Mews: 98% of hoteliers use AI
- A Mews survey found 98% of hoteliers now use AI in daily operations, while 59% still prefer humans for front‑desk check‑ins. - The survey suggests AI has moved into back‑of‑house roles like forecasting, operations and routine decision support rather than replacing guest-facing staff. - The result signals mainstream operational AI adoption, shifting vendor conversations from 'should we use AI' to 'where does it actually improve inventory and planning'. (prnewswire.com)
Mews says nearly every hotel operator in its latest survey is already using AI — and that matters less as a novelty story than as an operations story. (prnewswire.com) The company’s 2026 hotelier survey, conducted between December 2025 and March 2026 across more than 500 properties globally, found that 98% of hoteliers had used AI in operations in the previous six months. On average, AI was involved in 11 of the 19 most common hotel tasks and handled more than half the workload in those tasks. (hotelsmag.com) That headline number is easy to overread. The more revealing finding is the boundary hoteliers are still drawing: 59% said the front-desk welcome and check-in should remain human-led. Mews also said that preference was strongest among properties already using AI extensively, suggesting experience with the tools has not erased the case for staff-facing guest moments. (mews.com) So this is not really a story about robots replacing hotel workers at the desk. It is a story about AI becoming routine in the parts of hotel operations guests do not always see first: forecasting, routine decision support, workflow handling, commercial analysis and other back-of-house tasks. Mews said adoption now spans front office, commercial, food-and-beverage and leadership functions, with the highest use in upper-midscale, upscale and luxury properties. (prnewswire.com) The governance numbers matter too. HotelsMag, citing the same survey, reported that 92% of hoteliers were optimistic about AI in hospitality, 83% trusted AI tools to support decision-making, and 41% had no formal AI policy in place. Properties with a formal AI policy reported much higher trust in AI than those without guidelines. (hotelsmag.com) That leaves the industry in a more mature phase of the AI cycle. The question is no longer whether hotels are experimenting with AI at all; by Mews’s count, they already are. The live question is where operators think automation improves speed, forecasting and planning without weakening the parts of hospitality they still want humans to own. That is an inference from the survey pattern rather than a direct Mews quote, but it fits the split between broad adoption and the continued preference for human-led check-in. (mews.com) Mews quoted Wouter Geerts, its director of market research, as saying hoteliers are “optimistic about AI and willing to use it broadly,” while also being “precise about its role.” That may be the cleanest way to read the data: AI is now standard in hotel operations, but not all hotel work is being treated as equally automatable. (traveldailynews.com)
