiting for me, the spa booked, the kids at the kids club and the restaurant reservations already done?’” Tarter said in a recent interview.\nThe technology to deliver that experience is becoming more attainable. However, achieving it will require hotels to connect systems, improve their data and convince travelers that sharing their preferences will produce meaningful value.\nThe Problem With A Fragmented Hotel Experience\nRealTime Reservation began in 2014 with a focus on ancillary revenue and operational efficiency. Tarter saw hotels relying on manual processes to reserve services beyond the guest room. As specialized platforms emerged, they generally addressed individual categories such as restaurants, spas or recreational activities.\nThat digitized some experiences without necessarily connecting them.\nA guest might book a massage through one system, reserve a restaurant through another and call the hotel to request a cabana. The traveler is left managing multiple confirmations, while employees may lack a complete picture of the guest’s plans.\nRealTime Reservation has spent years building reservation capabilities across several categories. Its combination with hospitality guest-experience platform STAY expanded the company’s reach to approximately 2,500 hotels globally, according to Tarter. STAY’s technology focuses on the guest’s on-property experience, including mobile applications, messaging and housekeeping requests.\nThe larger objective is to combine pre-arrival planning and the on-property experience within one ecosystem.\nTarter compares the desired experience to an Amazon shopping cart: Guests should be able to select multiple activities, see them on one itinerary and complete one checkout rather than visit several independent platforms.\nPre-Arrival Planning Creates Value For Guests And Hotels\nMany travelers still arrive at a resort and ask what activities are available. By that point, the most desirable options may already be booked.\nA popular cabana, spa treatment, fitness class or restaurant can fill well before check-in. Other experiences require advance preparation. A hotel may need two days to create a custom birthday cake or several days to arrange an appearance by a tennis instructor, chef or local expert.\n“We want to get the guests involved in the journey before they get there,” Tarter said. “The more we can get the guests involved before they arrive, all their planning is handled in one place.”\nFor travelers, the benefit is less friction and less fear of missing out. For hotels, earlier engagement creates additional time to sell experiences, manage inventory and coordinate outside providers.\nIt can also help hotels move beyond a narrow focus on occupancy and room rates. Two hotels with identical occupancy may have very different ancillary-revenue opportunities based on who is staying there. A property filled with conference attendees, for example, may have unused pool and spa capacity that could be made available to local day guests.\nIn this model, yield management extends beyond the room to the restaurant, spa, cabana and other revenue centers.\nClean Data Comes Before Artificial Intelligence\nAI could eventually make hotel planning far more intuitive. A traveler might tell a hotel that he prefers an early workout, a healthy breakfast at 8:30 a.m. and an afternoon massage. The system could then recommend—or potentially reserve—an itinerary based on availability and the guest’s prior behavior.\nTarter views that as a realistic direction for the industry, but he repeatedly emphasized that AI depends on accurate, connected data.\n“Data has to be perfect,” he said. “The data lake being perfect, the reservation engines being the same—you put a layer of AI on top of it, and now you’re finding every opportunity that can exist.”\nA hotel might identify an early riser and recommend morning activities rather than late-night entertainment. AI could also improve operations behind the scenes. Tarter offered the example of a restaurant using ordering patterns to predict how long a table will remain occupied. Certain shared appetizers may add time to the meal, allowing the host stand to give walk-in guests more accurate wait estimates.\nSome of these applications may resemble advanced analytics more than futuristic AI. The important change is the speed and scale at which hotels can identify patterns and act on them.\nPersonalization Still Requires Permission And Judgment\nConnected personalization creates an unavoidable question: How much information will travelers share?\nTarter said RealTime Reservation keeps hotel and brand information separate and follows GDPR requirements, including procedures for deleting guest data. At the same time, he sees more travelers opting to retain or share their profiles when doing so makes future bookings easier.\nThat trade-off will be central to hospitality personalization. Consumers may be willing to share when the payoff is obvious: fewer forms, more relevant recommendations and a trip designed around their needs.\nHotels must also avoid over-personalization. A guest’s previous behavior may reflect the preferences of a former travel companion rather than the guest. Automatically referencing a favorite drink, restaurant or activity without context could create an awkward experience.\nThe strongest systems will likely recommend thoughtfully, confirm preferences and give travelers control rather than making assumptions.\nFrom Selling Rooms To Curating Time\nThe bigger opportunity is to redefine what a hotel sells. Travelers are not merely purchasing a place to sleep. They are purchasing a limited number of vacation days with family and friends.\n“When I go on vacation with my family, I want this to be the best vacation ever,” Tarter said. “I have seven days, my kids are getting older, and I have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. If I knew I could have ordered that, I would have done it six months earlier.”\nThat perspective changes the role of ancillary revenue. A cabana, private lesson, children’s activity or special dinner is not simply an upsell. Properly timed and personalized, it can become a defining part of the trip.\nThe future Tarter describes removes intake forms and scattered confirmations. Guests communicate their interests, receive a curated itinerary, make one payment and arrive with their plans already organized. They can then modify or cancel activities through a single interface.\nHotels that create this connected journey can potentially increase revenue, improve operating efficiency and deliver a better guest experience at the same time. AI will help, but the competitive advantage will come from using it to give travelers something more valuable than another recommendation: more control over their time.","reading_time_min":6,"extraction":{"state":"ok","confidence":0.9,"error":null,"explanation":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 7519 characters.","diagnostics_url":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.forbes.com/sites/jefffromm/2026/07/29/how-ai-will-turn-hotel-stays-into-connected-guest-journeys/","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 7519 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":7519,"summary_length":374,"usable_text_length":7519,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":7519,"summary_length":374}}},"quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 7519 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":7519,"summary_length":374,"usable_text_length":7519,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":7519,"summary_length":374}},"actions":{"read":"/item/49356","export_markdown":"/api/items/49356/export?format=markdown","export_json":"/api/items/49356/export?format=json","diagnose":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.forbes.com/sites/jefffromm/2026/07/29/how-ai-will-turn-hotel-stays-into-connected-guest-journeys/"}},"digest":{"id":49356,"title":"How AI Will Turn Hotel Stays Into Connected Guest Journeys - Forbes","url":"https://www.forbes.com/sites/jefffromm/2026/07/29/how-ai-will-turn-hotel-stays-into-connected-guest-journeys/","source":"Forbes","topic":"ai","published_at":"2026-07-30T01:14:32+00:00","excerpt":"Spas, restaurants, cabanas, children’s programs and other experiences often operated as separate businesses, each with its own reservation system—or, in some cases, no digital booking system at all. As travelers increasingly value experiences and expect greater personalization,…","quality_bucket":"high","quality_reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 7519 characters.","reading_time_min":6,"cluster_id":null},"card":{"display_title":"How AI Will Turn Hotel Stays Into Connected Guest Journeys - Forbes","subtitle":"Forbes · 2026-07-30","summary":"Spas, restaurants, cabanas, children’s programs and other experiences often operated as separate businesses, each with its own reservation system—or, in some cases, no digital booking system at all. As travelers…","badges":["quality:high"],"links":{"read":"/item/49356","original":"https://www.forbes.com/sites/jefffromm/2026/07/29/how-ai-will-turn-hotel-stays-into-connected-guest-journeys/","diagnose":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.forbes.com/sites/jefffromm/2026/07/29/how-ai-will-turn-hotel-stays-into-connected-guest-journeys/"},"quality_warning":null},"export":{"title":"How AI Will Turn Hotel Stays Into Connected Guest Journeys - Forbes","url":"https://www.forbes.com/sites/jefffromm/2026/07/29/how-ai-will-turn-hotel-stays-into-connected-guest-journeys/","summary":"Spas, restaurants, cabanas, children’s programs and other experiences often operated as separate businesses, each with its own reservation system—or, in some cases, no digital booking system at all. As travelers increasingly value experiences and expect greater personalization, hotels have an opportunity to manage the entire guest journey, not simply the room reservation.","source":"Forbes","date":"2026-07-30T01:14:32+00:00","content":"For decades, hotels have focused primarily on selling rooms.\nSpas, restaurants, cabanas, children’s programs and other experiences often operated as separate businesses, each with its own reservation system—or, in some cases, no digital booking system at all.\nThat fragmented model is beginning to change.\nAs travelers increasingly value experiences and expect greater personalization, hotels have an opportunity to manage the entire guest journey, not simply the room reservation.\nShawn Tarter, CEO of RealTime Reservation, believes the industry’s next phase will combine guest preferences, ancillary bookings and artificial intelligence in a single connected platform.\n“When we started out, we said, ‘Why can’t I plan my vacation and have a cabana waiting for me, the spa booked, the kids at the kids club and the restaurant reservations already done?’” Tarter said in a recent interview.\nThe technology to deliver that experience is becoming more attainable. However, achieving it will require hotels to connect systems, improve their data and convince travelers that sharing their preferences will produce meaningful value.\nThe Problem With A Fragmented Hotel Experience\nRealTime Reservation began in 2014 with a focus on ancillary revenue and operational efficiency. Tarter saw hotels relying on manual processes to reserve services beyond the guest room. As specialized platforms emerged, they generally addressed individual categories such as restaurants, spas or recreational activities.\nThat digitized some experiences without necessarily connecting them.\nA guest might book a massage through one system, reserve a restaurant through another and call the hotel to request a cabana. The traveler is left managing multiple confirmations, while employees may lack a complete picture of the guest’s plans.\nRealTime Reservation has spent years building reservation capabilities across several categories. Its combination with hospitality guest-experience platform STAY expanded the company’s reach to approximately 2,500 hotels globally, according to Tarter. STAY’s technology focuses on the guest’s on-property experience, including mobile applications, messaging and housekeeping requests.\nThe larger objective is to combine pre-arrival planning and the on-property experience within one ecosystem.\nTarter compares the desired experience to an Amazon shopping cart: Guests should be able to select multiple activities, see them on one itinerary and complete one checkout rather than visit several independent platforms.\nPre-Arrival Planning Creates Value For Guests And Hotels\nMany travelers still arrive at a resort and ask what activities are available. By that point, the most desirable options may already be booked.\nA popular cabana, spa treatment, fitness class or restaurant can fill well before check-in. Other experiences require advance preparation. A hotel may need two days to create a custom birthday cake or several days to arrange an appearance by a tennis instructor, chef or local expert.\n“We want to get the guests involved in the journey before they get there,” Tarter said. “The more we can get the guests involved before they arrive, all their planning is handled in one place.”\nFor travelers, the benefit is less friction and less fear of missing out. For hotels, earlier engagement creates additional time to sell experiences, manage inventory and coordinate outside providers.\nIt can also help hotels move beyond a narrow focus on occupancy and room rates. Two hotels with identical occupancy may have very different ancillary-revenue opportunities based on who is staying there. A property filled with conference attendees, for example, may have unused pool and spa capacity that could be made available to local day guests.\nIn this model, yield management extends beyond the room to the restaurant, spa, cabana and other revenue centers.\nClean Data Comes Before Artificial Intelligence\nAI could eventually make hotel planning far more intuitive. A traveler might tell a hotel that he prefers an early workout, a healthy breakfast at 8:30 a.m. and an afternoon massage. The system could then recommend—or potentially reserve—an itinerary based on availability and the guest’s prior behavior.\nTarter views that as a realistic direction for the industry, but he repeatedly emphasized that AI depends on accurate, connected data.\n“Data has to be perfect,” he said. “The data lake being perfect, the reservation engines being the same—you put a layer of AI on top of it, and now you’re finding every opportunity that can exist.”\nA hotel might identify an early riser and recommend morning activities rather than late-night entertainment. AI could also improve operations behind the scenes. Tarter offered the example of a restaurant using ordering patterns to predict how long a table will remain occupied. Certain shared appetizers may add time to the meal, allowing the host stand to give walk-in guests more accurate wait estimates.\nSome of these applications may resemble advanced analytics more than futuristic AI. The important change is the speed and scale at which hotels can identify patterns and act on them.\nPersonalization Still Requires Permission And Judgment\nConnected personalization creates an unavoidable question: How much information will travelers share?\nTarter said RealTime Reservation keeps hotel and brand information separate and follows GDPR requirements, including procedures for deleting guest data. At the same time, he sees more travelers opting to retain or share their profiles when doing so makes future bookings easier.\nThat trade-off will be central to hospitality personalization. Consumers may be willing to share when the payoff is obvious: fewer forms, more relevant recommendations and a trip designed around their needs.\nHotels must also avoid over-personalization. A guest’s previous behavior may reflect the preferences of a former travel companion rather than the guest. Automatically referencing a favorite drink, restaurant or activity without context could create an awkward experience.\nThe strongest systems will likely recommend thoughtfully, confirm preferences and give travelers control rather than making assumptions.\nFrom Selling Rooms To Curating Time\nThe bigger opportunity is to redefine what a hotel sells. Travelers are not merely purchasing a place to sleep. They are purchasing a limited number of vacation days with family and friends.\n“When I go on vacation with my family, I want this to be the best vacation ever,” Tarter said. “I have seven days, my kids are getting older, and I have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. If I knew I could have ordered that, I would have done it six months earlier.”\nThat perspective changes the role of ancillary revenue. A cabana, private lesson, children’s activity or special dinner is not simply an upsell. Properly timed and personalized, it can become a defining part of the trip.\nThe future Tarter describes removes intake forms and scattered confirmations. Guests communicate their interests, receive a curated itinerary, make one payment and arrive with their plans already organized. They can then modify or cancel activities through a single interface.\nHotels that create this connected journey can potentially increase revenue, improve operating efficiency and deliver a better guest experience at the same time. AI will help, but the competitive advantage will come from using it to give travelers something more valuable than another recommendation: more control over their time.","confidence":0.9,"diagnostics_url":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.forbes.com/sites/jefffromm/2026/07/29/how-ai-will-turn-hotel-stays-into-connected-guest-journeys/","quality_bucket":"high","failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"quality_reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 7519 characters.","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 7519 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":7519,"summary_length":374,"usable_text_length":7519,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":7519,"summary_length":374}},"tags":[],"format_contract_version":"news_item_formats.v1"}}}