Leadership Innovation in Travel & Hospitality, Beyond Transactional Efficiency in the Age of AI
Summary
This panel session at ITB Berlin focuses on the human leadership dimension of AI-driven transformation in travel and hospitality, bringing together Jeroen van Velzen (serial founder, investor, and founder coach at Elevaide) and Dana Jiménez Herrera (Senior Lecturer in Leadership and Organisational Behaviour at Hotelschool The Hague), hosted by Lea Jordan (Member of the Board of Experts, ITB Berlin Convention).
Jeroen van Velzen opened with a personal narrative: at age 40, he experienced a major burnout and depression after 25 years as an entrepreneur, during which he had rationalized everything and believed he could fix problems alone. This became, in his words, 'the biggest gift' because it forced him to open up to emotional intelligence. He later sold his travel business four years ago into a large corporate environment, where he found that human awareness was systematically deprioritized in favor of results, conversions, and transactions.
Van Velzen's company Elevaide built an AI model that tracks psychological safety within group dynamics during management meetings — not recording notes or action items, but analyzing the relational dynamics between people in real time. He described this as 'the double awareness layer,' using AI to upgrade human awareness rather than replace it. He cited a live anecdote from two days before the session: in an eight-person startup team operating at 'light speed' AI development, three team members had independently been building the exact same thing for six months — a direct result of leadership-driven psychological unsafety and poor relational intelligence.
Dana Jiménez Herrera brought in academic research grounding. Hotelschool The Hague conducted a global study in partnership with Booking.com on future skills needed to make hospitality future-proof. Key findings: relational and soft skills, alongside resilience, were identified as the most critical capabilities — yet only 5.5% of hospitality organizations currently prioritize leadership development. In stark contrast, 83% of young professionals surveyed expressed ambition and desire for a long-term career in hospitality. However, a significant paradox emerged: after their first-year practical placements, many Hotelschool students reported they no longer wanted to stay in the industry, due to negative experiences with managers on a personal level. This highlights a structural failure in translating guest-first values to employee experience.
The session challenged a dominant narrative heard at ITB that same week: other leaders on stage had attributed transformation stalls to team mindsets and employee resistance. Van Velzen and Jiménez Herrera's research and coaching experience showed that in 99.9% of cases where a leadership coach is brought in, the leader themselves is the root problem — yet leaders consistently resist this feedback. Jiménez Herrera recommended the Inner Development Goals (IDG) framework from Hotelschool The Hague — an open-source, evidence-based resource covering 25 skills across five dimensions — as a starting point for individual and organizational self-assessment. Van Velzen recommended two books championed by Jeff Weiner (former LinkedIn CEO) at Wisdom 2.0: 'The Art of Happiness' by the Dalai Lama and 'Conscious Business' by Fred Kofman (former LinkedIn L&D head). The session closed with a shared vision: AI offloading cognitive tasks creates room for humans to develop relational intelligence — the shift from transactional efficiency to genuine human capacity.
Key Takeaways
- •Only 5.5% of hospitality organizations currently prioritize leadership development, despite employees on the frontline identifying it as the single biggest future need. This data comes from a global study conducted by Hotelschool The Hague in partnership with Booking.com on future-proofing the industry.
- •83% of young professionals surveyed in the Hotelschool The Hague / Booking.com study expressed ambition and desire for a long-term career in hospitality — directly contradicting the widespread industry narrative that 'the new generation doesn't want to work.' Jiménez Herrera stated: 'There's not a single statistical evidence for that.'
- •After their first practical placement year, many Hotelschool The Hague students reported no longer wanting to remain in the hospitality industry, citing negative personal experiences with managers. Jiménez Herrera drew a direct parallel: 'We only have one example to make a good impression to the guests — and I think it's really time that we as an industry translate that also to our employees.'
- •Van Velzen's firm Elevaide built an AI model that monitors psychological safety in management meetings by tracking human relational dynamics — not notes or action items. He framed the core concept as 'the double awareness layer' and described it as 'a cosmic joke: using AI to upgrade the human awareness layer.'
- •In van Velzen's coaching experience, when executives hire a leadership coach because 'the team is not functioning,' in 99.9% of cases the leader themselves is the actual problem. He noted: 'They don't [take the feedback well] — that's the problem.' This was contrasted against other speakers at ITB that week who blamed teams rather than leaders for transformation stalls.
- •Van Velzen shared a concrete cautionary case study from two days before the session: in an eight-person AI startup team, three team members had each spent six months building the exact same product without anyone knowing. He identified this as a direct failure of leadership creating psychological unsafety and poor communication despite operating at maximum speed.
- •Jiménez Herrera argued that leadership development in hospitality is 'too fragmented and too incidental.' She was explicit that self-awareness, empathy, and emotional intelligence 'cannot be learned in a three-day workshop' — they require lifelong, continuous, on-the-job practice. She identified AI-powered coaching tools as a real opportunity to scale this development at lower cost.
Transcript
The next session shifts the lens from systems to leadership. Leadership we need in this industry. Please join me in welcoming the serial founder, investor and founder and founder coach Yun Fonvelen. And he will set the scene for a conversation we will have after. Yurun, thank you for being here. >> Thank you Leah. Thank you for having me. Um, it's also really good to be back. It's been quite a while since I've been in this uh ITV. Uh and it's really good to see some uh very familiar faces. Um an...
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