Insights hub: explore the latest in work, AI, and innovation in our blog posts and case studies
Five new AI Hospitality Alliance guides recognize contributions from Polydom CEO Lana Udalov and CTO Evgeny Chernyshov, advancing practical guidance for responsible AI adoption in hospitality.
Guests call back, switch channels, and follow up with different employees. Discover how Una's seven-day Continuous Guest Memory helps hospitality teams reduce repeated work, carry context forward, and continue requests without starting over.
A sold-out property doesn't have to mean a lost revenue opportunity. See how ZeeLink lets hospitality operators refer guests to other hosts and earn commissions, and where Una could fit into future connected workflows.
Guests remember experiences, not just accommodations. Discover why Polydom and Explorabout are helping vacation rental managers connect guests with curated local activities and create new commission opportunities.
A guest finds a cheaper rate on Booking.com just before booking direct. Discover how hotels can respond to price objections, compare eligible offers, and keep the reservation journey moving without automatically discounting.
Across 10,096 hours of live operations, Una handled 5,272 guest conversations, created 90 confirmed stay extensions, and generated 6,441 operational records for two UK serviced-apartment operators using Zeevou.
At Avaneo Hotels, Una handles real guest calls, corporate booking inquiries, and routine Front Office requests. See how AI helps the team focus on work that needs a human touch.
The EU AI Act is changing how hotels evaluate AI vendors. Learn what the 2026 transparency rules mean for guest communication, human oversight, and accountability.
Scaling AI across hotels requires more than individual integrations. Explore how two AI Hospitality Alliance initiatives are connecting technical standards with real-world hotel operations—and how Polydom is contributing through Una.
A corporate client at Avaneo Hotels chose Una's booking widget for future reservations. Discover how Una's expanded Apaleo workflows support corporate rates, multi-room bookings, group payments, and guarantee-aware reservation handling.
More AI tools don't necessarily mean less work for hotel teams. Discover why connected workflows, completed reservation actions, and useful human handoffs matter more than chatbot capabilities or integration counts.
A helpful AI reply doesn't eliminate the work behind a guest request. Explore how connected hospitality workflows can reduce repetitive checks, support authorized actions, and give hotel teams more time for meaningful service.
Una by Polydom joins 11 other organizations as a Founding Partner of the AI Hospitality Alliance. Here's why shared standards for AI decisions, human oversight, and interoperability matter to hotel operators—and what Polydom brings to the conversation.
At IMN Short Term Rental Summer 2026, more than 350 industry professionals gathered to discuss M&A, direct bookings, revenue management, AI, staffing, and regulation. Here's what the agenda and conversations revealed about building a scalable STR business.
PMS-native AI can save staff time, but what happens to guest conversations, learned workflows, and operating knowledge when you change systems? Explore the hidden switching costs and three questions every hotel operator should ask before choosing an AI agent.
Applying a corporate discount is easy. Booking the right company, under the right agreement, with the right billing details is much harder. Discover the six checks hotels need before trusting AI with corporate reservations.
Ahead of IMN’s Short Term Rental Summer 2026 in Carlsbad, Polydom explored what mega-event demand, unexpected disruptions, and operational endurance have in common—and why STR growth depends on keeping guest service running consistently.
Not every hospitality AI solution reduces the work behind guest requests. Learn how to evaluate an AI employee for reservation handling, operational context, revenue opportunities, and staff workload before you commit.
Your hotel already has a PMS, messaging tools, and task software. Yet employees still spend hours connecting them. Discover how Una helps move guest requests forward across existing systems without adding another layer of manual coordination.
A group booking can fall apart after the hotel sends a great proposal. Discover the seven handoffs behind group reservations, the three most vulnerable moments, and how to prevent missed follow-ups, unpaid room blocks, and last-minute arrival chaos.
Group booking inquiries can turn into hours of availability checks, room comparisons, and pricing explanations. See how Una's Apaleo integration helps hotels build multi-room offers, explain rates, and move guests toward booking with less manual work.
Hotels are appearing in ChatGPT through travel partners, AI search, and emerging booking tools. But visibility doesn't guarantee revenue. Discover what independent hotels can control to protect direct bookings and convert AI-driven demand.
When a guest couldn't access a serviced apartment late at night, Una resolved the situation without waking Niche's team. Discover how the operator provides 24/7 guest care while reporting 3–5 staff-hours saved daily and less after-hours pressure.
Guesty, Hospitable, and Hostaway already offer AI-powered guest messaging. So when does an STR operator need more? Explore five operational gaps involving voice calls, multiple PMS platforms, disconnected channels, human handoffs, and portfolio-wide visibility.
Your AI answers guests, but revenue can still disappear through poor human handoffs, cleaning failures, inflexible long-stay pricing, and missed upsells. Here's what hospitality operators should fix next.
Behind every successful vacation rental stay is a complex chain of bookings, payments, cleaners, contractors, and building rules. Discover the four coordination failures that make STR operations difficult to scale—and what operators can do about them.
A guest locked out at 3 AM doesn't need a polished chatbot demo. Use four practical tests to find out whether hospitality AI can answer urgent calls, identify the real problem, support staff, and deliver value after launch.
An analytical overview of how Guesty integration improves Una’s performance across direct booking, guest messaging, escalation, and day-to-day hospitality operations.
Live room availability isn't enough to win a direct booking. See how Una and Apaleo help hotels present the right offers, explain rates clearly, and move guests toward reservations without adding repetitive work for staff.
Managing more than 200 serviced apartments means guest inquiries don't stop when the team clocks out. See how Helge Capital used Una to improve after-hours responsiveness, protect staff focus, and report 3–5 hours saved per day.
Your Guesty portfolio may have availability even when no one is free to handle an incoming booking inquiry. Discover how Una helps turn phone calls, WhatsApp conversations, and website inquiries into direct reservations while reducing repetitive guest communication.
A hotel AI assistant can answer accurately and still create guest friction, unnecessary escalations, and extra work for staff. Discover why coaching, property-specific judgment, and controlled improvements matter more than another settings dashboard.
An AI agent that escalates every difficult guest request can increase staff workload, create false expectations, and undermine hotel policies. Real hospitality cases reveal why reliable AI must know when to help, hand off, or politely refuse.
A hotel AI deployment triggered 100 overnight emails. Other rollouts exposed voice loops, blocked messages, and broken formatting. Here's what these incidents teach hospitality operators about protecting guest experience and scaling AI safely.
Hotel software keeps getting smarter, yet employees still have to do the work. Explore the shift from AI copilots that recommend actions to AI autopilots that execute hospitality workflows.
Everything hotel and vacation rental operators need to know about Una: AI guest communication, PMS integrations, reservations, human handoffs, hallucination controls, security, implementation, and real customer results.
Connecting AI to your hotel PMS is only the beginning. See how Una uses live reservation data, supported booking actions, guest communication, and operational workflows to reduce manual work.
An AI chatbot can answer a guest in seconds while leaving hotel staff to complete the booking, update the PMS, or coordinate a service request. Discover how Una connects conversations with operational execution.
Answering guest messages is only half the job. Learn how hotels can connect WhatsApp and website chat to reservations, service requests, and operational workflows with an AI Digital Employee.
Not every hotel AI chatbot can manage reservations, guest calls, and operational requests. Use these 10 practical buying criteria to compare virtual concierges and AI agents before choosing a solution.
Una by Polydom is a voice-first AI Digital Employee for hotels and vacation rentals. Discover how Una handles guest calls, reservations, operational tasks, and human handoffs within existing hospitality systems.
AI-assisted, AI-mediated, and agent-to-agent booking are three different models of hospitality commerce. Learn what each means for hotel distribution, direct bookings, technology, and guest relationships.
Analysis of 15,910 hotel calls revealed how IVR menus can conceal abandoned callers, why city hotels face different challenges from spa properties, and what operators should measure before judging AI voice performance.
Automated guest messages don't necessarily mean automated operations. Learn how AI agents go beyond Airbnb chatbots to support reservations, guest requests, task coordination, and portfolio growth.
STR operators aren't overwhelmed by one major problem. They're overwhelmed by hundreds of small requests, missed handoffs, and repeated calls. Here's how connected AI workflows can reduce the operational burden.
Hotels face a growing challenge: implementing AI often requires expertise their teams don't have. Discover how AI Digital Employees can reduce the operational burden without replacing hospitality professionals.
Una's intelligence doesn't stand still. Discover why Polydom regularly evaluates and upgrades its OpenAI models—and why better reasoning, reliable workflows, and operational consistency matter more than any one model version.
In 2023, Alexander Udalov identified a problem in hospitality: hotels had more digital tools, but people still had to operate them. Here's how that insight led to Una, an AI Digital Employee.
See how Lee Gardens Extended Stay in Orlando used Una AI to generate $80,968 in direct bookings, handle 4,104 guest conversations, and limit human intervention to 1.95% of interactions over 10 months.
Housekeeping teams do more than clean rooms. Discover how AI helps hotels coordinate guest requests, room readiness, and maintenance tasks while keeping staff in control.
A guest can be ready to book and still get stuck between a phone call, a payment link, and a confirmation. Explore four Una updates designed to reduce booking friction and manual coordination.
Behind every smooth guest experience is a chain of operational tasks. Discover how AI agents help hotels manage bookings, guest requests, and routine coordination without losing the human touch.
A fast reply is only the beginning of good guest service. Discover how hotels can connect AI-powered communication with bookings, service requests, and operational follow-through.