We recently brought together a group of senior hospitality leaders for a closed-door workshop in London. No demos. No sales pitches. Just an honest conversation about what's genuinely helping operators today, and what still isn't.
Different businesses. Different challenges. But remarkably consistent views on where technology needs to go next.
Here are the five biggest takeaways.
Hospitality is not short of data. It's drowning in it.
Too often, managers are expected to interpret multiple dashboards, reconcile conflicting reports and decide what matters most. All while running a busy shift. The result isn't better decisions. It's cognitive overload.
Insights arrive too late. Or get ignored altogether.
What operators actually want is prioritisation. Clear guidance on what needs attention today, and why. Without trawling through systems to find it.
The real opportunity for AI isn't analytics for analytics' sake. It's helping people focus on the decisions that will make the biggest difference, in the moment they're needed.
There was a healthy realism in the room about AI's track record so far. Many operators have been sold tools labelled as "AI" that worked well on paper, but fell over the moment reality kicked in.
Hospitality is messy by nature. Menus change. Teams rotate. Trading patterns shift. Unexpected things happen every single day. Traditional machine-learning tools perform best in stable environments. Hospitality rarely offers that luxury.
What's changed is the emergence of agentic AI: systems that can reason, adapt and work towards outcomes, rather than simply answering fixed questions.
That shift brings AI much closer to how experienced operators already think. And it's far better suited to the realities of the sector.
This was the idea that resonated most.
Anyone who's seen a strong GM step into a struggling site knows the impact good decision-making can have. Performance improves quickly. Not because the data changes, but because priorities become clearer.
The ambition isn't to automate judgement away. It's to make that kind of thinking more consistent and accessible across the business.
Crucially, trust matters. If AI is going to influence decisions, it has to explain its reasoning. As operators made clear: if a system can't show why it's recommending something, it won't be used.
Data quality inevitably came up. The conversation was refreshingly honest.
Legacy systems. Partial integrations. Missing feeds. That's the reality in hospitality. Expecting months of data cleansing before any value is delivered simply isn't realistic.
What operators want is technology that works with the data they have, not the data they wish they had. Systems that can ingest raw information, flag anomalies and recognise when something looks like a data issue rather than a performance issue.
This ability to reason over imperfect information is one of the most meaningful differences between older BI tools and newer AI-driven approaches.
Perhaps the most important takeaway. And it came back to tech fatigue.
This isn't about capability. Hospitality teams are incredibly skilled. It's about the sheer number of systems managers are expected to juggle. Any new technology has to earn its place by removing work, not adding another layer to manage.
The idea that AI could sit above the existing tech stack, reducing screen time rather than increasing it, reframed the conversation entirely. Instead of logging into multiple tools, managers could be guided towards action. The system does the heavy lifting in the background.
For several people in the room, this was the first time AI had been positioned as something that might genuinely simplify operations rather than complicate them.
Final thought
By the end of the session, the conversation had shifted from "what is this?" to "how would this work in my business?"
Always a good sign in a room full of experienced operators.
The future of AI in hospitality isn't about smarter dashboards or louder claims. It's about better decisions, made earlier, with less effort.
Technology that works with the realities of hospitality. Not against them.
➡️ Want to see what Sona can do for your operations? Let’s get some time in the diary to chat about your 2026 goals and see where tech can make a difference.