Hilton's CEO on Why the Fundamentals Still Win in the AI Era
Skift Take
As AI models increasingly decide who gets recommended, Chris Nassetta's view is that the inputs still hold. Reliability, culture, and a lifetime relationship with the guest keep earning the recommendation, even as who does the recommending has changed.
Hilton has spent decades turning reliability into a portfolio of 28 brands and a loyalty engine that spans them. Its President and CEO, Christopher Nassetta, who speaks at Skift Global Forum, September 22–24, 2026, argues that as AI reshapes how travelers search and book, the fundamentals of earning a guest still hold. They have simply found a new gatekeeper. Ahead of his session in New York City, Nassetta lays out the thinking behind that view.
What AI Changes, and What It Doesn’t
Skift: As AI starts deciding who gets recommended and who doesn’t, what have you had to do differently to earn a spot in that recommendation?
Chris: Ultimately, earning a place in an AI recommendation comes down to the same thing that has always earned guest loyalty: being relevant to the traveler and delivering the industry’s most reliable and friendly stays. When we deliver on that promise, it turns into positive reviews that reverberate across the network, including into the AI models that increasingly shape how people search.
At the same time, we’re investing in our own AI capabilities, including the Hilton AI Planner, which combines our property content with local destination information to give travelers more personalized recommendations directly from us as they dream about and book their future trips.
Hilton’s digital advantage is not any single tool or technology. It is the result of a long-term strategy to build an industry-leading proprietary technology platform that allows us to innovate faster, scale more effectively and deliver greater value across a rapidly growing portfolio of hotels.
The Inputs He’s Betting Won’t Change
Skift: How are you thinking about how the traveler/customer relationship has evolved, and what companies need to do to maintain it?
Chris: The relationship has moved from being largely transactional to an intentional, long-term effort to earn and maintain a guest’s loyalty across a lifetime of travel. A guest used to choose us one stay at a time. Now, thanks to the strength of our global network and loyalty platform, customers are choosing Hilton for all their travel needs across family vacations, business trips, milestone celebrations, and more.
Maintaining that relationship seems simple — it’s all about delivering the most reliable, friendly stays — but that takes a lot of work to perfect, and it starts with our culture. When our team members feel like they belong at Hilton, like they’re contributing to something bigger than themselves, they create better guest experiences, which in turn builds loyalty. So in our view, being the best place to work enables us to be the best place to stay.
Why the Portfolio Is Built for a Fragmenting Market
Skift: What’s a behavior shift you’re seeing in your own data right now that would surprise people outside your company?
Chris: One behavior shift that’s been particularly interesting is the strength we’re seeing in midweek business travel, especially from small and medium-sized businesses. For the last few years, much of the conversation has centered on the resilience of luxury travel, but what we’re seeing now is demand broadening across all segments of the market, with SMB travelers increasingly getting back on the road and driving growth in our midscale and upper midscale hotels.
What makes that noteworthy is that it points to a healthier and more balanced travel environment. It’s no longer just the top end of the market driving growth. We’re seeing a much wider range of businesses traveling again, which speaks to the overall strength of demand and gives us confidence in its durability.
Skift: The customer journey keeps getting longer and more fragmented. How has your thinking changed about traveler choice and how your company curates products and offerings?
Chris: Our thinking hasn’t changed as much as it’s sharpened. Travel is more fragmented, people are making choices in different ways, and they want options that fit the specific purpose of their trip. That’s exactly why we’ve built a portfolio of 28 brands — so we can meet guests where they are, across more destinations, more price points and more travel occasions.
Alongside that expansion, we’ve worked hard to build Hilton Honors as the connective thread across our portfolio, giving guests the freedom to explore our brands and destinations while remaining in one relationship with Hilton.
The Long View Behind the Approach
Skift: What is one area that the travel industry doesn’t discuss or pay attention to enough?
Chris: We don’t talk nearly enough about the role travel plays in bringing people together. Conrad Hilton believed hospitality could be a force for good in the world, and I think that idea is just as relevant today as it was more than a century ago when he founded the company. When people travel, they experience new places, cultures and perspectives. Those experiences build understanding in ways few other industries can.
We saw that come to life during this summer’s World Cup, and we’ll see it again when the Olympics come to Los Angeles in 2028. Travelers from around the world stayed in our hotels, connected with our Team Members and experienced communities that may have looked very different from their own. Those interactions might seem small in the moment, but they matter. A conversation in a hotel lobby, a welcome from a Team Member, a shared experience between people from different backgrounds, that’s hospitality at its best. And in a world that can often feel divided, creating those connections may be one of the most important things our industry does.
The Decisions on the Table
- Who owns the recommendation: whether reliability and reviews are enough to win inside someone else’s AI model, or whether owning the model layer with tools like the Hilton AI Planner and a proprietary tech stack is the real moat.
- Scale vs. underpricing: whether that owned-tech moat holds at Hilton’s size, or becomes a cost that pure-play tech partners eventually undercut.
- Culture as an AI-era input: whether “best place to work equals best place to stay” is a durable input to the AI recommendation loop, or a harder story to tell an algorithm than to a guest.
- Fragmentation vs. consolidation: whether 28 brands and Hilton Honors are the right architecture for a splintering market, or stretch the loyalty relationship thinner than a focused portfolio would.
Hear from Christopher Nassetta alongside Accor’s Sébastien Bazin, Uber’s Dara Khosrowshahi, Wyndham’s Geoff Ballotti, Carnival Cruise Line’s Christine Duffy, and more live at Skift Global Forum, September 22–24 in New York.
Reporting originally appeared via Skift Travel News. Read the full source for additional context.