In Brief: A new report from the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA) finds that artificial intelligence is enabling hotel teams to automate routine tasks, allowing staff to dedicate more time to direct guest interactions and service delivery.
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New AHLA Report Says AI Is Giving Hotel Teams More Time for What Matters Most: Guests – Image Credit AHLA
The American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA), in partnership with hospitality software company Actabl, today released a new report on how artificial intelligence (AI) is impacting hotel operations. Unveiled at The Hospitality Show, the report finds that AI’s greatest value is as an enabler for the hotel workforce, not a replacement for critical hospitality labor.
The report, titled “AI and the Hotel Workforce: How Technology Is Supporting People and Improving Hotel Operations,” examines how AI is helping employees spend less time on administrative tasks and more time on meaningful human interactions and the guest experience.
Key findings from the report include:
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AI is speeding up routine work. Nine in 10 respondents (90%) said AI is helping routine work get done faster, and 38% identified operational efficiency as the area where AI provides the most value, ahead of revenue growth (28%).
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Frontline work is the next opportunity. While 84% of respondents said AI has improved their own work, only 15% said it has improved frontline work — a gap the report identifies as one of the industry’s biggest opportunities.
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Staffing is better matching demand. In the first half of 2026, Hours per Occupied Room (HPOR) fell 3.1% at full-service hotels and 3.5% at select-service hotels using Actabl’s Hotel Effectiveness tool, even as occupancy increased, pointing to tighter alignment between staffing and workload.
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Turnover continues to decline. Hotel turnover was 5.35% in June 2026, down from 5.84% in June 2025 and 6.07% in June 2024, according to HotelData.com analysis of Actabl data.
“Hospitality has always been a people business and will always be a people business,” said Rosanna Maietta, President & CEO of AHLA. “And AI is further enabling that by giving employees more time back to devout to supporting their colleagues and solving problems. AI doesn’t replace what makes our industry special. It gives our people more room to deliver it.”
“Managers make better decisions when they have better information. When they spend less time chasing updates, they spend more time supporting one another,” said Steven Moore, CEO of Actabl. “And when complexity fades into the background, people have room to get back to what drew them to this industry in the first place: being hospitable.”
As AI becomes more widely available across the industry, the report argues that the most useful question for hotel leaders is less “What jobs can AI perform?” and more “What work can AI take off people’s plates so employees can perform their jobs better?” From scheduling and forecasting to onboarding and finding the right procedure in the moment, AI can help hotel teams get information faster, plan earlier, and redirect their time toward the moments guests remember.
The report also underscores that better planning benefits employees as much as operators. When managers can see demand coming earlier, schedules become more predictable, and available hours can be redirected to training, deep cleaning, preventive maintenance, or guest service. For hotel employees, that can mean finishing on time and planning around childcare, school, and family commitments — the kind of stability that keeps people in the industry for years.
The full report is available here.
About AHLA
The American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA) is the largest hotel association in America, representing more than 30,000 members from all segments of the industry nationwide – including iconic global brands, 80% of all franchised hotels, and the 16 largest hotel companies in the U.S. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., AHLA focuses on strategic advocacy, communications support, and workforce development programs to move the industry forward. Learn more at www.ahla.com.
About Actabl
Actabl provides hotel operations software that connects finance, labor, guest service, and asset management across hotel portfolios. Its core products — ProfitSword, Hotel Effectiveness, Alice, and Transcendent — help hotel owners and management companies understand what is happening in their businesses, take action, and measure the results. Actabl is extending that foundation with AI and data offerings that help hotel teams ask questions of financial data, identify emerging labor cost risks, and put data to work in their own systems. More than 180,000 hotel professionals use Actabl technology, including teams at 90% of the 50 largest U.S. hotel management companies. Learn more at https://actabl.com/