A Next Level of Understanding the Guest with AI: Synthetic Personas in Hospitality Innovation

At ITB Berlin, one of the travel industry’s leading global gatherings, a thought-provoking panel titled “A Next Level of Understanding the Guest with AI: Synthetic Personas in Hospitality Innovation” took place on Tuesday, March 3, 2026. Among the panelists was our Founder and Managing Partner, Ali Beklen, who joined industry experts to discuss how artificial intelligence is reshaping the way hospitality businesses understand their guests. This post is adapted from this panel and reflects Ali Beklen’s views. It has been edited for clarity and length.

For decades, the industry has relied on traditional personas or archetypes, often static profiles built on assumptions that quickly become outdated as traveler behavior evolves. The panel challenged this long-standing approach by introducing the concept of synthetic personas: AI-generated, data-driven models capable of simulating guest behavior, predicting outcomes, and helping businesses test ideas before bringing them to market. 

Ali Beklen’s philosophy emphasizes the inevitable transition from data-assisted “co-piloting” to the AI Pilot era, leveraging high-dimensional, real-time data to automate complex decision-making in a rapidly shifting digital landscape.

The growing challenge of how hospitality companies can truly leverage the vast amounts of data they collect

Responding to this challenge, Ali Beklen emphasized that turning the vision of AI-driven innovation into real products requires acknowledging a few fundamental shifts in how data behaves today. In particular, he pointed out that data itself has changed significantly: it expires faster, moves more frequently, and has become increasingly multidimensional. 

This means that organizations can no longer rely on static datasets or slow analysis cycles. Instead, they must be prepared to work with constantly evolving streams of information that capture different layers of guest behavior and market dynamics.

The new data challenge: faster expiration, constant movement, and increasing complexity

Considering these three characteristics of modern data organizations often realize that their existing data streams and systems quickly become outdated. As Ali Beklen explained, recognizing these realities is essential before attempting large-scale AI initiatives. From an organizational perspective, adopting technologies such as synthetic personas requires more than technical implementation; it demands a fundamental mindset shift. 

Businesses must rethink how they collect, manage, and interpret data to ensure their systems and strategies are capable of keeping pace with the speed and complexity of today’s information landscape.

When the pace of choices outruns human capacity

An example given by Ali Beklen is the dramatic increase in the number of decisions being made every day. Two decades ago, executives in major companies typically made around 15 decisions per day. 

Today, leaders in large organizations can face around 300 decisions daily, representing nearly a 20-fold increase. While consumers have not yet reached that same scale—currently making around 3 to 5 decisions per day—the growing influence of AI is expected to accelerate their decision-making pace as well. 

This rapid expansion in the volume and speed of decisions creates a new pressure point for businesses: traditional human-driven processes struggle to keep up, making it increasingly necessary to rely on AI-driven insights and predictive models to support faster, more informed choices.

Are hospitality businesses ready for the speed of AI-driven decisions?

Building on this shift, Ali Beklen raised a critical question for organizations: are they ready to handle a dramatically higher pace of guest decisions? As AI tools empower consumers to search, compare, and choose faster than ever, travelers will increasingly expect instant answers, real-time availability, and immediate booking options. 

If a company’s infrastructure, data systems, and operational processes are not prepared to respond at this speed, it risks falling behind. In an environment where guests can make decisions almost at “light speed,” businesses that cannot meet these expectations may simply lose demand to competitors who can.

Another major challenge highlighted by Ali Beklen is the talent shortage that intensified after the pandemic, making it increasingly difficult for hotels to train and scale their teams effectively. As hospitality businesses struggled to onboard and prepare new staff quickly, traditional training methods proved too slow and resource-intensive. 

When hiring can’t keep up with growth

To address this, he explained how his team explored the idea of creating personas representing different hotel roles from revenue and sales teams to housekeeping staff and eventually developed digital twins of these personas. 

These AI-driven models can simulate real operational scenarios and provide a training environment for hotel teams. By training digital personas instead of relying solely on human onboarding, organizations can help leaders maintain service quality, accelerate learning, and support scalable operations in an industry where growing the workforce quickly has become increasingly difficult.

Scalability is the new priority for technology leaders

Scalability must become a top priority for technology leaders, especially CEOs. The pace of technological change is accelerating at a speed humanity has rarely experienced before, and organizations must be prepared to adapt quickly. Beklen pointed out that many current training and operational processes still rely heavily on human-to-system inputs, where people manually feed data and expect systems to learn from it. 

However, this model limits scalability because the quality and frequency of data are still dependent on human capacity. As AI systems become more powerful, businesses must rethink how they structure data flows, training processes, and infrastructure so they can scale efficiently. 

Without this shift, organizations risk falling behind in a market where the ability to adapt quickly and process large volumes of data is increasingly critical to maintaining demand and staying competitive.

Rethinking guest understanding

AI could fundamentally change how hospitality businesses understand and serve their guests. Instead of relying solely on traditional segmentation, the future may revolve around individualized, AI-supported guest profiles. 

Beklen described a scenario where, with the guest’s permission, AI systems could securely share relevant preference data before arrival, enabling hotels to anticipate expectations in advance. In such a model, different AI systems from the guest side to the hotel’s internal platforms could communicate with each other, ensuring that staff already understand a traveler’s needs by the time they arrive. 

This approach could transform service delivery, allowing hotels to move beyond broad customer segments and toward highly personalized experiences shaped by each guest’s unique preferences and behaviors.

The personalization gap: When guest expectations move faster than teams

Building on this vision, Ali Beklen highlighted another challenge facing hospitality organizations: the growing expectation for truly individualized experiences. Today’s travelers are no longer satisfied with generic services; they expect experiences tailored specifically to their preferences, backgrounds, and travel intentions. 

However, delivering this level of personalization across an entire organization is extremely difficult. Hotel staff and travel professionals cannot realistically analyze every individual guest’s needs and respond at “light speed” on their own. 

To bridge this gap, Beklen emphasized the importance of AI-supported systems and trained models that can help teams interpret guest expectations quickly and share insights across the organization. By enabling staff with these tools, businesses can better prepare to welcome guests from diverse cultures, preferences, and contexts while maintaining the level of personalization modern travelers increasingly demand.

When legacy thinking slows AI innovation

Another concern highlighted by Ali Beklen is the mindset gap among leadership teams when approaching AI-driven transformation. In conversations with senior executives, Beklen often observes a tendency to build new initiatives using legacy experience, traditional models, and existing infrastructure. 

However, when it comes to AI, these foundations may quickly become obsolete. Implementing AI is not simply a technology upgrade it requires organizations to fundamentally reset how they think, plan, and operate. According to Beklen, the biggest challenge is not the technology itself but the organizational shift required to adopt it, as leaders must rethink their assumptions, adapt their strategies, and move away from long-established frameworks that can slow down execution.

The ultimate reset

As a practical recommendation for hospitality leaders navigating this transformation, Beklen offered a simple guiding theme: reset. Organizations should reset their mindset, reset their expectations, and reset their timelines. 

In a world where technological change is accelerating rapidly, businesses can no longer plan innovation on multi-year horizons. Instead, they must challenge themselves to deliver in months rather than years, continuously revisiting their assumptions and adapting their strategies. 

By embracing this mindset shift, organizations can foster a more agile culture, one capable of making faster decisions and delivering innovations at a pace the industry has rarely experienced before.

You can find the full panel by clicking here.