We continue our series of selected materials dedicated to tourism entrepreneurship alongside DinPort.ro collaborator Deniz Tüfekçi (deniz@seventur.com.tr / +905322827758), a highly reputable international specialist and consultant in the hospitality industry, with a career spanning over four decades built at the very core of Turkish tourism. Developed during the peak expansion period of luxury resorts, he promotes an integrated management model where hospitality is viewed as both a rigorous financial discipline and a state philosophy. Recognized in specialized publications across Romania and abroad for his pragmatic analyses, Deniz actively collaborates with regional investors to implement operational audits right from the architectural sketch phase, restructure hotels facing financial deadlock, and calibrate pre-opening budgets. Reflecting his extensive footprint in the industry, his professional track record also includes serving as the founder and president of the Young Hostel Owners Association of Turkey, alongside authoring numerous specialized business articles. For hotel owners looking to optimize their businesses, his team remains open to discussing specific goals and the unique characteristics of each property.
For today, he proposes a short debate on how international tourist flows and business strategies shift under the pressure of globalization. A central idea from these conversations remains deeply relevant: in tourism, technology is merely the vehicle, while direction and profitability are dictated exclusively by the quality of management and the depth of the applied strategies. For Turkish experts, hotel management is not just a profession; it is a rigorous discipline that they have mastered by living it at every single operational level for many decades. Through this systematic approach, Turkey has achieved the status of the fastest-growing country over the last five decades and the nation with the most hotel beds in the world. Along the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts, as well as in major cities like Istanbul, they have built some of the best resort complexes in the world and highly successful businesses, setting a clear standard for the global industry.
Within this context of an in-depth analysis of hospitality industry mechanisms, we present the translation of an exceptional editorial piece by Erdal Kurtuluş, a renowned Turkish specialist and consultant with over 35 years of experience in hotel management. Although previously published in the specialized press of a friendly nation, its relevance is undeniable, which is why we believe it can highly inspire local entrepreneurs in the field. The Turkish expert points directly to a major vulnerability among operators in the digital era: the critical confusion between merely owning an online system and actually knowing how to manage it to generate true profit. It is a mathematical, concise, and incredibly lucid breakdown that we provide for our managers who want to understand where their property’s revenues are actually slipping away.
The full text is attached below:
Erdal Kurtuluş – Artificial Intelligence in Hospitality: Who Will Manage Sales — Humans or Machines?
A new era has begun in hospitality. Artificial intelligence is no longer just a topic for technology companies; it has become an important part of hotel sales and revenue management. But in the future, will hotels be managed by people or algorithms?
For years, successful hotel sales depended on experience, market knowledge, and the ability to set the right price. Today, however, we have artificial intelligence systems capable of analyzing millions of data points in seconds.
Booking.com, Expedia, Agoda, Hotelbeds, channel managers, PMS, and revenue management systems… Technology was already part of the hotel industry. But with artificial intelligence, we are moving beyond simply automating operations. We are entering an era in which technology also supports business decisions.
So, what will artificial intelligence change in hotel sales?
First and foremost, pricing.
By analyzing demand, occupancy, competitor rates, historical reservations, cancellation trends, flight activity, and major events in the city, AI can help determine which room should be sold, at what price, and on which date. Information that once required a hotel manager to spend hours working through Excel spreadsheets can now be available in seconds.
And pricing is only the beginning.
Artificial intelligence can identify which distribution channels generate the highest profitability, which agencies carry excessive commission costs, which markets produce stronger revenue, and when room rates should be increased or reduced. It can monitor B2B and B2C rate differences, detect rate parity violations, identify unnecessary discounts, and alert management to potential revenue losses.
Guest communication will also undergo significant changes. Reservation inquiries, multilingual correspondence, quotation preparation, booking modifications, and many routine guest requests can increasingly be handled automatically.
But the real question is: Do we still need people?
Absolutely. But the industry will increasingly need professionals who understand their work, rather than people who simply perform repetitive tasks. Artificial intelligence can analyze data, but it cannot always understand the full commercial reality behind a business relationship.
The strategic value of a long-standing travel agency partnership, the expectations of an important guest, or the impact of an unexpected market development cannot always be measured by numbers alone. An algorithm may recommend lowering room rates. An experienced sales manager, however, may recognize that such a decision could damage the hotel’s brand positioning and long-term profitability.
Will everything become automated?
Many routine operations probably will. However, sales strategy, crisis management, customer relationships, negotiation, and commercial accountability will not simply disappear. The real transformation will not necessarily begin with reducing staff numbers. It will begin by redefining what hotel employees actually do.
Employees who once spent their days entering rates, checking reservations, and preparing reports will increasingly need to become professionals who interpret data, supervise systems, and make informed commercial decisions.
Hotel owners also have an important responsibility. Purchasing artificial intelligence software does not automatically create an effective sales management strategy. A system operating with inaccurate data, poor pricing strategies, or insufficient human supervision can automate losses just as efficiently as it automates sales.
The Bottom Line
The most successful hotel of the future will not necessarily be the one with the most technology, but the one that uses technology most effectively. Artificial intelligence will not completely replace human expertise. However, professionals who know how to use AI effectively will gain a significant advantage over those who continue relying exclusively on traditional methods.
Perhaps it is time for the hospitality industry to stop asking: „Will artificial intelligence take our jobs?” and start asking a much more important question: „Why are we still spending so much time doing work that artificial intelligence could already handle?”
21 cititori.
