As the hospitality industry accelerates into an era defined by intelligent innovation, few forces loom larger than artificial intelligence (AI). Once a distant concept, AI has rapidly become an everyday catalyst reshaping how hotels engage guests, optimise operations, and drive commercial success. With adoption moving from experimentation to strategic integration, the industry enters a pivotal moment, one that will take centre stage at next week’s HSMAI Middle East & Africa Commercial Strategy Conference (CSC MEA).

Cottar’s Safaris, Africa’s oldest family-run safari company, is proud to announce the launch of Mara, an AI-powered Safari Travel Assistant designed to support both guests and trade partners, alongside the launch of its new website – together bringing a century of safari heritage to life and making it easier, smarter, and more engaging to plan journeys to Cottar’s 1920s Camp and Cottar’s Bush Villa in Kenya’s Maasai Mara.

Thrillophilia, India’s leading AI-powered multi-day tours platform, has released its Women & Travel Decisions 2025 report, revealing a quiet but powerful shift inside Indian households. The country’s real travel decision-maker today is not the travel agent, the algorithm, or the loudest voice in the room; it is the woman who plans, filters, budgets, and ultimately shapes the family’s entire travel experience. Based on an analysis of 212,000 itineraries and 8.9 million planning signals, the report finds that women now influence or directly design 72% of India’s leisure trips, taking ownership of everything from budgeting and safety to emotional comfort and experience curation.

Artificial intelligence isn’t just reshaping travel technology, it’s reshaping the way travel leaders think, work, and create. From using AI to communicate more clearly to embedding it into enterprise platforms that forecast demand and personalize experiences, executives across the industry are finding new ways to collaborate with machines. Some embrace AI as an everyday assistant; others approach it with caution, mindful of preserving human creativity and judgment. Yet all agree: the potential is enormous, and we’re only at the beginning of understanding how these tools will redefine travel, business, and leadership itself.

Launched today at the inaugural TOURISE Summit, the ‘New Codes of Luxury: Elevating the Hospitality Guest Experience with AI’ white paper, produced by The Future Laboratory in partnership with Together Group, reveals how AI will redefine service, personalization, and the very meaning of luxury for a new generation of global travelers.

Mews, the leading operating system for hospitality and shared spaces, has launched a new report exploring how intelligent agents will reshape hotel operations. Hospitality is entering a new stage of digital maturity, driven by agentic AI. According to the new report, Agentic AI for Hotels: The Mews Vision for AI in Hospitality, the shift from assistive to autonomous intelligence will redefine how hotels operate, learn, and deliver experiences in the decade ahead. Building on the connected ecosystem that Mews has been developing for more than a decade – and accelerated by the recent acquisition of DataChat, a leading generative AI analytics company – agentic AI will enable a new level of coordination across revenue, operations, and guest experience.