How artificial intelligence, labor shortages, and American immigration policy are changing the hotel industry

The Last Concierge: How Artificial Intelligence, Labor Shortages, and Immigration Policy Are Changing the Hotel Industry

The hotel industry has been undergoing a profound transformation for several years, but in 2026 it is becoming clearer than ever that this is no longer just about a technological trend or a temporary labor shortage after the pandemic. Hotels are facing a structural shift in which luxury brands are expanding at the same time, pressure on operating costs is increasing, workers are lacking for key positions, and artificial intelligence is evolving from a supporting tool into a model for organizing business operations. In such an environment, the very meaning of hotel service is also changing: what once rested on visible human presence is increasingly moving to automated processes, digital support, and personalization that the guest sees through a screen rather than through a conversation at the front desk.

It is particularly interesting that these changes are not occurring only in the cheaper or standardized accommodation segment. Quite the opposite, the most aggressive investment announcements are coming from the luxury and lifestyle segment, where hoteliers are trying to get closer to the guest while simultaneously reducing operational pressure. At the end of 2025, Hilton announced that its portfolio of luxury and lifestyle hotels had reached 1,000 properties worldwide, with nearly 500 new ones in development. In March 2026, Marriott announced new expansions in Southeast Asia, including agreements to enter and strengthen luxury brands in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. This shows that global demand for the upper segment of travel has not stopped, but also that such growth is now being built with a different internal organization of work than it was a decade ago.

Luxury is growing, but operational pressure is growing too

At first glance, it might seem that the global expansion of luxury hotels is a sign of a return to the old model in which service is almost completely reliant on a large staff. Yet today’s numbers point in the opposite direction. The American Hotel & Lodging Association, AHLA, states in its 2026 state of the industry report that the sector remains resilient, but under strong cost pressure. According to those figures, gross operating profit per available room remains at about 90 percent of the 2019 level, even though revenues and guest spending are rising. In other words, the revenue exists, but operations are more expensive, more complex, and more sensitive to any disruption in hiring.

At the same time, AHLA estimates that direct employment in hotel operations in the United States should reach about 2.2 million jobs during 2026, with growth of more than 30,000 jobs. The very fact that the industry is growing while simultaneously warning about a shortage of people indicates that the problem is not only the number of open positions, but also the fact that they are difficult to fill. The end of 2025 in the United States was also marked by a survey according to which 65 percent of hotels report staffing shortages, and more than 70 percent have open positions they are unable to fill despite active recruitment. The most pronounced shortages are in housekeeping, at the front desk, in the kitchen, and in maintenance, precisely where the guest feels the quality of service most directly.

For hoteliers, this creates double pressure. On the one hand, they have to open new properties, expand standards, and justify investments. On the other hand, they must maintain the level of service at a moment when jobs are most sensitive to turnover, exhaustion, and changes in the labor market. In the luxury segment, this paradox is even greater because guests are paying for an experience that must feel flawless and personal, while behind the scenes systems are increasingly being introduced that reduce the need for part of human labor.

AI is no longer an add-on, but a response to the shortage of people

At that point, artificial intelligence enters the center of business strategy. In an extensive study among hoteliers and travelers, Oracle Hospitality and Skift already warned that models that had been talked about for years in hospitality are now being activated, but had long remained at the level of pilot projects: contactless check-in, automation, unbundling services from the base accommodation price, advanced analytics, and personalization through digital tools. The essence of that report’s message was not that technology abolishes hospitality, but that hotels are trying to reshape service so that a smaller number of employees can serve a larger number of needs with the help of software, predictive analytics, and automated workflows.

This is now visible in almost every part of the hotel. Check-in and check-out are increasingly taking place through apps, kiosks, or mobile keys. Communication with guests is moving to chatbots and automated messages that take over part of the work of the front desk and concierge services. Revenue systems use algorithmic demand estimates to adjust prices. Operational teams use software for scheduling room cleaning, predicting breakdowns, and managing energy consumption. In the restaurant segment, reliance on predictive procurement and shift optimization is growing. Artificial intelligence is therefore not arriving only as a technology for attractive presentations to investors, but as a concrete attempt to close staffing gaps.

The International Labour Organization warns, however, that the effect of artificial intelligence on work is not unambiguous. The outcome depends on whether an entire occupation or only part of the tasks is automated, how technology is introduced into processes, and whether the employer wants to retain people in the role of supervision, interpretation, and customer relations. This is precisely what is crucial for hospitality. It is not realistic to expect that a hotel, especially in the upper segment, will be fully automated without losing part of the identity of the service. But it is very realistic to expect that many jobs will look different in the future: less routine, more coordination with systems, more digital communication, and more pressure on one employee to cover a wider range of tasks.

What is lost when the classic concierge disappears

The symbol of this change may perhaps be best summed up in the figure of the concierge, one of the last recognizable signs of classic hospitality. Once, the concierge was a person who did not only provide information, but represented local knowledge, social skill, trust, and improvisation. In the age of apps, generative artificial intelligence, and personalized recommendations, a large part of that work can be transferred to a digital system. Today, a guest can get a restaurant recommendation, transportation, a reservation, and a sightseeing plan without speaking to a single person.

Yet this is exactly where the key question of the future arises: is the hotel industry redefining service so that it becomes more efficient, or is it reducing it to a technically deliverable function that loses part of its human value. For a guest traveling for business, arriving late, and wanting to get to the room as quickly as possible, automation can be an advantage. For a guest arriving in a city for the first time, wanting an authentic recommendation, or needing help in a non-standard situation, that same automation can feel cold and limited. The problem is not that technology exists, but how the boundary is drawn between the standardized process and human judgment.

Hoteliers therefore increasingly speak of a model in which technology takes over background and repetitive tasks, while people are retained where empathy, discretion, and the ability to adapt are needed. That sounds convincing, but practice will depend on the budget, ownership structure, and labor market. If there are chronically too few workers, there is a strong incentive to gradually standardize even the areas that were once considered distinctly human. In that sense, the concierge is not just one profession, but an indicator of how ready the hotel industry is to defend the idea that hospitality is not the same thing as accommodation logistics.

American immigration policy further intensifies uncertainty

In the United States, the entire discussion is becoming even sharper because of immigration policy. For years, the hotel sector there has emphasized that it relies on immigrants and on legal temporary work programs such as H-2B and J-1. AHLA openly states that hospitality is a major employer of immigrants and that it is seeking stronger legal hiring channels so that businesses can meet labor market needs. At the same time, during 2025 and at the beginning of 2026, discussions intensified about temporary protected status, work authorizations, and the enforcement of federal immigration measures, which created additional uncertainty within the industry itself regarding labor availability and business compliance.

Part of the problem is not only in the formal rules, but also in the effect such an environment has on the decisions of workers and employers. When the rules change quickly or their interpretation changes, hotels find it harder to plan seasonal and long-term needs. In February 2026, AHLA organized a special briefing for its members on immigration policy and guidelines for employers, in which among the key topics it highlighted federal moves affecting staffing, the consequences of changes in temporary protected status, and the management of H-2 programs. The very need for such crisis guidance shows that the labor issue can no longer be separated from regulatory and political risk.

At the same time, the American government continues to use H-2B as an important valve for seasonal non-agricultural jobs. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, USCIS, announced that for fiscal year 2026, in addition to the statutory cap of 66,000, an additional 64,716 H-2B visas were also opened, but also that the cap for the second part of the fiscal year had already been reached on March 10, 2026. Such data show two things. First, employer demand for legal temporary workers remains very high. Second, even additional caps do not remove the fundamental problem because the need for workers arises faster than the system can provide a predictable response.

That is why it is inaccurate to claim that hospitality is simply replacing people with machines because it wants to. More precisely, it can be said that automation is accelerating where three pressures converge: a lack of workers, regulatory uncertainty, and rising guest expectations. In that triangle, artificial intelligence becomes a way to defend profitability and continuity of service.

The weakening of international arrivals to the United States further complicates the picture

For the American market, the problem is even more complex because changes in the workforce are occurring at a moment when international arrivals are not entirely stable. At the end of 2025, the U.S. Travel Association estimated that the number of international visits to the United States would fall from 72.4 million in 2024 to 67.9 million in 2025, which would be the first decline since 2020. At the beginning of March 2026, the same organization stated that international arrivals were continuing to weaken, with a year-on-year decline of 4.2 percent and nearly one million open jobs in the broader leisure and hospitality segment.

This means that hotels are managing not only an internal hiring problem, but also an external demand problem that is slowing in some markets. When international traffic weakens, competition for every guest increases. And when competition is stronger, the need also grows for the experience to be personalized, fast, and operationally orderly. It is precisely then that hotels most often turn to automation because it promises consistency, faster processing, and more accurate revenue management. But in the long term, the question remains open as to whether guest loyalty can also be built in this way, especially in segments where travelers decide not only according to price, but according to the feeling of service.

The global picture shows that the problem is not only American

Although the American example is often highlighted because of the political visibility of the issue, the labor shortage is not an exclusively American phenomenon. The World Travel & Tourism Council, WTTC, estimated that the travel and tourism sector supported a record 357 million jobs in 2024, and around 371 million in 2025. At the same time, it warns that by 2035 the global labor shortage could exceed 43 million people, while the hospitality industry itself could face a shortage of 8.6 million workers, or about 18 percent below the required employment level. It is especially important that WTTC emphasizes that strong demand will continue to remain for jobs that cannot be easily automated and that depend on human interaction.

That is an important correction to technological optimism. If even industry analyses that strongly advocate modernization acknowledge that human contact will remain essential, then the future of hospitality cannot be reduced to a story about robots at the front desk. Rather, it is about a new division of labor in which the most sought-after employees will be those who can work alongside digital systems, but still provide what an algorithm cannot: assessment of context, calming conflict, cultural sensitivity, local knowledge, and the feeling that the guest has truly been noticed.

The International Labour Organization additionally warns that the effects of AI are not predetermined. The decision of whether technology will mean job losses or their upgrading depends on the way it is managed. In hospitality, this will be precisely the political and business question of the coming years. Will owners invest in retraining employees, higher wages, and digital skills, or will they use automation primarily as an instrument for cutting costs? The answer to that question will determine both the quality of service and the quality of work.

What guests can expect from the new hospitality industry

For guests, the most important thing is that modern travel will increasingly be a combination of high-tech and very selectively human experience. In practice, this means fewer spontaneous contacts, more pre-programmed steps, and an ever greater amount of personalization based on data. A guest may receive a more precise room recommendation, faster handling of administration, and more flexible digital services, but at the same time will increasingly rarely encounter a person who has the time, authority, and space to solve a problem outside the prescribed pattern.

This does not necessarily have to mean weaker service. In many situations, it can mean exactly the opposite: less waiting, fewer mistakes, and more predictability. But the question is how much hotels will succeed in maintaining the distinction between efficient service and a truly hospitable experience. In an industry that has been sold for decades through the feeling of welcome, that is not a cosmetic difference but the core of the brand.

That is why the future of hospitality will not be decided only in investment plans and software implementations, but also in how the industry will respond to an ever rarer and more expensive human presence. The last concierge is not only a metaphor for a profession that is disappearing, but also a warning that hotels are entering an era in which they will have to redefine themselves in relation to the question of what exactly they are selling: an overnight stay, an optimized service, or a human travel experience. For now, only one thing is clear: artificial intelligence, pressure on the workforce, and immigration policy are no longer separate topics, but three faces of the same change that is already reshaping global hospitality.

Sources:
- Hilton – overview of the growth of the luxury and lifestyle portfolio and plans for 2026 (link)
- Marriott International – announcement of new luxury hotel projects in Cambodia and Laos, March 2026 (link)
- Marriott International – announcement of the signing of 10 new hotels in Vietnam, March 2026 (link)
- AHLA – 2026 State of the Industry, key indicators on revenue, costs, and employment in the American hotel industry (link)
- AHLA – survey on labor shortages in hotels and the hardest-to-fill positions (link)
- AHLA – the industry’s position on immigration reform, H-2B, and J-1 programs (link)
- AHLA – material on employer guidance in conditions of changes in immigration policy, February 2026 (link)
- USCIS – current information on the H-2B program and caps for fiscal year 2026 (link)
- U.S. Travel Association – forecast of a decline in international arrivals to the United States during 2025 and expectations for 2026 (link)
- U.S. Travel Association – Travel Insights Dashboard, indicators on demand, arrivals, and open jobs at the beginning of 2026 (link)
- Oracle Hospitality and Skift – research on automation, personalization, and changing work models in hospitality (link)
- International Labour Organization – overview of the risks and potential of artificial intelligence for jobs (link)
- WTTC – estimates of the global labor shortage and future needs of the travel and tourism sector (link)