EDITION #64
Welcome to RemoteHotelier!
In today’s newsletter:
🤖 IHG joins Accor and Wyndham inside ChatGPT
🔐 A new security report warns hotels about World Cup risks
📦 Cloudbeds drops a new set of updates
💡 Lighthouse launches a new AI tool for commercial teams
🤝 + 4 new partnerships
🚀 + 6 new product updates
🤖 IHG joins Accor and Wyndham inside ChatGPT
Source: IHG
IHG follows the trend, and will also launch its own app inside ChatGPT, letting users search and compare more than 7,000 properties through natural language.
🔐 A new security report warns hotels about World Cup risks
A new security report flags serious cyber and physical threats surrounding the 2026 FIFA World Cup, with direct implications for how hotels manage data and guest safety during the tournament.
The report by Global Guardian covers terrorism, civil unrest, extreme weather, and cyber attacks across all 11 US host cities, plus the venues in Mexico and Canada.
General crime (pickpocketing, theft, scams) is the most consistent threat, and several cities are rated under "moderate" risk.
The tournament runs from June 11 to July 19, covering 104 matches across three countries, making it the largest World Cup in history.
Ticket prices are going through the roof (to the surprise of absolutely nobody given recent events like the NBA finals). And the logic in a thief's mind is pretty straightforward: who can afford these prices? Someone with money. And where is that person staying? A hotel.
Add the fact that most attendees will follow their teams, which means they'll switch cities or leave early depending on the results. They won't stick around to deal with a robbery. And the window of opportunity is almost too obvious: while the games are being played (nearly two hours 🤯).
For hotels, the most expected type of threat is social engineering. Bad guys using a convincing story to find out where a guest is staying, and when their room will be empty.
The GTM bets that shouldn't have worked, and did
One grew revenue 50x after half his team quit over the strategy. One brought in 50K signups in a single day with no paid budget. One generated 100M+ views from a stunt that took 50 hours to conceive. One asked every prospect to demo the product themselves instead of demoing it for them.
None of them followed the safe playbook. They treated GTM like an experiment, moved before they had proof, and made bets most founders would never get approved.
HubSpot for Startups documented all 6 stories in the free Bold Bets Playbook. The risks they took, why it was risky, and what it returned.
📦 Cloudbeds drops a new set of updates
Cloudbeds Spring Release drops a broad set of new capabilities across group sales, direct bookings, operations, accounting, business intelligence, and conversational AI:
Groups & Events brings group booking workflows, branded proposals, rooming lists, and multi-property visibility into Cloudbeds for the first time.
Spaces lets hotels manage meeting rooms, pool cabanas, and other rentable assets directly within the platform, going beyond guestrooms.
The Immersive Booking Engine keeps the full booking journey on the hotel's own website, designed to improve direct conversion.
A rebuilt Calendar now supports over 4,000 rooms and 30 concurrent users with real-time updates.
Ask Signals, its new conversational AI interface, gets its first public preview.
Mews had Unfold last week, Cloudbeds has Spring Release this week… Coincidence? I don’t think so.
This is a common practice in other industries. And lately, it’s also becoming standard in hospitality tech. I can’t help but wonder though what’s better: announce first or after 🤔
💡 Lighthouse launches a new AI tool for commercial teams
Lighthouse presents Ernest, an AI built specifically for hotel commercial teams.
This new tool plugs into your PMS, CRS, and other hospitality tools to perform tasks like delivering analysis, recommending the best action, and even take automated tasks if you wish.
It's still in beta for select customers, so the real test will come when it's in the hands of revenue managers at scale.
The image is linked to a LinkedIn post with a nice video introducing this tool.
RESOURCES
📍 Next Event: HITEC San Antonio (15–18 June).
📅 See the full hotel tech event calendar.
💼 Check which hotel tech companies offer remote jobs.
💻 Get your PMS comparison spreadsheet.
NEW PARTNERSHIPS
🤝 GuestRevu: it was selected as a preferred guest feedback and reputation management provider for The Leading Hotels of the World, giving access to its tools across more than 425 member properties in 80 countries.
🤝 Mews: Small Luxury Hotels of the World expanded its partnership with Mews, deepening the connection between the PMS and the SLH portfolio of independent luxury properties.
🤝 Daylight PMS: Coral Sea Hotels PNG selected Shiji's Daylight PMS to power operations across its seven properties, marking a notable win for Shiji in the Pacific market.
🤝 eviivo: earns Booking.com's 2026 Premier Plus Connectivity Partner status.
PRODUCT UPDATES
🔌 Keep it rolling: Shiji's Daylight PMS now integrates with M3, connecting hotel financial operations with M3's hospitality accounting platform.
It shouldn’t take long until Shiji announces its own version of “hotel OS”.
🔌 Folio partners with meez: to connect recipe management with procurement workflows for hotel F&B teams. Chefs can now plan recipes, track food costs at the ingredient level, and place orders inside a single interface.
🔌 TRYBE partners with Infor: to connect its spa, activity, and leisure management platform directly with Infor's PMS. Guest charges, bookings, and profiles now flow between the two systems.
🆕 BCD Travel adds Model Context Protocol support: letting AI agents connect across booking, policy, and data systems using natural language instead of custom API integrations.
MCP (Model Context Protocol) is the most predominant “language” AI chatbots use to fetch data from third parties.
🆕 Engine launches Omni: an API that lets companies embed hotel booking directly into their own platforms without building supplier connectivity, payments, or support infrastructure from scratch.
💰 Brace yourselves: Juniper Group closes a majority acquisition of DerbySoft, the hotel connectivity and distribution specialist, with DerbySoft remaining independent under its existing leadership. Juniper said they’ll allow to keep their own roadmap and management structure.
If you ask me, “keep their own roadmap and management structure” sounds like corporate code for “in 6-12 months we’ll change your entire roadmap and management structure”.
That’s all for today, thank you for reading. If this was helpful, share it with someone who'd find it useful too:
See you next week!
Jose