If you’re in hotel media and communications—part storyteller, part strategist, part brand builder—you likely thrive when 1000 things come at you at once. This work includes digital campaigns, storytelling for brands, content creation, social strategies, reputation management, internal communications, and more. The ride can feel like drinking water from a firehose, but it’s all part of the fun.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a necessity in the branding and communication world since late 2022. AI is now supporting workflows across portfolios, from editing voiceovers with Descript to creating scalable, brand consistent visuals with Canva. Adobe Creative Cloud Firefly integrates into design tools. DALL·E visualizes storyboards. Imagen sifts through and refines photos. Canva Design Assistant is helping to spread templates across 40+ Hotels. What’s the result? Not just efficiency—but scalability with style, ensuring creativity remains uncompromised.
ChatGPT is a great tool to help with menu design and upselling strategies. Not to replace design instinct—but to refine it, sharpen the storytelling, and accelerate time to execution.
AI is no longer limited to fixing typos. It pitches content angles and changes visuals. It also rewrites metadata. However, fully leveraging AI requires fluency—mastering prompts, formatting outputs, and training AI to match brand tastes and tones. Once this is done, the results are tangible.
AI-Enhanced Guest Experience is the Future of Hospitality
At the recent 2025 HSMAI Commercial Strategy Week and Hospitality Industry Technology Exposition and Conference (HITEC®), the message was clear, AI is rapidly reshaping hospitality. AI tools are now able to build customized itineraries in real-time, predict demand gaps and respond to guests’ sentiments. Vendors showed systems that quickly answer questions like, “Why are bookings weak on Tuesday?” They can suggest faster corrective strategies than manual processes.
Generative AI is also transforming the rules of search engine optimization (SEO), evolving into what’s now being called GEO—Generative Engine Optimization. Google’s Search Generative Experience, or SGE, emphasizes the importance of visibility by using helpful, semantically rich, and structured content. Conversational AI platforms like Gemini, Claude and Perplexity power research while tools such as Perplexity and Claude help to anticipate guest needs. It’s not about keywords but rather meaningful dialogue. Tools like Google’s AI Studio now offer the ability to evaluate and optimize your website content through an AI lens—changing how we approach relevance, structure, and storytelling online.
These events featured sessions that brought AI applications to life. Benu Aggarwal, President and Founder of Milestone, unpacked the idea of travel “agents”—AI-powered companions that guide guest decision-making. John Jimenez, VP of eCommerce & Revenue at Noble Investment Group, introduced the concept of what I’ve come to think of as ‘AI advisory councils’—where multiple platforms like Claude, Gemini, Bard, and CoPilot are blended together to create a flexible and well-rounded toolkit. It’s not about loyalty to one model—it’s about choosing the right ingredients for each task. Michael Goldrich is the author of Too many hats, too little time Right now AI Literacy Playbook – A Guide for Hoteliers, shared with us a practical framework named TRACE (Tasks Role Action Context Expectation). This helps AI prompting be more effective. Each speaker reiterated the same fact: AI is most effective when it is guided by human clarity.
At Newport, we’ve been using various forms of AI in business planning to shop the competition and aggregate guest sentiment—among other uses. These aren’t just futuristic concepts; they’re part of how we think and work.
The marriage of two different skill sets
AI doesn’t replace human skill—it enhances it. This synergy, between machine accuracy and human intuition, gives us critical time back for strategy, storytelling, or genuine guest empathy. This allows teams to move from reacting only and begin creating proactively. Think of AI as a dashboard for imagination—predictable tools managing routine tasks, freeing space for human creativity to shine.
AI is a powerful tool for marketing. It allows faster video edits, instantly polished copy and visuals perfectly aligned to brand voices. It offers faster feedback loops and deeper audience insight for branding. AI is used to ensure consistency and clarity in communications.
However, AI can seem overwhelming and complex. Confusion and uncertainty are normal when new terms such as VEO, SGE and agentic workflows continue to emerge. Fact-checking, understanding, and critical analysis remain essential skills—AI assists but doesn’t replace these fundamental capabilities.
HSMAI and HITEC® 2025—were sources of inspiration, revealing connections among revenue, operations, digital, sales, and design sectors. AI has become a trusted partner, enhancing cross-functional innovation and collaboration.
Curiosity is the new superpower
Walt Disney said “When you’re interested, you can find a lot of things to do.” This is particularly true in an AI driven world. Curiosity is the fuel that drives continuous learning. This makes new platforms less intimidating and more exploratory.
AI is not just for hospitality. It also impacts education, healthcare, entertainment and our daily lives. Much like hearing a lyric expressing your exact feelings—AI clarifies thoughts and voices ideas more articulately. It’s more than a tool.
Everyone is an early adopter today. AI’s influence is unmistakable, whether you are automating reviews or designing immersive campaigns. The goal isn’t to master every tool, but to remain curious, flexible, and human.
Two steps you can take: create a CoPilot AI agent to help with repetitive tasks and join a peer group or community that focuses on AI to share insights. Each AI journey will be unique and shaped by the individual’s creativity and needs.
This new era is not a time of fear but one of fascination. Learning AI’s language transforms it from a tool into a creative translator—enhancing how we concept, write, design, and deliver. It’s how we amplify, accelerate, and stay ahead—squeezing more juice out of every marketing effort, without losing flavor. If you’re experimenting with AI in your own workflow—I’d love to hear from you. Let’s keep this conversation going, and learn about each other’s uses cases.
If growth and improvement drive you—if being better than yesterday motivates your daily efforts—AI is your powerful ally. Remember, foundational skills remain vital–just like math. In the event that technology fails, we will have to rely on ourselves. Curiosity sharpens our skills. Now is the time to turn up the AI.
