Clean data, bold decisions: the AI playbook hoteliers built at NAVIGATE 2026

In this episode of Hotel Moment, Karen Stephens, Chief Marketing Officer of Revinate, and Bailey Yeats, Marketing Manager at Revinate, take listeners inside NAVIGATE 2026, the annual Revinate customer conference that brought 300 attendees together this year at the Wigwam in Phoenix. Around 200 were customers; the rest were vendor partners and Revinators. The Wigwam, a nearly century-old property in the Historic Hotels of America collection, provided both the backdrop and an unexpected proof of concept: a barista who knew Bailey's exact order every morning before she said a word.

What you'll learn:

● AI is already reshaping how travel is booked: Conference MC, Courtney Witherspoon opened the main session with one question: how many people had used ChatGPT or a similar tool to book travel in the last six months? Seventy-five percent of hands went up. The question of how hoteliers prepare for a world where AI models become primary distribution channels is no longer hypothetical.

● The three AI use cases shaping hospitality: A McKinsey presentation at NAVIGATE outlined three areas: back-office functions like HR and finance, on-property AI applications for guest experience and operational efficiency, and the disruption of traditional search and booking flows as OTAs face increasing pressure from AI-native discovery.

● Ivy is Revinate's AI intelligence layer: Running through all of Revinate's platforms, Ivy is beginning to manifest in Reservation Sales first. The initial application is automated call scoring, which Bailey notes could save reservations managers up to 30 hours per month. Colton Bean, Director of Reservations at Suncadia Resort and a Revy Award winner at NAVIGATE, describes the impact: time back in the day to focus on strategic priorities, culture, and streamlining processes.

● Sixty to seventy percent of hoteliers in pre-conference training wanted the same superpower: When asked what superpower they would choose, the overwhelming answer was time-saving. The products coming down Revinate's roadmap are designed to deliver exactly that.

● Personalization is not a merge tag: Abby Waski, Area Marketing Specialist at Pyramid Global Hospitality, describes the aha moment from NAVIGATE: enhancing guest profiles to capture real preferences, and activating those preferences in communications and front desk interactions. Bailey's framing cuts to the point: there is nothing worse than arriving at a hotel you have stayed at ten times and being asked if it is your first visit.

● AI without clean data hallucinates: Bryson Koehler, CEO of Revinate, delivered the conference's most direct caution in his keynote: AI vendors promising transformative results on top of a messy data foundation are selling something that cannot be delivered. His analogy is precise: it is like a world-class chef trying to bake a cake after someone switched all the labels in the pantry. Salt in the sugar jar, sand in the red jar. The AI does not know the difference.

● Seventeen years of data collection is now an activation asset: Revinate started in 2009 collecting reputation and survey data. Today the company connects to over 100 PMS systems and has more than 160 integrations, all synthesized through identity resolution into guest profiles. Karen's point is direct: that foundation, built over 17 years, is what makes AI activation both possible and safe. It is also what separates a hotel that can genuinely personalize from one that cannot.

● Data outbound capabilities are live: For the first time, hoteliers can activate Revinate guest data outside the Revinate ecosystem, running it through AI platforms, external tools, and third-party activations while using Revinate as the clean, identity-resolved source of truth.

● Bold decisions require a data foundation: Angelo Fernandes, CEO of Cote Hospitality, describes what the NAVIGATE conversation meant to him: the ability to make bold decisions faster and more efficiently, based on data that was previously unavailable to the companies he has led.

● The anxiety became optimism: Jennifer Barnhart, Marketing Manager at Noble House Pacific City Collection, captures the arc of the conference in a single sentence: the future of AI in the hotel industry is going to be brighter than we can ever imagine. Bailey echoes it: the hoteliers who arrived with questions left with a direction.

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Episode Highlights

[04:53] From anxiety to advantage — Bailey describes the mood in the pre-conference training room at the start of the day: real questions, some anxiety, and a lot of uncertainty about what AI means for hospitality teams. By the end of NAVIGATE, the tone had shifted. "I think them being there and being able to lean on each other and lean on our team really helped calm some of that anxiety around what to do next." Karen adds the framing that ran through the entire conference: "You don't get into hotels because you love technology. You get into hotels because you love beautiful properties, guest experience, making people feel wonderful."

[08:38] The icebreaker that revealed everything — When pre-conference training opened with the question "if you could have a superpower, what would it be?", 60 to 70% of the room answered the same way: they wanted to save time. Bailey connects that directly to the products coming from Revinate's roadmap, particularly automated call scoring through Revinate’s AI intelligence layer, Ivy. Colton Bean, Director of Reservations at Suncadia Resort, makes it concrete: "Thirty hours a month is crazy. And I just am so excited that once this is online, we will have that time back to be able to focus on strategic things — helping streamline our processes and focus on culture."

[13:23] Personalization is not a first name — Abby Waski from Pyramid Global Hospitality describes her aha moment at NAVIGATE: "Getting to know our guests, enhancing their profile, getting to know their needs and what they really love when they come to the hotel, so that we can implement those guest preferences into Revinate." Karen connects it to the technology vision: "It's running behind the scenes so that the person having that interaction can easily understand — this person has been here four times, they stay in the spa, they really enjoy vanilla lattes — all of that information at their fingertips." Not AI replacing the human at the front desk. AI making that human unbeatable.

[15:30] The chef with the unlabeled pantry — Bryson Koehler's NAVIGATE keynote delivers the conference's most memorable framing of the AI data problem: "AI without data is like a world-class chef trying to bake a cake, but somebody's gone into the pantry and taken all of the labels — where the sugar was in the blue jar and the salt was in the red jar and switched all around." The AI hallucination is what happens when the ingredients are mislabeled. The vendors selling AI on top of a messy data foundation are selling a cake that will not rise. "That's the vendor who sold a bill of goods."

[17:34] The data void that no longer exists — Angelo Fernandes, CEO of Cote Hospitality, describes what made NAVIGATE meaningful for him: "The ability to make bold decisions based on the data that we're able to collect — that was a big void in our industry for many years." Revinate's 17-year foundation of reputation data, guest data across 100-plus PMS systems, and over 160 integrations synthesized into identity-resolved profiles is what fills that void. As Karen summarizes: "We saw the future, we are now in the future, we are here — and now we're all about activating."

Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
00:57 - NAVIGATE 2026 at the Wigwam, Phoenix
02:48 - What great hospitality looks like in the wild
04:53 - AI anxiety and AI opportunity
06:35 - McKinsey on the main stage: Three ways AI is reshaping hospitality
08:38 -Revinate’s Ivy and Reservation Sales: what automated call scoring changes
13:23 - Personalization beyond the merge tag: Abby Waski on knowing your guests
15:30 - Bryson Koehler: Why clean data is the foundation of every AI strategy
17:34 - Angelo Fernandes: bold decisions and the data void that no longer exists
19:03 - Jennifer Barnhart: The future is brighter than we can imagine