Choice Hotels Hosts Internal Tech Summit Focused on AI
Choice Hotels International has kicked off its 11th Mastery Tech Summit, a week-long internal event. This year's summit focuses on hands-on AI experimentation, with teams building and testing AI solutions against real-world business challenges in the hospitality industry.
This year's "Mastery" summit convenes over 800 associates in Scottsdale, Arizona, to tackle business problems with emerging technologies. The event features hands-on competitions, including a cybersecurity challenge called "Capture the Flag" and an "AWS AI league" where participants build real-world AI solutions using Amazon Web Services tools. The summit is a cornerstone of Choice's long-term innovation strategy, which has been in place for over a decade. A key outcome of past summits is the "Make-a-Thon," where engineers develop new software. Winning projects are considered for company-wide deployment, with one previous winner automating special rate creation, which generated over $31 million in sales across 600 hotels. This focus on internal innovation is built on a significant technological foundation. In 2024, Choice Hotels became the first major hotel company to migrate its entire system infrastructure to the cloud with Amazon Web Services (AWS). This five-year transition involved decommissioning over 3,700 servers and phasing out 300 software programs. Choice Hotels already utilizes several AI-powered solutions to support its franchisees. The company's AI-enabled tools for corporate accounts led to a 35% increase in group revenue in 2025. Additionally, their award-winning mobile-first revenue management solution, ChoiceMAX, uses AI to provide real-time pricing recommendations. The company is also leveraging AI to enhance the guest experience directly. In May, Choice extended its partnership with Oracle to use an AI-powered merchandising solution that presents targeted offers, such as room upgrades or late check-outs, to guests. According to CIO Brian Kirkland, the company is also testing an AI tool that creates unified profiles of customers to deliver more personalized experiences. Looking ahead, CEO Patrick Pacious has stated that the company is investing in a next-generation, AI-driven guest data platform to better understand customer behaviors and preferences. This aligns with the broader industry trend of using AI for dynamic pricing, virtual assistants, and personalizing the entire guest journey from booking to check-out.
