Twenty minutes from order to delivery – that’s the new normal.
Deliveroo brings dinner to your door faster than you can decide what to watch on Netflix. It’s an extraordinary level of speed and convenience, driven by tech giants with billion-dollar budgets that have completely rewritten how customers expect to be served.
For hospitality, that’s both the challenge and the opportunity. If the sector is going to stay relevant, venues must be more competitive, more forward-thinking, and far more connected to their guests than ever before.
And while hospitality provides a vivid example, this shift is rippling across every service-led sector, from retail to real estate, where relationships and responsiveness now define competitive advantage.
Because the truth is simple: younger generations won’t wait. Whether it’s a wedding, a restaurant booking, or a weekend escape, they expect instant answers. If they don’t get them, they move on, not tomorrow, but within minutes.
And even after they’ve left, the relationship shouldn’t end. Guests who’ve had a brilliant experience rarely return on their own. They’re waiting to be invited back, but most venues never follow up. I experienced this myself on a recent holiday. We had a fantastic stay, but there was no follow-up, no reminder, no reason to return. Another lost opportunity that the managing director probably never even knew existed.
That’s the real gap technology can close.
Because hospitality isn’t just about service anymore, it’s about nurture.
It’s not enough to answer questions quickly; venues need to build lasting relationships that span every stage of the guest journey. From the first enquiry through to the final countdown and long after the guest has checked out, nurture determines loyalty, reputation and revenue.
In an economy defined by rising costs and shrinking teams, you can’t keep adding people to handle that scale of communication, 24/7. But you also can’t afford not to be there when your guest needs you. The answer lies in combining empathy with efficiency, using intelligent technology to stay connected, personal and proactive around the clock.
Today’s generations are digital by instinct. Nearly three-quarters of millennials now prefer live chat over traditional channels because it feels faster and more in tune with how they live. But speed alone no longer impresses them – it has to feel relevant. That’s why chat facilities and tools like ChatGPT have exploded in popularity. People are comfortable starting a conversation with technology, but they expect that exchange to understand them.
In hospitality, more than half of guests say AI already enhances their booking and stay experience, yet too many interactions still feel generic. Being digital isn’t the goal – being personal is. Legacy templates and scripted replies belong to the past. The future lies in context-aware conversations that listen, learn, and respond with personalised meaning.
That’s where the win-win happens. Guests get the immediacy and relevance they expect, while venues free their teams to focus on delivering the magic moments that only humans can create.
Venues must now navigate this new world by working smarter, staying human and building loyalty that lasts long after the event ends. Delivering experiences that feel effortless and personal, even as operations grow more complex, requires blending intelligent technology with a human touch. Guest interactions should feel personal and thoughtful, not transactional.
For venue teams, AI is not about replacing hospitality, it’s about giving them back time to be hospitable. When the admin fades away, people rediscover why they love this industry: making guests feel special.
Research consistently shows that today’s guests expect real-time communication before and after their stay – a level of responsiveness that manual processes alone can’t sustain. The next frontier for hospitality leaders isn’t adopting AI for novelty’s sake, but designing truly human experiences powered by it.
The future of hospitality depends on how well technology supports that balance – not replacing human connection, but amplifying it. The most successful operators will be those who use data and AI-driven insights to anticipate needs, personalise experiences and nurture relationships long after checkout.
This isn’t automation for its own sake. It’s empathy at scale. It’s sentiment you can see and action you can take.
Because the next leap in hospitality won’t come from faster check-ins or cleverer booking systems. It will come from how well we nurture: every message, every moment, every guest.