Artificial Intelligence in hospitality: How Lighthouse AI helps hotel revenue teams reclaim time for strategy

Expert analysts become spreadsheet operators, where instead of steering commercial strategy, they’re stuck doing non-revenue-generating activities. 

This is exactly the gap automation is closing. 

In fact, in a 2024 Lighthouse survey of over 1,200 hospitality professionals, 75% said they expect Artificial Intelligence (AI) to have a major impact on their company’s revenue management strategy within five years.

Except the future isn’t five years away. It’s here.

And, while some hotels are still toying with the idea of AI as an experiment in the margins, others are embedding it into the center of their commercial strategy. Those who dabble may see some efficiency gains; those who commit are transforming how their teams work.

For revenue teams, the change is most obvious in the simplest of places: the daily routine. Hours once spent pulling data or formatting reports can now go to pricing calls, forecasts, and even syncing with sales and other teams. The work is still there, but automation has stripped away the repetitive steps that got in the way of action. So how does that look in real life?

A day in the life of a revenue manager: Before and after AI

In a recent Lighthouse whitepaper on automation, “The New Era of Revenue Management: How AI Frees Up Time and Fuels Growth”, we mapped this out with a simple comparison: two versions of the same workday – one built around manual processes, and one powered by AI. The contrast makes clear just how much time is lost to routine tasks.

Here’s what a typical day looks like in a traditional setup:

8:00 – Report crunch

Pull data from multiple systems, drop it into spreadsheets, run macros, and email reports. That’s an hour gone before analysis even begins.

9:00 – OTB and segment review

Sorting through internal and market on-the-books data takes another 45 minutes.

10:00 – Forecasting

Updating forecasts for occupancy, ADR, and revenue targets eats another 45 minutes.

10:45 – Meeting prep

Building slides and charts for leadership can run to 90 minutes, much of it formatting.

Afternoon

Three-hour revenue calls, more ad-hoc reporting, displacement analysis, and urgent admin tasks. Strategic planning usually gets squeezed to the margins.

Add it up, and you see the pattern:

• 63% of the day on admin

• 20% pulling data

• Only 17% left for analysis

• No real time for strategy

Here’s how that day looks when Lighthouse takes over. With AI-driven automation, the same work looks different.

8:00 – Review reports

AI-driven Smart Summaries deliver pickup trends, key metrics, and plain-language summaries in minutes. They even preempt many of the questions leadership will ask later.

8:15 – OTB and segment review

Internal and market data are already lined up, so the review takes 20 minutes instead of 45.

8:35 – Compset check

Smart Compsets give you a forward-looking view of real competition in five minutes.

9:15 – Meeting prep

Dashboards are presentation-ready. Prep drops from 90 minutes to 20.

Late morning

With routine tasks handled, you have almost three hours back for pricing scenarios, channel mix optimization, or identifying untapped revenue streams.

The impact shows in the numbers:

• 25% of the day spent on admin

• 6% on pulling data

• 38% on analysis

• 31% on strategy

The shift is clear: less time lost to admin, more time spent on analysis and strategy. AI isn’t replacing the work of revenue management, but it is shifting where time is spent, giving more weight to analysis, interpretation, and long-term planning. And it’s that philosophy which sits at the heart of the Lighthouse platform.

Lighthouse as a platform for innovation

As a complete commercial platform, Lighthouse brings together market intelligence, revenue management, and distribution into one place. Over the years, it has evolved through constant feedback from hotel groups, focusing on practical ways to simplify operations and make decisions faster.

“From the beginning, our goal has been to build a platform that drives revenue for our hotel partners,” says Greg Peppel, Director of Product at Lighthouse. “Every new capability starts with a clear understanding of customer pain. It can be tempting to chase the latest technology, but we start by asking: what is the real problem we’re solving? Only once that’s clear do we decide whether AI is the right fit – and sometimes it isn’t.”

That belief guides where and how Lighthouse applies AI today. Automation is applied where it directly removes friction for revenue teams; generating reports, highlighting performance shifts, and surfacing opportunities faster.

“The explosion of new AI capabilities is grabbing headlines, but in a business context, data quality will always be the limiting factor in value creation,” Greg explains. “AI is only as good as the data driving it. High-quality datasets deliver accurate, specific answers. Poor data leads to misleading ones. It’s that simple.”

Behind this precision is one of the most comprehensive hospitality datasets available:

• 1.2 billion flight and hotel searches daily 

• 16.4 million hotels and short-term rentals profiled daily 

• 1.7 billion hotel rates collected daily

This data offers a live, forward-looking view of global travel behavior. For hotel groups, it means every decision is grounded in a complete picture of demand. 

With this foundation, Lighthouse AI delivers real-time performance and market data – far beyond what public sources can provide – giving revenue teams a level of visibility that would be nearly impossible to achieve independently.

That visibility means little unless teams can trust what they see. At Lighthouse, transparency isn’t an afterthought but a design principle built into every stage of AI development. Greg explains:

“We never want AI to feel like a black box,” he says. “Every output should be backed by visible data, so revenue teams can connect the dots and trust the insights they’re acting on.”

In hospitality, AI is often limited to chatbots or bolted-on tools that operate outside daily workflows. Lighthouse takes a different approach. Its AI capabilities are embedded into the tasks revenue managers handle every day.

That’s why Smart Compsets can reveal a hotel’s true competitive set in minutes, why Smart Summaries turn routine reporting into clear insights, and why dashboards come presentation-ready without extra formatting.

Not only does this make the system more convenient, but, by taking routine reporting off the table, Lighthouse gives revenue teams more space for analysis and strategic decisions.

Existing AI capabilities in the Lighthouse platform

This shift toward automation is already visible inside the Lighthouse platform. Across hotel groups, revenue teams are using these tools to cut time on reporting, reduce manual errors, and dedicate more of their day on pricing, forecasting, and long-term planning.

Smart Compset

Traditional competitor sets are often built manually and remain static, even as booking behavior changes. Smart Compset uses live search and booking data to show which hotels guests are actually comparing and booking against. 

This forward-looking view updates dynamically, so revenue teams see their real competition by date, segment, or market shift – not just the properties they traditionally track.

Smart Summaries

Reporting has long been one of the most repetitive tasks in revenue management. Smart Summaries turn Lighthouse data into daily natural-language reports, highlighting key pickup trends, performance shifts, and portfolio metrics. 

They arrive directly in a manager’s inbox each morning, reducing reporting time significantly and providing answers to many of the questions leadership will ask later in the day.

Forecasting and dashboards

Forecasting typically requires multiple spreadsheets and constant reconciliation against actuals. Revenue managers often have to take monthly or weekly totals and spread them manually across individual days and segments, a time-consuming process that needs to be redone whenever assumptions change. 

Lighthouse automates this work: forecasts for occupancy, ADR, and revenue targets can be updated with bulk actions, while segments remain editable. Dashboards are presentation-ready, reducing prep time from 90 minutes to 20 and ensuring stakeholders see consistent, accurate data.

Displacement analysis automation

When a group request arrives, revenue managers often spend half an hour or more compiling data across systems to decide whether to accept or reject it. 

With Lighthouse BI, metrics such as ADR, RevPAR, bookings, and pace are brought into a single view. Displacement analysis runs in minutes, allowing teams to evaluate group requests quickly and with confidence in complete, reliable data.

KITT AI Receptionist

Lighthouse’s acquisition of The Hotels Network (THN) brought new guest-facing automation into the platform. 

Among its tools is KITT AI Receptionist, which uses natural language to answer guest calls and messages instantly in more than 50 languages, around the clock. Every inquiry receives a timely response, reducing workload for on-property staff and improving the guest experience.

Lighthouse continues to extend how AI supports hotel performance. Two new developments already in progress show how automation will take commercial strategy even further in the months ahead.

Looking ahead: The next wave of AI in Lighthouse

Connect AI

AI assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity are becoming part of how travelers plan trips. Yet many hotels remain invisible in these results because the systems rely on incomplete or outdated data.

Connect AI addresses this by structuring and distributing hotel content, including descriptions, amenities, policies, rates, and availability, in a format AI platforms can interpret.

The result is that hotels appear accurately in AI-powered trip planning, with up-to-date information that assistants can recommend and connect directly to booking. 

As more travelers use AI to plan trips, visibility will depend on how well hotel data is structured and shared. Connect AI ensures hotels are represented with the right information wherever travelers are searching.

Smart Insights (in beta)

Revenue teams need a clear view of the changes that affect performance, but identifying them often means reviewing multiple reports – a time-consuming task given the amount of data involved. Smart Insights uses AI to surface the most important shifts in hotel and portfolio performance, such as competitor rates, events, pickup, and pace, and prioritizes them based on potential impact.

The insights are delivered with a simple summary alongside daily KPIs, giving teams context and an overview of performance at a glance. This makes it easier to see what matters most, explore the details when needed, and act quickly.

Shaping the future of hotel commercial strategy

Commercial teams have long been stretched between analysis and action. Too much time lost to spreadsheets and reporting, not enough spent on pricing, forecasting, or aligning with sales and marketing. Lighthouse changes that by automating the repetitive work so teams can focus on what moves performance forward.

Tools like Smart Compset, Smart Summaries, forecasting, displacement analysis, and guest-facing automation already make that shift possible today. Smart Insights and Connect AI build on that foundation, surfacing what matters most and ensuring hotels stay visible in the AI-driven channels where travelers now begin their journeys.

“Every organization sits somewhere different on the adoption curve,” says Greg. “What matters is running projects that can eventually become part of your core commercial strategy. Each experiment strengthens the next. Even if something doesn’t reach production, it builds the muscle for what comes next.”

For Lighthouse, innovation is a continuous process of testing, refining, and scaling, always grounded in real hotel workflows, not abstract technology.

That pragmatic approach reflects why AI adoption isn’t just about the tools; it’s about trust. Teams who understand and trust the systems they use are faster, more aligned, and better equipped to respond to change.

Some hotels are still testing AI on the side. Others are weaving it into daily work across their commercial teams. The ones taking that step are finding a clear advantage: more time for strategy, better collaboration, and stronger results across the portfolio.

“Our focus is helping hotels turn data into action,” says Greg. “That’s where AI delivers real impact – when it frees people to think strategically, not just react.”

For Lighthouse, that means continuing to build tools that make every decision clearer and every hour count.

Curious how Lighthouse AI could help your hotel turn data into better decisions? Get in touch.