In this episode of Hotel Moment, Karen Stephens, Chief Marketing Officer of Revinate, sits down with Jarrett Tomback, Vice President of Digital Strategy and CRM at Starwood Hotels, for a wide-ranging conversation on what it means to build genuine guest loyalty, how a human-first AI philosophy actually works in practice, and why AI engine optimization has become the most important distribution investment a hotel brand can make in 2026. Jarrett manages digital strategy and CRM across three of the most distinctive lifestyle brands in global hospitality: 1 Hotels, the sustainable nature-inspired luxury brand with locations from Hanalei Bay to Tokyo; Baccarat Hotels, which brings the 250-year heritage of the Baccarat crystal brand to life in New York and beyond; and Treehouse Hotels, built entirely around the feeling of "carefreedom" and the adventurous spirit most of us associate with childhood.

● Mission Membership reframes loyalty as belonging: Rather than competing with points-chasing programs, 1 Hotels' Mission Membership is designed so that guests feel they belong to something with purpose. Joining plants a tree. Every qualifying stay donates 1% of revenue to the guest's chosen nonprofit partner: the NRDC, Oceanic Global, or Green Our Planet. Personalization follows from the preferences members share: room setup, dining style, and personal interests.

● A 360-degree CRM view enables invisible personalization: If a guest has requested extra pillows on every previous stay, those pillows should be waiting on the next arrival without the guest having to ask again. If a preference was shared during a local dining experience, it shows up in the hotel profile. Jarrett describes building a CRM infrastructure that connects inputs from multiple sources: direct guest preferences, team observations, and dining data, all flowing into one comprehensive guest profile.

● AI is human-first at Starwood: AI amplifies what great hospitality teams can already do, it does not replace them. Most of Starwood's current AI investment is in back-of-house processes that free teams from routine tasks and give them more time with guests. Guest-facing applications are being explored carefully, particularly concierge recommendations and seamless bookings, but always with the option for direct human contact preserved.

● Dirty data makes AI worse than no AI: Jarrett is candid about the risk. If the data foundation is not clean and actionable, applying AI to guest-facing interactions produces experiences worse than what no AI would have delivered. The phrase that captures it: AI is "very confidently wrong" when the underlying data is bad. Starwood's approach is to get the data right before deploying AI where guests can see it.

● AEO is the top priority for 2026: Traditional blue-link Google search is giving way to AI-first discovery. In a world where an AI model gives a traveler three to five hotel recommendations rather than pages of results, being in that shortlist is decisive. Jarrett identifies AI engine optimization as the most urgent action any hotelier should take this year.

● Hotels must become their own source of truth for LLMs: Many hotels put more data about their properties into OTA listings than into their own knowledge bases. Jarrett's point is direct: if LLMs are pulling data from third parties to answer guest questions, those third parties win the recommendation. Building direct knowledge bases and feeding them to LLMs positions the brand as the authoritative source.

● Brand storytelling still beats pure data: Even in an AI-mediated discovery environment, the goal is to drive guests from the LLM recommendation to the hotel website, where the brand story, visual identity, and full experience context live. Data gets a hotel recommended. Storytelling gets the booking.

● Loyalty is evolving beyond the stay: Jarrett's vision for the next five years sees guests expecting loyalty programs to reflect their values and extend into their daily lives. Lifestyle brands in particular have an opportunity to bring the in-property experience into guests' routines between stays, building a sense of ongoing membership rather than a transactional relationship that only activates at check-in.

Karen and Jarrett also discuss the implications of Google's announcement about agentic commerce in the hospitality space, the regulatory landscape for data privacy across GDPR and US state laws, and what it means to own the guest relationship in an increasingly fragmented distribution environment.

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[05:57] Membership, not loyalty — Jarrett explains why 1 Hotels walked away from the traditional points model entirely: "Our guests want personalization and they wanted to feel like they belong to something. That is where we came up with the idea of positioning it as a membership, and not a loyalty program." Mission Membership plants a tree when a guest joins, donates 1% of qualifying stay revenue to the member's chosen nonprofit partner, and uses preference data to deliver personalized in-stay experiences. It is a loyalty program built around the brand's core mission rather than around the guest's wallet.

[09:09] The extra pillow — Jarrett uses a simple example to illustrate what a 360-degree CRM profile actually enables in practice. If a guest requests extra pillows on every stay, those pillows should be in the room before the guest arrives next time, without a request. If a preference was shared during a dining experience, it flows into the hotel profile for the next stay. "We're able to take inputs from a number of sources...it's really about being able to get a comprehensive 360-degree view of the guest and their behaviors, their preferences, what they tell us directionally and observationally." Data collection and activation at that level of specificity is what makes genuine personalization possible.

[13:21] AI is very confidently wrong — Karen asks about the risk of AI without clean data, and Jarrett's response is one of the most quotable in the episode: "It's very confidently wrong when it's wrong." He acknowledges the learning that many companies are going through as they sprint into AI applications: "If the data house isn't in order, if that foundation isn't there, then the AI is going to be a worse experience than no AI at all." Starwood's approach is to invest first in back-of-house applications while ensuring data quality before deploying anything guest-facing.

[15:50] Become the source of truth — Jarrett identifies the most urgent AEO action any hotel can take. "We have the most data about our properties, but sometimes we give more of that to the OTAs than we even put out through our own sources of knowledge. Building those knowledge bases on the direct side and being able to distribute those to the LLMs so that we are the source of truth and that they're not turning to third parties to get their data is critical." The hotel that controls its own data narrative wins the LLM recommendation.

[19:53] AEO as the number one priority — Asked for the single most important action a hotelier should take in 2026, Jarrett does not hesitate: "The number one thing this year really is AEO — AI search optimization. In a world where an AI is really giving three to five recommendations and not pages and pages and pages of links, it is essential that you are in those top three to five recommendations based on the guest criteria of what they're looking for."

Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
01:49 - 1 Hotels, Baccarat, and Treehouse: three brands, one company
06:19 - Mission Membership: loyalty built around purpose, not points
08:29 - CRM as the engine of personalized guest experience
10:30 - Where AI delivers and where it needs clean data first
13:27 - Channel strategy and the AI distribution shift
15:53 - Why owning your data and content wins the LLM recommendation
18:23 - Data privacy, AEO, and the future of loyalty