As Asia’s hotel market continues its strong recovery and surpasses pre-pandemic levels, hoteliers and operators are making substantial investments to transform guest experiences, maximise revenues, and streamline operations.
Events like NoVacancy Asia play a valuable role in this moment of change, connecting solution providers with industry leaders who are actively looking for the next breakthrough technologies and services. The convergence of hotel groups, investors, operators, designers and solution providers created an environment ripe for strategic partnerships and transformative discussions about where our industry is headed.
For me, one of the strongest signals from the event was how clearly guest expectations are shifting. Today’s guest doesn’t just want to be recognised; they expect to be understood. They want intuitive, seamless experiences that feel anticipatory, and this shift is creating a growing appetite for hotels to rethink their approach to service, revenue and long-standing measures of performance.
This evolving hospitality landscape demands a shift away from traditional metrics like Revenue Per Available Room (RevPAR) to a more holistic view of Revenue Per Available Guest (RevPAG) for hoteliers to obtain a more well-rounded picture of the opportunities to tap into with each guest well beyond their rooms.
At the event, I spoke about how a unified view of the guest becomes essential in this new landscape. You simply cannot make full use of AI-driven personalisation, guest predictions and optimise total guest revenue without a single, connected view of the guest. A unified technology ecosystem – one that links property management systems (PMS), point-of-sale (POS), engagement tools and analytics – is the foundation that makes modern hospitality possible.
AI is also becoming an important part of this shift; not as a replacement for human service, but as a way to support it. Used well, AI will continue to help hoteliers anticipate needs, reduce friction and give staff the insight they need to deliver memorable moments as we head into 2026.
What NoVacancy Asia reinforced for me is that the industry is entering a new phase – one shaped by integrated systems, deeper personalisation, and more forward-looking revenue strategies. As Asia Pacific continues to accelerate, the opportunity now is to turn these ideas into practical steps that strengthen both operational efficiency and the guest experience.
