Google has officially entered a new phase of inbox intelligence. With the rollout of Gmail features powered by Gemini AI, the inbox is no longer just a place where emails arrive. It is becoming an AI-curated feed that prioritizes relevance, engagement, and perceived importance.For hoteliers, this shift represents more than a product update. It signals a fundamental change in how marketing emails are evaluated, surfaced, and consumed by guests. While traditional deliverability still matters, visibility is now determined by how much attention your emails earn.

Since opening its first property in 2006, Roomzzz has grown into eleven aparthotels across eight UK cities, each designed to offer a home-from-home environment. Built around a strong sense of belonging for guests, staff, and local charities, the brand is grounded in a simple idea: people should feel like they belong, just like in a family.

Last week in Linz, the ÖHV Congress once again brought together Austria’s hospitality industry. This year, the focus was clear: artificial intelligence, simplification, and the future of the sector. But between the keynote speeches and the conversations during coffee breaks, a very real tension became visible.

Shiji, the global hospitality technology leader, today released its yearly Guest Experience Benchmark Report, revealing that global guest satisfaction continued its upward trajectory, reaching 86.7%, despite record-breaking tourist arrivals and rising operational pressure across the industry. Based on over 40 million guest reviews, 84 million mentions, and data from 12,000 hotels across eight regions gathered using Shiji Reviewpro, the report confirms that hotels worldwide are coping better than ever with rising guest expectations while navigating uneven regional and segment-level performance.

After years of rapid digital acceleration, infrastructure now constrains innovation more than imagination does. At the same time, the promise of artificial intelligence, automation, and hyper-personalisation has collided with an uncomfortable reality: many hotel technology environments can no longer support modern demands.

Cloudbeds, the leading hospitality technology platform, today announced a new partnership with Ágora POS, a leading point-of-sale solution in Spain, trusted by hotels and hospitality businesses to streamline operations, ensure fiscal compliance, and deliver unified guest experiences across F&B and accommodation services. The partnership delivers tighter integration between hotel operations and on-property POS systems, enabling hotels to simplify financial workflows, improve guest experience, and maintain accurate, real-time operational data across departments.

Cloudbeds, the hospitality industry’s leading unified platform, today announced a new partnership with Jumbonline, a global leader in hotel wholesale and distribution, formerly part of Jumbo Tours. The partnership integrates Cloudbeds’ property management and distribution capabilities with Jumbonline’s advanced API, enabling hotels to reach a broader network of tour operators, wholesalers, and travel professionals worldwide with greater speed and efficiency.

Shiji, the global hospitality technology leader, today announced the full-scale launch of Reviewpro Reputation in Japan. Since establishing its Tokyo office in 2018, Shiji Japan has introduced next-generation hospitality solutions, from Daylight PMS and Infrasys POS to guest engagement and data intelligence tools, to accelerate digital transformation across Japan’s hotel and restaurant industry. Now fully localized for Japan, Reviewpro Reputation supports over 80 review sites and 45 languages, transforming diverse guest feedback into actionable insights that help hotels strengthen brand value, improve service quality, and deliver superior guest experiences across every guest touchpoint.

The beginning of a new year in hospitality always brings a familiar mix of optimism and pressure. We talk about trends, we debate priorities, and we promise ourselves that this will be the year when technology finally simplifies rather than complicates our work. As 2026 begins, that conversation feels different, more grounded, and far more urgent.

Nestor Stay, a hotel and serviced apartment group with 14 properties in London, announced that it has increased Gross Booking Value by 62% year over year, and grew direct booking revenue by 168%, after embedding AI across core guest-facing and operational workflows on Apaleo’s open API-first property management platform.