How AIHA Is Building the Future of Hospitality AI

Polydom is contributing to new technical workstreams, while AIHA and HEDNA invite the industry to build an open knowledge base of real-world hospitality AI applications.

As many of our readers know, Polydom is a Founding Partner of the AI Hospitality Alliance, and our Co-founder and CEO, Lana Udalov, serves on the AIHA Advisory Board.

We are sharing two important developments from the AI Hospitality Alliance that demonstrate how the industry is moving beyond general conversations about artificial intelligence and beginning to build the shared technical foundations and practical knowledge required for responsible AI adoption at scale.

Under the leadership of AIHA Founder Ira Vouk, the Alliance has brought together hospitality operators, technology providers, researchers, consultants and industry organizations to collaborate on challenges that no single company can solve independently.

Building the Technical Foundations for Hospitality AI

The first major update is the formation of the AIHA Workstream Committees, created to advance the priorities set out in the Alliance’s 12-month roadmap.

At the time of publication, the initiative includes eight committees, 84 committee seats, 59 individual contributors and 37 companies. The participants include founders, CEOs, CTOs, architects, engineers, product executives, consultants and hospitality practitioners.

The committees will work in parallel to develop practical blueprints, standards, guidelines and measurement frameworks. AIHA states that the resulting work will be reviewed by its Advisory Board and, once approved, published as open-source industry resources available for the benefit of the wider hospitality community.

The current workstreams cover:

agentic protocols adapted to hospitality;
middleware orchestration;
scalable AI platform architecture;
AI-ready data and shared terminology;
AI visibility criteria and performance indicators;
organizational AI readiness;
AI governance and operating guidelines.

A complete description of the areas being addressed is available through the AIHA Technical Standards and Guidelines Task Force.

Polydom CTO Evgeny Chernyshov Joins Two Technical Committees

Polydom CTO Evgeny Chernyshov has joined two of the new committees:

Middleware Orchestration Layer Blueprint

This committee is developing a practical blueprint for how AI systems should coordinate actions across hotel platforms and operational systems.

Scalable AI Platform Architecture Blueprint

This committee is working on a reference architecture for reliable, extensible and scalable AI platforms designed for the hospitality environment.

In his LinkedIn announcement about joining the committees, Evgeny explained why these particular areas are essential.

Much of the current hospitality AI discussion still focuses on the conversational layer: answering guest questions, responding to messages, handling FAQs or deflecting routine inquiries. However, the real technical challenge begins when an AI agent must take action.

It may need to create or modify a reservation, retrieve live availability, write information back to the PMS, coordinate multiple systems, initiate an operational workflow or transfer a situation to a human employee at precisely the right moment.

That is an orchestration and architecture challenge—not simply a chat or content-generation challenge.

Without a reliable orchestration layer, integrations can become brittle. A demonstration that works successfully within one property or a controlled environment may not remain stable when deployed across dozens or hundreds of hotels, technology stacks and operational configurations.

As Evgeny noted:

“If we get the middleware and architecture layers right, everything built on top of them gets easier for everyone—vendors and hoteliers alike.”

Collaboration Across the PMS Ecosystem

This work is particularly significant because senior leaders and technical contributors from several major property management and hospitality platform companies are represented across the broader AIHA Advisory Board and committee ecosystem.

They include:

Mews, represented on the Advisory Board by founder Richard Valtr;
Cloudbeds, represented by founder and CEO Adam Harris, with additional participation in the middleware committee;
Oracle Hospitality, represented by Laura Calin, SVP of Oracle Consumer Industries;
Apaleo, represented by founder Philip von Ditfurth, with technical and product leaders participating across multiple committees;
RMS Cloud, represented by CEO Adam Seskis, with RMS product, engineering and technical leaders participating in several workstreams.

Their participation does not mean that the Alliance is developing recommendations for one specific PMS. Rather, it creates an opportunity to develop shared principles that reflect the realities of different architectures, data structures, integration models and operating environments.

This cross-platform participation is critical. Hospitality AI cannot scale effectively if every connection between an AI agent and a PMS, CRS, CRM, booking engine or operational system must be designed independently from the beginning.

The Practical Perspective Polydom Brings Through Una

This is also the practical perspective Polydom brings to the committees through the continued development and live implementation of Una.

Una is built as an AI digital employee that moves beyond conversation. It understands intent, works with existing hospitality systems, completes reservation and operational workflows, and involves human team members when judgment, authorization or personal attention is required.

Through the implementation of Una across hotels and vacation-rental operations, Polydom has direct experience with the challenges that appear when AI moves from a controlled demonstration into daily operations.

These challenges include integration reliability, data accuracy, escalation logic, human-in-the-loop workflows, differences between individual properties and the need to maintain consistent performance as implementations expand.

Polydom therefore brings not only a product-development perspective to the AIHA committees, but also practical lessons from deploying an AI digital employee within real hospitality technology stacks and operational environments.

AIHA and HEDNA Launch an Open AI Use Case Knowledge Base

Shared technical architecture is one side of the hospitality AI challenge. The other is practical visibility: understanding where AI is already being tested, which business problems it addresses and what results operators can realistically expect.

To support this need, the AI Hospitality Alliance and HEDNA have launched a crowdsourced Hospitality AI Use Case Knowledge Base.

HEDNA is a global hospitality distribution association whose members include hotel companies, technology providers, consultants and other stakeholders involved in hospitality distribution.

Together, AIHA and HEDNA are inviting hoteliers, vendors, consultants, educators and other hospitality professionals to contribute real-world or pilot AI applications from across the hotel technology and operating ecosystem.

As Ira Vouk explained when the initiative was announced:

“The hospitality industry does not need more abstract conversations about AI. It needs practical examples of where AI is being tested, adopted, and measured.”

Mapping AI Across the Hospitality Technology Stack

The new interactive Hospitality AI Use Case Map organizes the hotel technology environment into five major functional areas:

Guest Experience;
Revenue and Business Intelligence;
Operations;
Distribution and Commerce;
Marketing and Sales.

Within these areas, contributors can select the system or technology category most closely related to their use case. The map includes PMS, CRS, RMS, CRM, booking engines, channel managers, connectivity platforms, guest messaging, labor management, housekeeping and engineering, direct-booking tools, digital marketing, business intelligence and many other areas.

Contributors are asked to describe:

the business or operational problem;
how AI improves that part of the hotel operation;
the benefits or results achieved;
the impact on hotel employees, guests or commercial performance;
and, optionally, the technologies or vendors involved.

According to AIHA, an initial use case can be submitted in approximately 60 seconds. The collected results will be aggregated and developed into an open industry resource designed to support education, responsible adoption and shared learning.

The AIHA and HEDNA interactive map allows hospitality professionals to submit real-world and pilot AI use cases across the hotel technology stack. Explore the map and contribute a use case.

Why an Open Use Case Library Matters

Hospitality does not need another collection of broad predictions about what AI may eventually be able to do.

Operators need practical evidence:

Where is AI already working?
What specific business problem does it solve?
Which systems must be involved?
Does the AI only provide information, or can it execute an action?
What role does the human employee continue to play?
What operational or financial outcomes have been achieved?
Can the implementation scale beyond a pilot property?

A shared use case library can help operators identify relevant applications, compare different approaches and learn from implementations already underway.

It can also help the industry identify where common standards, better integrations, clearer governance or new technical solutions are still required.

At Polydom, we see particular value in documenting use cases that extend beyond basic guest communication. These include group reservation workflows, PMS actions, operational task dispatching, policy-based escalation, direct-booking support and collaboration between AI digital employees and human hotel teams.

From Shared Knowledge to Shared Infrastructure

Together, these two AIHA initiatives address both sides of the hospitality AI transformation.

The technical committees are developing the shared architectures, blueprints and guidelines needed for reliable implementation. The AI Use Case Knowledge Base is documenting how AI is already being applied across real hotel functions, technology systems and operational workflows.

Polydom is proud to contribute to this industry-wide effort through:

Lana Udalov’s participation on the AIHA Advisory Board;
Evgeny Chernyshov’s work within the Middleware Orchestration Layer Blueprint and Scalable AI Platform Architecture Blueprint committees;
and our practical experience building and implementing Una as an AI digital employee for hospitality.

We also recognize the work of Ira Vouk, whose leadership has brought together organizations that would traditionally approach these challenges independently, and HEDNA for supporting the development of a collaborative, industry-wide use case resource.

Hoteliers, technology providers, consultants, educators and hospitality professionals are invited to explore the interactive map and contribute a real-world or pilot AI use case.

The stronger the participation, the more useful this shared resource will become for the entire hospitality industry.