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Welcome to RemoteHotelier #86!
I had a cool story prepared for today about a hotel group reducing its portfolio on purpose, but I’m postponing it at the last minute because of everything that happened this week. Today’s edition is loaded:
In today’s newsletter:
🤖 OpenAI buys an AI travel agent
🔐 A password left in Wyndham’s app exposes customer data
📅 Airbnb’s AI agent is coming in early 2027
⚖️ + 1 new regulation
🔌 + 2 new integrations
🤝 + 2 new partnerships
🆕 + 4 new product updates
💼 + 6 new jobs in the job board
🤖 OpenAI buys an AI travel agent
This is Francis Davidson, Sonder co-founder (and since this week, most likely also filthy rich after selling Odessia to OpenAI)
OpenAI has acquired Odessia, the AI travel agent startup that Sonder co-founder Francis Davidson launched just five months ago.
Odessia plans and books flights, hotels and itineraries in a single conversation.
Its IATA accreditation gave it access to private hotel rates and perks like free breakfast and room upgrades.
Terms aren’t disclosed, and Davidson is joining OpenAI to focus on travel.
Why would OpenAI buy a travel agent when it already has its own agent (called Dots)? That’s the big question. If I had to guess, I’d say they’ll plug Odessia into Dots instead of building a separate travel module.
🔐 A password left in Wyndham’s app exposes customer data
A security researcher found a password hardcoded in Wyndham’s Android app that opened an internal database with customer names, emails, member numbers and login tokens.
According to the researcher, the database held millions of entries, but he couldn’t say how many customer records were exposed.
Wyndham immediately revoked the credentials, and says it has no evidence of unauthorized access.
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RESOURCES
📍 Next Event: Hotel Technology Forum (17–19 November).
📅 See the full hotel tech event calendar.
💻 Get your PMS comparison spreadsheet.
💸 Get your RMS comparison spreadsheet.
📅 Airbnb’s AI agent is coming in early 2027
And more about AI agents this week because Airbnb plans to launch its own.
The company confirmed this in its Q3 shareholder letter.
Instead of answering in plain chat, the agent builds an interface around each request, pulling from hundreds of travel components like maps, photos, comparisons, calendars and itineraries.
It’s hard to picture how that interface would like (at least for me). Really looking forward to seeing how it looks.
NEW REGULATION
⚖️ England introduces its tourist tax bill: which would let mayors charge a percentage based on overnight stays in hotels, short term rentals and holiday lets, collected by the accommodation providers. [Link]
Ten mayors have pledged to keep it at 5% or below, so PMS and channel manager vendors should get ready for a lot of “can you calculate this?” tickets.
INTEGRATIONS
🔌 Mirai integrates with Mews Payments: so hotels on Mews can collect direct booking payments inside Mirai’s booking engine and charge the same tokenized card later from the PMS. [Link]
🔌 RMS connects its PMS to TrustYou’s customer data platform: through a real time API that syncs reservations and guest profiles into a single “unique profile” for upsells and segmented campaigns. [Link]
Front desk staff can also see guest history inside RMS through a browser plugin.
PARTNERSHIPS
🤝 Accor and Hard Rock sign a global partnership: that lets Hard Rock hotels plug into ALL Accor’s distribution and loyalty platform and its 125 million members. [Link]
Accor takes no stake, so Hard Rock gets a giant loyalty engine without handing over the keys.
🤝 Hyatt names Danny Miles chief digital and information officer: putting the former Under Armour CTO in charge of a newly combined digital and technology organization. [Link]
Coming weeks after Hilton hired its CTO who previously work at Uber.
PRODUCT UPDATES
🆕 DMscore launches AI Search Score: a ranking that shows how visible a hotel is in conversational AI search compared with its local competitors, right next to SEO, PPC and maps. [Link]
🆕 Hyatt relaunches Hyatt Leverage: its travel platform for small and midsize businesses, now running on Spotnana with preferred rates at 1,300+ Hyatt hotels. [Link]
🆕 Dayuse launches Daypass in the US: letting hotels in South Florida, Los Angeles, Orlando and Scottsdale sell pool, cabana, spa and beach access to people who aren’t staying the night. [Link]
Commission only, no PMS integration and about 10 days to go live.
🆕 Avalora debuts Cross-Platform Guest Intelligence: an AI analytics layer that logs every guest request made through its phone platform and VAIA assistant and turns the patterns into dashboards. [Link]
JOB BOARD
HOTELS
💼 Director, Franchise Performance & Activation, Core Performance | Remote (based in the US) | Choice Hotels International.
💼 Manager Hotel Level Marketing, Agency Solutions | Remote (based in the US) | Hilton.
💼 FLEX Manager, Hotel Transitions | Remote (based in the US) | Marriott International.
TECH
💼 Global Director, Mid-Market Onboarding | Remote (based in Spain) | Cloudbeds.
💼 Lead, Financial Systems & Strategy | Remote (based in Spain) | Duetto.
💼 Remote Sales Development Representative United Kingdom | Remote (based in the UK) | RoomPriceGenie.
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
