Hey folks, Adam Harris here, founder and CEO of Cloudbeds.

My wife Kelly and I both use Claude every day. She asks it about clothes. I ask it about wine. We both ask it about life: the cabinet guy, the kids’ soccer schedule, who’s feeding the snake.

The thing driving me insane: our two Claudes couldn’t talk to each other.

So one Saturday, I built the layer that let them. We voice-memo into a shared thread, an AI agent picks it up, logs everything, sends us a daily planner. Really easy to build.

What I built wasn’t a smarter AI. The AI was already smart. I built the connective tissue. That was the whole game.

That’s exactly what’s been missing in hospitality.

A hotel is a coordination problem dressed up as a building. Front desk tells housekeeping. Housekeeping tells maintenance. Revenue tells distribution.

Most AI in hospitality works in isolation. A chatbot that doesn’t know the room is mid-clean. A pricing tool that doesn’t know a discount is about to fire.

Last week a hotelier built an agent on our API. He gave it one sentence: “Create the cleaning schedule for April.” And it pulled every booking, caught a room conflict, fixed it through the API, drafted bilingual staff emails. Three minutes. His take: Day 1 was setup. Day 2 was proof.

He didn’t get early access. He just opened our API. Because Cloudbeds is the connective tissue; thirteen years of one unified data model, every department coordinating in real time, ready for an agent to act on. That’s the difference between AI that runs your hotel and AI that confidently makes things up.

Same thing Kelly and I figured out at the kitchen table. The AI is already smart. It needs the whole picture: your kids, the contractor, the snake. Or your front desk, housekeeping, revenue calendar. On one platform. In real time. Or it’s guessing.

If you’ve been waiting for permission, this is it. Just make sure what’s underneath is worth trusting.

What will you build? 

Onward!

Adam

Our podcast, hosted by Sébastien Leitner, is back and going deeper, asking tougher questions, and challenging the comfortable answers. 

The first few conversations are live and feature Suzanne Speak (Radisson Hotel Group) and Vipul Dayal (Entrepreneur & Hospitality Expert).

Listen & subscribe

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For French Cowboys, growth starts with restraint. What began with two founders spotting overlooked, “memory-soaked” properties has turned into a portfolio of seven design-forward hotels, each with its own identity, rooted in its town.

Their approach is simple: don’t force a brand onto a place, uncover what’s already there, and bring it back to life.

Read the full story

Good ideas are meant to be shared. Pass it on. 

Hey folks, Adam Harris here, founder and CEO of Cloudbeds. I’m going to start pulling back the curtain on what we’re seeing across the industry. Here’s what’s been on my mind.

A few months ago, my family and I were planning a trip to Montana; our first one taking the kids! I had a rough idea of what we needed. And without really thinking about it, I opened Claude.

I typed something like: “Family-friendly lodge in Montana, near hiking, not a resort, good for kids who want to be outside all day.” It gave me three options in plain language, and provided the tradeoffs to each.

Part of me was delighted. This is genuinely useful. But another part of me (the part that serves hoteliers every day) immediately thought about the lodges that weren’t in that answer.

And I have a right to be worried for you.

According to our State of Independent Hotels report, the share of U.S. travelers using traditional search engines for trip planning fell from 51% to 36%. Use of generative AI platforms more than doubled. The rules of visibility are being rewritten faster than most operators realize.

The Montana properties that surfaced in my results had one thing in common: they’d made themselves legible to systems that read the internet differently than humans do. Which means they had consistent information across platforms, strong review volume, and descriptions that actually answered the specific question being asked. We cover this in depth, along with a lot more, in our State of Independent Hotels report, because most operators have no idea if they’re even showing up. 

The lodge we ended up booking in Montana was exactly what I’d described. The owner had no idea I’d found them through an AI assistant. They had no idea they were even playing the game, and yet, they were winning it. 

That’s what I want for all of you.

Onward!

Adam

Let me help you cut through the noise. Here’s a few things I’m paying attention to:

Hotels spend more than ever to attract guests, only to lose them after one stay. OTAs keep the relationship. Hotels keep paying the commission.

But it doesn’t have to work that way.

This playbook shows how independent hotels can turn scattered guest data into meaningful relationships, repeat bookings, and long-term revenue.

Download playbook

“Cloudbeds allows me to control my own technology, my own marketing, and my own guest experience — all in one place.”

For Vipul Dayal, going independent wasn’t just a business decision — it was personal. After years under a franchise, he reimagined Hotel 1550 as a boutique property with its own identity, taking full control of pricing, brand, and guest experience.

But fragmented systems slowed him down. After switching to Cloudbeds, direct bookings nearly doubled (8–10% → 18%), while new campaigns and upsells unlocked additional revenue, giving him the flexibility to move faster and run the hotel on his own terms.

Read the full story

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