I spent some time in New York recently, attending both the NYU Hospitality Investment Forum and the Skift Data + AI Summit, and thought I’d share a few observations.
After two conferences where nearly every conversation somehow found its way back to AI, I have a confession:
I’m a little AI’d out.
The energy reminded me of previous technology waves. The internet was going to change everything. Then big data. Then cloud. Then blockchain. The pattern is familiar. The technology is real, the impact is real, but the timeline is usually longer than the conference speakers would have you believe.
One moment stuck with me.
During the Skift conference, a room full of travel executives and technology leaders was asked who had seen meaningful ROI from their AI investments. Very few hands went up.
I don’t know whether those who raised their hands actually measured it, and nobody was exactly fact-checking the responses, but it did make me pause. For all the excitement, urgency, and investment flowing into AI, the room wasn’t exactly overflowing with proven success stories.
That’s not a criticism of AI. It just suggests we’re still early.
My takeaway was simple: pick one or two areas where AI can genuinely move the needle for you or your business, experiment aggressively, and ignore the noise.
Ironically, my favorite session had almost nothing to do with technology.
Hospitality legend Danny Meyer (Union Square Cafe, Shake Shack, 11 Madison Park) sat down with another industry giant, Jonathan Tisch (Loews Hotels and longtime New York tourism leader), for a conversation about leadership, hospitality, and why the fundamentals still matter.
One idea stuck with me: hospitality isn’t just an industry, it’s a business principle. Whether you’re running a restaurant, hotel, airline, bank, or tech company, people remember how you made them feel.
He also talked about his upcoming book, What Could Possibly Go Right? The phrase came from the early days of Shake Shack, when a simple hot dog cart in Madison Square Park turned into something much bigger. His point wasn’t to ignore risk. It was that too many people start with all the reasons something won’t work instead of asking what might happen if it does.
That whole conversation struck a chord, because it was almost the opposite of the AI chatter happening everywhere else. While everyone was focused on what technology might do someday, Meyer was talking about taking smart risks, creating great experiences, and betting on people.
In a week dominated by talk about algorithms, automation, and artificial intelligence, that may have been the most valuable lesson of all.
The technology keeps changing. Hospitality doesn’t.
