Guest expectations have never been higher. They want to book instantly, from their phones, at 11pm on a Saturday, or out and about during a Sunday catch up with friends. They want personalised experiences, seamless journeys, and venues that feel like they already know them. They want wellness, packages, and experiences that go far beyond the room.
The question is: has hospitality technology kept pace?
The honest answer? In some areas, yes.Â
In others, there's still a significant gap, and that gap is costing operators revenue every single day.
The Gap Is Real
Let's start with the numbers.
According to Deloitte, 45% of hotels say fragmented technology and data prevent them from achieving a unified view of their customers and operations. Meanwhile, 80% of guests say they prefer returning to hotels that recognise them and offer data-driven personalisation.
There's a clear disconnect. Guests are demanding connected, intelligent, personalised experiences. A large proportion of the industry is still operating on isolated systems that don't communicate with each other.
This isn't a minor operational inconvenience. It's a revenue leak.
When a guest's preference for a poolside treatment is recorded in the booking engine but never makes it to the front desk, the experience suffers. When a spa can't be booked online because it sits in a different system to the room reservation, bookings are lost. When upsells have to be pitched manually at check-in rather than woven into the digital journey, conversion drops.
The technology problem is ultimately a guest problem.
Where Technology Is Falling Short
The core issue isn't a lack of technology in hospitality. It's the wrong kind.
Most hotel tech stacks were built around one central system: the PMS. And while the PMS has evolved, it remains fundamentally room-centric. Everything else, spa, leisure, dining, activities, tends to sit in separate, siloed systems that aren't connected, aren't bookable in a unified way, and aren't visible to AI or digital discovery tools.
This fragmentation has consequences. Guest data doesn't flow. Teams are double-handling information. Ancillary revenue opportunities, often the highest-margin parts of the business, are invisible to the booking journey.
As we've written before, AI won't fix this problem. It will expose it. AI-powered discovery, whether through conversational trip planning or recommendation engines, will prioritise what is structured, real-time, and bookable. If a spa treatment can't be booked via API, it simply won't appear in the recommendations.
The hospitality businesses best positioned for the next phase of growth aren't necessarily the ones with the most technology. They're the ones with the most connected technology.
What Guests Actually Want
Understanding the gap starts with understanding the guest.
Today's traveller is mobile-first. TRYBE data shows that 76% of wellness bookings are made on a smartphone or tablet, and 51% happen outside traditional office hours. They're not calling the spa desk at 10am on a Tuesday. They're booking from the sofa on a Friday evening, on their commute, or mid-dinner with friends.
If your booking experience isn't mobile-optimised, fast, and available 24/7, you're not creating friction, you're actively losing revenue.
The data outside wellness tells the same story. A travel industry average of 81% booking abandonment occurs when guests are required to call or email. Compare that to TRYBE's average abandonment rate of 39% across clients, and the commercial case for seamless digital booking is undeniable.
Guests also want value, and they want it delivered simply. Forty percent actively look for bundled experiences rather than building their own from scratch. Too much choice creates hesitation. A well-designed package removes uncertainty and communicates value at a glance. Across TRYBE, 92% of bookings are package bookings, a figure that reflects exactly how guests want to buy.
And once they're booking, they want it to feel personal. According to industry research, 56% of UK travellers plan to increase spending this year, driven primarily by personalised and tech-enhanced experiences. Guests aren't looking to spend less. They're looking for the right experience to spend on.
Where Technology Is Catching Up
There are reasons to be optimistic.
AI adoption is accelerating fast. 89% of hoteliers plan to install new AI applications by 2026 to support guest communication and operational decision-making. Hotels using predictive analytics in revenue management are already outperforming competitors by 4–8 percentage points annually. And 8 in 10 travellers now actively want AI assistance during their booking journey.
Mobile booking is maturing too. It's set to account for 75% of hotel bookings by 2026, and the industry, particularly the forward-thinking segment of it, is building experiences to match.
Dynamic pricing is becoming standard rather than sophisticated. Static rate cards are giving way to demand-led approaches that protect peak periods for high-margin services and respond in real time to booking behaviour. In wellness specifically, TRYBE data shows that Saturday bookings, driven by a more relaxed, indulgent mindset, consistently deliver the highest average spend despite lower overall volume. The operators who understand this are promoting accordingly.
And the integration ecosystem is expanding rapidly. Cloud-native platforms with open APIs are enabling the kind of connected tech stacks that were once only achievable for the largest hotel groups. Best-in-breed systems are increasingly able to talk to each other, syncing data automatically and giving operators a single, real-time view of their guests.
The Wellness Opportunity. And the Tech Imperative
If there's one area where the technology gap is most costly, and most addressable, it's wellness.
Demand has never been stronger. Knight Frank research found that leisure revenues at UK hotels with wellness offerings increased by around 6% per occupied room in 2025, even as the sector navigated rising costs and cautious consumer spending. Wellness drove performance when rooms alone couldn't.
The guest base is also shifting in important ways. The 25–34 age group is now the highest-spending wellness segment. Male spa bookings rose 255% between 2024 and 2025. The global men's wellness market is set to double by 2030. This isn't a niche audience. It's a growing, high-value one, and it books digitally, spontaneously, and on mobile.
Yet in too many properties, wellness still operates like an afterthought. Treatments aren't structured as bookable inventory. Packages can't be assembled and purchased online. Upsells are left to front-desk conversations rather than built into the digital journey. The result: a high-demand category that consistently underperforms its potential.
Closing the gap here is not complex in principle. Spa treatments need to be treated like room types: structured, dynamically priced, and API-accessible. Packages need to be available at the point of digital discovery. Upsells need to be embedded in the booking flow, not added as a manual afterthought, TRYBE data shows that automated upsells consistently outperform manual selling, with an average upsell value of £266 per booking.
When these pieces connect, the results are tangible. TRYBE clients save an average of 22 days per year in admin alone, time redirected to delivery, upselling, and guest experience. And clients moving from legacy software or manual processes to fully digital, integrated operations see revenue increases of 83% on average.
Closing the Gap
The guest has moved. The question is whether the industry moves with them.
The operators pulling ahead aren't waiting for a single solution to solve everything. They're building connected ecosystems, integrating their PMS, booking engine, spa and leisure software, CRM, and communication tools into a unified stack that gives them a single view of each guest and a seamless experience at every touchpoint.
They're treating wellness and ancillary experiences not as add-ons, but as core, revenue-generating inventory. They're designing booking journeys that match how guests actually behave, mobile-first, out of hours, package-led. And they're using data not as a retrospective report, but as a live decision-making tool.
Is hospitality tech catching up with guest demand? In parts, yes. The building blocks are there. But the gap between what guests expect and what most properties currently deliver remains significant, and it's widest precisely where the revenue opportunity is greatest.
The good news is that closing it has never been more achievable.
Want to see how TRYBE helps hospitality businesses bridge the gap between guest expectation and operational reality? Book a demo.
