How to prepare for hospitality's AI future: Inside NAVIGATE 2026

Episode notes

In this episode of Hotel Moment, Karen Stephens, Chief Marketing Officer of Revinate, and Bailey Yeats, Marketing Manager at Revinate, take listeners inside NAVIGATE 2026, the annual Revinate customer conference that brought 300 attendees together this year at the Wigwam in Phoenix. Around 200 were customers; the rest were vendor partners and Revinators. The Wigwam, a nearly century-old property in the Historic Hotels of America collection, provided both the backdrop and an unexpected proof of concept: a barista who knew Bailey's exact order every morning before she said a word. What you'll learn: ● AI is already reshaping how travel is booked: Conference MC, Courtney Witherspoon opened the main session with one question: how many people had used ChatGPT or a similar tool to book travel in the last six months? Seventy-five percent of hands went up. The question of how hoteliers prepare for a world where AI models become primary distribution channels is no longer hypothetical.