Alexa, Go Walk the Floor for Me.

Published 06.10.2025

I’ve said before that AI doesn’t belong in hospitality but let me clear that up.

It doesn’t belong in robots serving guests. It doesn’t belong in tablets staring up at diners at their table. It doesn’t belong flipping steaks or shaking margaritas.

Where it does belong is in your pocket — giving you quick access to information built from real human interaction with guests, teams, and stakeholders.

I read recently that AI will soon change operational management. At first, that sounds scary, especially to someone who’s built a career in operations. But reading between the lines, it actually proves my point. Operations is about being close to people and teams, not glued to a laptop. Out of the office. Off the Zoom screen. Present. Hospitality is about people, and if data can give us sharper insights, great — but the real job is side by side with your team. Mentoring, inspiring, learning. Not firing off WhatsApp messages and calling it a day.

And look, I’ve been around a while — hospitality is in my bones. I’m the old-school operator who could walk into a room and instantly spot what was right and what was wrong. So when reservation systems, touchscreen tills, and expediting screens came along, I was excited. I thought they’d make my life easier. And in many ways, they did. But I’ve always had a terrible memory (I still don’t know my mother’s mobile number). So my workaround was simple: I pulled all that data together, printed it on an A4 sheet, folded it into my pocket, and used it to walk the floor each day.

That scrap of paper was my version of AI. A tool that gave me focus, not a distraction that pulled me away from the floor. It didn’t replace the work — it let me do it better.

And that’s really the point. I love what technology can generate for us operators, but it still has to remain just that — a tool. Something that helps us cut through the noise and stay focused on what really matters: operational hospitality with our teams, our guests, and our stakeholders.

Because hospitality doesn’t live in dashboards or CCTV feeds. It lives in the way you walk the floor, the way you mentor a new manager, the way you make a guest feel like they’re the only person in the room. Data can point us in the right direction, sure — but it’s people who carry it across the line.

That’s why the article I read about AI replacing operational roles stuck with me. Strip away the headlines and it’s not really about machines taking over. It’s about reminding us what operators are meant to do. People. Presence. The floor, not the inbox.

I just wish I’d saved that article so I could share it with you. Instead, I lost half an hour searching my inbox. Seems we don’t need a robot that shakes margaritas — just some kind of magic that actually finds old emails so we can get back to doing the real work.