The response gap: Why deep system connectivity is now business-critical - powered by SiteMinder
Summary
This fireside panel at ITB Berlin 2026, powered by SiteMinder, addressed the 'response gap' — the disconnect between how fast market conditions shift (hours) and how slowly most hotels can respond (days). Moderated by Leah Rankin, CPO at SiteMinder, the panel featured Klaus Kohlmayr (IDEAS), Linda Vallner (Cloudbeds), and Richard Valtr (Mews). The session ran approximately 23 minutes and covered AI-driven automation, agentic AI in revenue management, human-in-the-loop design, and the future role of hotel technology vendors.
Klaus Kohlmayr opened by contextualizing the shift: IDEAS has been doing predictive analytics for 35 years, but what's new is democratization. More hotels than ever can access predictive data, yet a 'trust gap' persists — hotels want to use more data but lack confidence that outputs are actually correct and driving the right outcomes. His company makes 20 billion decisions every single day globally, a scale no human team can replicate.
Linda Vallner argued that the PMS, as the system of record, holds 'true data' and must take responsibility for rethinking what data it shares with other vendors — the data sent historically may not be what partners actually need going forward. She identified agentic AI enabling demand creation (not just price manipulation) as the biggest game-changer in revenue management. Specifically, she described using agentic AI to interpret PMS guest profile data — booking lead time, travel party type, room category — and automatically trigger targeted marketing campaigns for low-demand periods, including AI-generated creative assets. She emphasized this is especially impactful because most hotels today have no dedicated marketing manager.
Richard Valtr of Mews pushed back on the premise that hoteliers want natural-language BI or chat-based reporting. His view: hoteliers don't want to query their data — they want someone to tell them what to act on. The ideal interface is a proactive system that calls the GM on the way to work and says 'this is behind, here are the anomalies, here's what I've already done about it.' He also issued a candid warning to vendors: with vibe-coding making it trivial to build basic systems, vendors' 14 years of experience 'means nothing in the age of AI.' Vendors must move from 50% use-case coverage to 90%, and must prove value with verifiable social proof and up-to-the-minute results from like-minded hotels — not marketing messages.
Klaus described the evolution of vendor relationships as moving through four stages: (1) showing you what you need to see, (2) telling you what to do, (3) doing it for you, and (4) providing insights you didn't know you needed. The execution layer will become increasingly autonomous; human roles will shift to oversight, exception management, and focusing on the three to four drivers of biggest revenue impact.
A memorable anecdote came from Klaus: that morning, his taxi driver in Berlin was coding an app to buy and sell cars — while driving — without knowing anything about coding. This was held up as a vivid illustration of the democratization of development and what it means for all industries including hospitality. Richard added that on his flight from New York he vibe-coded a new Mews system extension and sent it to the product manager mid-flight.
The panel converged on a vision where technology becomes 'invisible' — hotels return to doing hospitality, building guest communities, while automated systems handle the operational and commercial layers entirely in the background.
Key Takeaways
- •The response gap is costing hotels billions globally: market conditions shift in hours, but most hotels can only respond in days due to disconnected systems and manual processes.
- •IDEAS makes 20 billion decisions per day globally — Klaus Kohlmayr used this figure to illustrate that autonomous execution at scale is already here, and the human role must shift to overseeing exceptions, not making routine decisions.
- •A 'trust gap' exists alongside the data gap: hotels want to ingest more data but lack confidence that the outputs are correct and actionable — democratization of data alone is not enough without confidence in data integrity.
- •Linda Vallner's biggest prediction: agentic AI will shift revenue management from price manipulation (rates, length-of-stay restrictions) to actual demand creation — triggering automated, AI-generated marketing campaigns targeted at low-demand periods based on PMS guest profile segmentation.
- •Most hotels today have no dedicated marketing manager — Linda Vallner cited this as a primary reason why automated, agentic campaign generation is not a nice-to-have but a necessity for the majority of properties.
- •Richard Valtr's contrarian take on hotel BI: hoteliers do not want to chat with their data or build custom reports. They want a proactive system that tells them what is important, what is anomalous, and what action has already been taken on their behalf — 'don't make me think.'
- •Klaus Kohlmayr described the vendor evolution arc: from 'I will show you something' → 'I will tell you something to do' → 'I will do it for you' → 'I will provide insights you didn't know you needed.' Execution will increasingly pass to autonomous agents; humans become overseers of outliers.
- •Richard Valtr issued a direct warning to vendors: '14 years of personal experience means nothing in the age of AI' — with vibe-coding making it easy to build basic systems, vendors must move from 50% to 90%+ use case relevance and prove value with real, verifiable results from like-minded hotels, not marketing claims.
Transcript
In the next session, we're also going to talk about a very relevant topic. Something that we touched upon throughout this day several times now because to become AI ready, there's a few things you have to do and something that was addressed by all the leaders before on the stage was system integrations. And in the next session which is powered by site minder we have a rockstar panel put together by site minder and they will discuss the response gap why deep system connectivity is now business cr...
