Cloudbeds, the intelligent unified platform powering hotel growth, has been recognized across multiple categories in the 2026 HotelTechAwards, reinforcing its reputation as the most trusted, customer-driven technology partner in hospitality.

As Milan prepares to take center stage for the 2026 Winter Olympic Games, hotels across the city are facing a once-in-a-generation opportunity. With an expected influx of international travelers, athletes, media, and delegates, the spotlight will shine not only on Italy’s cultural capital but also on the service and hospitality standards of its accommodations.

Shiji, the global hospitality technology leader, has announced the deployment of Infrasys POS solution at Chen’s, the award-winning Japanese Szechwan Restaurant under OUE Restaurants and a MICHELIN Bib Gourmand 2019, 2021- 2023 winner. This marks another milestone in Shiji’s continued growth within Singapore competitive F&B landscape, reinforcing the company’s commitment to support leading dining concepts with scalable, modern technology.

RateGain Travel Technologies Limited (NSE: RATEGAIN), a global leader of AI-powered SaaS solutions for the travel and hospitality industry, today announced an exclusive reseller partnership with Aztech Digital, an adtech solution provider and trusted advisor to hotels across Greece and Cyprus. This partnership will expand the reach of UNO VIVA, the first CRS-integrated AI voice agent built for hotels.

What becomes clear heading into 2026 is that advantage no longer comes from isolated innovation. It comes from coherence. The hotels pulling ahead are not experimenting more than their peers; they are aligning experience, operations, and technology into a single, reinforcing system. Where that alignment exists, execution accelerates. Where it does not, even strong ideas struggle to scale.

The era of static blueprints is officially over. For decades, hotel design and hotel technology were separate disciplines. Architects drew walls, and IT teams filled them with cables. However, this siloed approach fails in a market demanding hyper-personalization. Today, the role of technology in hospitality design is shifting from a functional add-on to a foundational element. It is the “invisible architect,” shaping function, feeling, and revenue. For modern hoteliers, the challenge is balancing aesthetic beauty with operational intelligence. Technology must support the design without dominating it.

The numbers are in — here are the destinations that generated the most interest among leisure and business travelers who were traveling by air in 2025.

In December 2024, we explored Booking.com’s announcement of its new review scoring approach. A few months later, the impacts are becoming clearer. Drawing on trend data from both Booking.com and the Guest Review Index™ (GRI), we can now assess how this change is reshaping hotel performance in practice.

If the last decade of hospitality tech was defined by gathering data, the next era will be defined by what that data can finally do on its own. Despite years of digitization, the industry’s operating model has mainly remained analogue, relying on staff to act as the “middleware” manually bridging the gaps between disjointed systems. However, as we look toward 2026, this era of manual friction is drawing to a close. We are now entering a phase of structural AI transformation where the convergence of cloud maturity and autonomous algorithms will reshape the hotel from a collection of siloed departments into a single, cohesive, and intelligent organism.

As we edge closer to 2026, one question keeps surfacing in hospitality circles: where is our industry headed?