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Harry Fielder, CEO of Umi and Community Chair of the Hotel Marketing Association, reflects on a session at the Indendependent Hotel Show centred on the intersection between people and technology. 

I recently had the pleasure of joining Jane Pendlebury (HOSPA), Matthew Bell (Mollie's), and Susanne Williams (Journey) on the Innovation Stage at the Independent Hotel Show London to talk about one of my favourite topics. ‘How technology can enhance, rather than replace, the human side of hospitality.

As expected, it quickly turned into a lively conversation about where the industry is heading, what tech actually makes sense for hotels. How to make sure we don’t lose sight of what makes hospitality so special in the first place.

The Tech Stack Isn’t Always the Problem, It’s How You Use It

One of the big themes of the session was how hotels are piecing together their technology ecosystems. There are so many pieces of the puzzle that the combination of products are often more important than the individual products themselves. Matt spoke about the “best-in-class” approach at Mollie’s where they use off-the-shelf systems to achieve the majority of the task, and then invest in small areas of customisation to truly tailor it for their business.

That struck a chord with me, as I’ve seen far too many hotels trying to reinvent the wheel when they don’t have to. Modern systems are increasingly open and flexible. The real challenge is less about which tools you have and more about how well they connect and how creatively you use them.

Too often, hotels have multiple CRMs, disconnected booking platforms, and data silos that stop them from seeing the full guest picture. My advice to any hotel is simple: start by mapping your data flows. Literally draw it out on paper! Put your CRM in the middle and see how many lines you can draw to everything else. Anywhere you can’t draw a line, you’ve probably found an opportunity to improve.

Buy Smart, Build a Little

We talked a lot about the old “buy versus build” debate. My view is that most hotels don’t need to build from scratch, that’s a full-time job for a software company. Instead, buy the best system that gets you 80% of the way there, and invest in the final 20% to make tailors it to your unique use case.

That last 20% is where the magic happens: connecting data, adding automation, personalising the user experience, and creating the of seamless, first-party guest journey.

AI, Agentic Systems, and Speed to Market

Of course, you can’t talk about hotel tech in 2025 without mentioning AI. What I find most exciting isn’t necessarily the gimmicky chatbots, it’s the agentic and specialist applications of AI where systems are deeply embeded in highly specialised ways rather than throwing generic, generative AI at everything. We will see this used this to autonomously handle complex processes, spot anomalies, and flag issues before they become problems.

The broad-brush-stroke gen-AI tools are useful, don’t get me wrong, but for me, it is in the specialist applications that I think it can be truly transformative.

Relating to Umi Digital in particular we are seeing the specialised AI-driven advertising deliver excellent results in a fraction of the time. We are even seeing AI-assisted code generation changing the game with regard to speed, efficiency and complexity. I recently read that 30% of all Microsoft code is now written by AI so it's clear that this paradigm is here for the foreseeable.

Integrations and applications that once took weeks can now be prototyped and tested in days. This will ultimately mean hotels (and their tech partners) can iterate faster, experiment more, and respond to change with more agility.

We have actually been piloting various applications here; building on best practice, open API documentation and carefully structured prompts as we find the right combination of reliability and consistency, and the speed and scale opportunities that AI code generation offers.

The Human Element Is Still the Point

Something Matt said really resonated with me: the purpose of automation is to “free people up to look after people.” That’s exactly it. The role of technology in hospitality isn’t to replace human touch, it’s to remove the friction that stops great service from happening.

I’ve always said that technology should enhance humanity, not erase it. Give the guest choice. Let them check in however they prefer. Use automation to make operations warmer and smoother, not colder.

The hotels that will thrive in the next decade will be the ones that blend efficiency with empathy, the ones that use tech to empower their teams to be more human, not less.

Creativity Is the New Competitive Advantage

As more of our digital marketing world becomes AI driven and automated, from bidding and targeting to attribution and even creative testing, the thing that will truly set brands apart is authenticity and creativity.

You can automate process, but you can’t automate personality. You can outsource code, but not creativity.

As my wise friend Sam Willan said "Creative is the last legal way to gain an unfair competitive advantage". I love this, and would extend it slightly by saying: "Creativity and authenticity is the final frontier of competitive advantage in advertising and discovery."

At Umi, we’re seeing that the hotels performing best online are those with a strong voice, a clear story, and genuine content. As AI takes over the mechanics, human creativity becomes the last great differentiator.

It also completely re-writes the rule book on what value an agency offers - as manual ‘doing’ is abstracted away, the requirement is becoming increasingly value-based and strategic instead of the classic time and materials.

If we can keep our focus on data that empowers, systems that connect, and experiences that feel human, we’ll have the best of both worlds - the efficiency of machines and the warmth of hospitality.

Or, to borrow the quote Jane closed our session with (wrongly attributed to Einstein, but still brilliant):

“Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate, and brilliant. Together, they are powerful beyond imagination.”

That, to me, sums it all up perfectly.