BETHESDA, Maryland—Otelier released The 2026 Hotel Operations Index: Progress, Pressure, and the Path Forward, a new industry report developed in partnership with Agilysys and Sage. The study surveyed leading hotel owners and operators to better understand how hotel organizations are navigating system integration, data fragmentation, and AI readiness amid growing operational and financial pressure.
The report found a widening gap between technology investment and real-world impact. While most hotel organizations believe they are making progress modernizing operations, fragmented systems, manual workarounds, and low confidence in data continue to slow decision-making and strain already lean teams.
“The results show an industry that’s clearly moving forward—but not nearly fast enough to keep pace with the challenges hoteliers are facing today,” said Rob Lawrence, chief executive officer of Otelier. “Most respondents told us their data and systems are still fragmented, and meaningful integration remains elusive. That has real consequences for cost control, agility, and the ability to take advantage of technologies like AI.”
Key Findings
Among the report’s key findings, only a small percentage of respondents said that their systems were fully integrated, and even fewer expressed high confidence in their data. Many leaders described their progress as incremental rather than transformational.
“We ran this survey to give hotel leaders a clear, honest benchmark for where the industry actually stands,” said Maggie Mistovich, vice president of marketing at Otelier. “There’s a lot of conversation about innovation and AI, but not enough shared visibility into the foundational work required to support it. This report is meant to ground those conversations in data and help operators prioritize what truly needs to change.”
While the report highlighted industrywide challenges, it also pointed toward a path forward—one grounded in connected systems, trusted data, and automation that meaningfully reduces manual work. Otelier works with hotel owners and operators to help address many of these challenges by centralizing operational and financial data, improving visibility across properties, and enabling smarter, faster decision-making.
