I believe priority #1 for independent hoteliers, midsize and smaller hotel brands is to create true two-way APIs among three crucial technology pieces: PMS-CRS-CRM.

This is the only way to prepare the property for the agentic AI, expected to take over hotel bookings, guest relationships and personalization over the next years.

Where do hoteliers start? Implement a CRM technology to aggregate all of the property’s first-party and zero-party data, which is then cleansed, de-duped, enriched and appended. If you already have CRM in place, consider upgrading to a CDP to empower property operations and deliver above-and-beyond customer service and personalization.

First-party data is the customer data (past customers & guests, website users, opt-in email subscribers, lists of corporate travel managers, meeting planners, wedding and event planners, SMERF group leaders the property has been doing business with or at least in communications with, etc.) that comes from the PMS, CRS, WBE, from the property's website, opt-in email sign-ups, even customer lists sitting on laptops of sales and marketing personnel.

The CRM (and CDP for more complex independents, midsize and smaller brands) provides “a single source of truth” for guest data and creates 360-degree guest profiles, augments these with preferences, social media ambassadorship, customer engagement data, etc., which enables ALL hotel departments to do their job more efficiently and effectively.

The more you know about your guests, their preferences, their likes and dislikes, their past stay history, and their RFM value (Recency, Frequency, and Monetary), the better you can deliver value, recognition, and personalized service. AI can make this process a thousand times more efficient and effective.

Ex. Operations can now anticipate guest requests and preferences, and personalize customer experiences; Marketing can finally embark on one-to-one marketing and can significantly increase customer engagements via similar audiences marketing.

First-party and zero-party guest data have become more precious than gold today due to government privacy regulations as well as browsers and search engines own privacy protections.

The moral of the story? Before jumping into futuristic AI connectivity projects with Model Context Protocol (MCP) or Agent-to-Agent (A2A), take care of the fundamentals to prepare for the upcoming Agentic AI upheaval that will, inevitably, take over hotel bookings, guest relationships and personalization over the next years.

Max Starkov
Hospitality & Online Travel Tech Consultant & Strategist

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