AI Can Book the Trip. It Can’t Take It For You

Monocle ran a list recently ranking the jobs most likely to survive AI. Doctors and nurses were first. And right behind that? Hospitality at a close second. I read that story twice. For a decade, this industry has been, purposefully or not, ripping people out of the guest experience. QR codes replaced menus. Apps replaced concierges. A link replaced room service. And now it turns out the one thing AI still can’t do well is greet a stranger, read a room, or fix a problem before the guest even opens their mouth about it.

That tracks with what guests actually pay for at the high end. Not another screen, not another login, not an app you have to download just to ask for towels three floors down. People pay extra for someone who makes things easier. I’m not scared of the tools — sometimes I love the tools. I use AI to compare flights, track a connection, translate a menu in a small town outside Bari, to remember how I like my coffee, find the eleven-seat restaurant with no website. Take all of that off people’s plates. Just don’t take the person at the door away from me. With the details sorted, the rest doesn’t happen on a screen. It happens in a body, in a place that pushes back on you a little. You don’t understand somewhere until you’ve stood in it. I want you to smell the bread coming out of an oven, get stuck behind the scooters, sit across from someone whose life makes your assumptions look small. 

Somewhere in the middle of installing all these kiosks, travel has quietly become the new status symbol. Surveys on affluent Americans now put travel ahead of watches and clothes as a marker of success. Ask someone what they do and let the conversation run. Within thirty seconds you’re talking about where they’ve been, not (hopefully) what new app they just downloaded. Humans have moved for most of our history, following food, seasons, trading, emigrated. Settling in one place and never leaving is the newer, stranger part. Our bodies still know the difference between being informed and being present. A call can keep a deal moving, but a dinner — showing up — is still the only thing that actually connects people.

So here’s how I run my own business: AI stays in the back. Let it manage housekeeping schedules, flag the compressor before it dies, handle the hundredth “what time does the pool close,” remember what a repeat guest likes for breakfast, and get someone into their room the minute they arrive instead of some arbitrary hour in the afternoon. Take the small-minded administrative work off the staff’s hands, and put that savings into the moment they walk in the front door and decide how they’re going to feel for the next three days. Fewer people? Better people. Paid properly, and then they might stick around for a while.

What’s stuck with me over after 93 stamps on my passport? It was a stranger who changed how I saw something. A perfect cup of coffee. (Or a terrible pillow.) A place where I got something wrong in public and had to adjust. No amount of aggregated research replaces that. AI is going to keep getting better at planning, booking, pricing, translating. Let’s let it. But it’s never going to give you sand between your toes, or dinner with someone you met four hours ago. Go stand in the place. The headset will still be there when you get home.