— Mirko Lalli
U.S. business travel hitting a record $538.5 billion in 2024 while sustainable aviation fuel sits at 0.8% of global supply tells you everything about where the industry's priorities actually land versus where we claim they are. The money is moving, just not toward decarbonization.
What caught my attention this week is the tension between personalization hype and operational reality. At the Global Revenue Forum, Patricia Sánchez-Bretaño from Luderna made a point I rarely hear executives admit publicly: hyper-personalization is overrated in practice. The ROI does not justify the complexity. Meanwhile, Soneva's new CEO under KSL ownership is betting hard on exactly that, repositioning the brand around customization for ultra-luxury guests. Both can be right. Personalization works when margins are extreme and guest volume is low. For most hotels, the smarter play is what 123COMPARE.ME and SiteMinder are enabling: better rate parity monitoring, tighter revenue-marketing integration, infrastructure that actually scales.
Toni Raurich's piece on LLMs threatening OTAs deserves serious attention. His question is whether large language models will collapse the search-compare-book funnel that Booking and Expedia monetize. I think the threat is real but slower than the hype suggests. Distribution is sticky. Still, any OTA not building conversational interfaces today is running out of runway.
For the next twelve months, my advice is simple: invest in pricing intelligence and direct channel defense before chasing AI-powered personalization. The former pays back now. The latter remains expensive and unproven for anyone outside the ultra-luxury tier.
U.S. business travel hit $538.5 billion in 2024. Meanwhile, IATA projects airline operating profits will crash 37% by year-end. Same industry. Opposite trajectories. The gap between who is winning and who is bleeding has never been wider.
This week's signal is clear: recovery is real, but it is not evenly distributed. The winners are those who control their margins. The losers are those exposed to forces they cannot influence.
The Fuel Squeeze Is Back
According to IATA, airline fuel costs are expected to rise 39% to $350 billion in 2026, driven largely by the ongoing Iran conflict. This means carriers without hedging strategies or government backing are facing margin compression that no revenue optimization can fix.
India's response is instructive. The government launched a $1 billion price stabilization fund offering interest-free advances to protect its carriers. State intervention as competitive advantage. European and American airlines, left to market forces, have no equivalent cushion.
Willie Walsh, in his final IATA address, called out engine manufacturers for "gouging" airlines during supply-chain disruptions. The accusation matters less than what it reveals: airlines are squeezed from both ends. Fuel on one side. Suppliers on the other. Pricing power sits everywhere except with the carriers themselves.
Hotels Are Playing a Different Game
The contrast with hospitality is stark. According to Hospitality Net, U.S. RevPAR grew 6.5% in late May, powered partly by Las Vegas concert demand. Hotels are capturing premiums. Airlines are absorbing costs.
The difference is not just market structure. It is technology adoption speed.
SiteMinder's infrastructure bet, the European M&A surge in hospitality tech (Lighthouse, Hostaway), new tools like 123COMPARE.ME's rate monitoring, all point to an industry investing in control. Hotels are building the systems to protect direct rates, optimize revenue in real-time, integrate marketing with revenue management.
Meanwhile, aviation's tech conversation is still dominated by fleet delays and engine reliability.
The Contrarian Take on Hyper-Personalization
Here is where I part company with the prevailing narrative. At the Global Revenue Forum, hoteliers called out hyper-personalization as overrated. Patricia Sánchez-Bretaño of Luderna put it bluntly: implementation is hard, results are uncertain.
I agree. The industry is obsessed with personalization as a differentiator when most guests would settle for competence. Get the basics right. Respond fast. Price fairly. The personalization arms race is a distraction for operators who have not yet mastered consistency.
What LLMs Mean for OTAs
Toni Raurich's question in Hosteltur deserves attention: will large language models kill the OTA model?
The honest answer is not yet, but the threat is structural. If AI can understand intent, compare options, and book directly, the aggregation layer that OTAs provide becomes less valuable. The intermediary's margin depends on friction. LLMs reduce friction.
OTAs that survive will be those that become infrastructure, not storefronts.
The Task
Two questions for this week. If you are an airline: where is your cost control strategy beyond hoping fuel prices drop? If you are a hotel: are you investing in control systems, or still renting them from intermediaries who do not share your interests?
The split is here. Which side are you building for?