AI in hotels: 91% use it, only 28% have a real plan

The new h2c report lands with one of those numbers that says a lot without saying everything. Out of 113 hotel chains surveyed for 2026, 91% already use AI in some form. Read that again. Near total penetration. The interesting bit is not the 91. It is the 28% that has a company-wide strategy behind it, according to the study shared by Hospitality Net. So most chains are dabbling, and a minority are actually building something coherent.

The barriers h2c flags are the usual suspects, and none of them are exotic. Skills gaps inside the organisation, and integration challenges with the existing stack. Translation: the AI tools show up, the team does not quite know what to do with them, and nobody wired them into the PMS, the CRS, or the revenue system. That is where the gap lives. Not in the tools.

My read as an editor: this is actually good news wearing a slightly awkward outfit. A 91% adoption rate tells you the sector has stopped debating whether AI belongs in hospitality. It is there. The task now is the boring, valuable middle. Pick two use cases, put a real owner on them, connect them to the systems that move money, and measure. My bet is the chains that do that in the next 18 months will be the ones everyone else is copying at HITEC 2027.