This episode is part of a series created in partnership with The Hospitality Show Miami where Scott will be speaking next week.What happens when AI stops being a pilot and starts running at the scale of the world's largest hotel franchisor?
In this episode, Scott Strickland, Chief Commercial Officer at Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, returns a year after his first appearance to share which AI initiatives moved from experiment to standard practice across Wyndham's portfolio. Because Wyndham runs a single global reservation system and a centralized tech stack, it can build an integration once and push it to thousands of franchised hotels, then pass the savings and the revenue upside through to owners.
For experienced hoteliers, this is a rare look at how a major brand decides what to build, how it tests, and what the numbers look like once a tool is live.
In the episode we discuss:
One of the more surprising insights is that on recorded calls, human guests often sound more robotic than the AI, because they haven't yet realized the agent can keep up at natural speed. Scott also shares an idea from franchisees that has little to do with AI: turning in-room TVs and Wi-Fi landing pages into a local media network that promotes neighboring restaurants and small businesses.
The conversation also covers the 6,000+ hotel rollout of
Canary's on-property guest messaging, upsells and mobile check-in, how Adora, Wyndham's generative AI content engine, has improved social click-through rates up to six times, why social is now a single-digit share of bookings after starting from zero, how Scott sees AI agents splitting business and leisure booking behavior, and why Wyndham Rewards is betting on everyday redemptions and a fixed-price points structure to keep loyalty simple.
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