This ITB Berlin 2026 panel, moderated by Lea Jordan, brought together four hospitality technology leaders — Pedro Colaco (direct booking advocate), Champa Hariharan Magesh (Acess Hospitality), Teresa Mackintosh (Synexis, formerly Aan Hospitality), and Dan Ogen — to debate the technology trends reshaping hotel operations and distribution. The session opened with a shared diagnosis: the hospitality industry's core problem is not a lack of technology but a failure of execution and leadership discipline. Pedro Colaco drew a sharp distinction between AI (which has driven revenue management systems for over 15 years) and generative AI (the genuinely new capability to create content and respond to conversations), urging hotels to stop chasing 'hyperpersonalization' and start with basic personalization — for example, not showing babysitting add-ons to solo travelers.
Champa reframed the software paradigm with a striking analogy: today's software forces staff to adapt to it rather than the reverse. Agentic AI, she argued, inverts this — a general manager logging in would be greeted with their top three priorities, relevant alerts, and frequently used actions contextually surfaced, eliminating hours of training and toggling between systems. Teresa reinforced that the rate of change is now measured in three-to-six month windows, not three-to-five years, and that real efficiency gains are already being delivered on consolidated platforms like Synexis.
A significant portion of the discussion focused on AI discoverability — Pedro's prediction that AI search interfaces (ChatGPT, Gemini, Siri) will reduce hotel shortlists from 150 options to three or four represents the most disruptive economic shift on the horizon. He expressed both optimism (differentiated hotels could finally surface on merit rather than OTA spend) and pessimism (the new AI platforms will likely develop their own economic extraction models similar to OTAs). Champa added that discoverability is no longer just about what hotels publish — AI is pulling from Reddit reviews, Trustpilot, Glassdoor, and review responses, making end-to-end operational excellence a distribution strategy.
Teresa introduced MCP (Model Context Protocol) as a concrete technical requirement: hotels need MCP-enabled platforms to be findable by agentic booking agents. The panel closed with rapid-fire homework assignments for hoteliers: audit your online guest booking journey personally (Pedro), gather granular personalization data to drive direct bookings (Teresa), and assess tech partners on their ability to simplify your stack and operations (Champa).
So I think in the next 12 months the opportunity is now to consider how you eliminate that fragmentation, stop paying that toggle tax, improve your staff experience, and lay the foundation for AI to be an accelerant in your business. >> Theresa, are you nodding in agreement? >> I am. I'm in complete agreement. I think the most important thing we can do in the next 12 months is focus on data enrichment and governance because much like she said it it's all around getting ready for those AI opportu...
16:54David Poprawka, Innovation Strategist at Infor Hospitality, presents a 17-minute keynote at ITB Berlin 2026 on the conve...