Skip to content
MarketScale
Demo
‹ Back to IndustriesHospitality

Smart Tourism Sets the Bar for Cities’ Tech Future

Tourism is a major revenue source for many cities, whether they attract visitors because of theme parks, historic or natural sites, or sporting events. Recently, something else has been drawing tourists to some places: technology. Home to Walt Disney World, Universal Studios and SeaWorld, Orlando, Fla., has little trouble bringing in visitors — a record…

This story was produced through MarketScale. See how Hospitality teams put it to work with Executive Thought Leadership.

Share
Smart Tourism Sets the Bar for Cities’ Tech Future

Get featured

Want to get featured in MarketScale Hospitality?

Create a free MarketScale workspace and get your company's expertise featured across our Hospitality coverage. No credit card, no demo required.

Start free

Tourism is a major revenue source for many cities, whether they attract visitors because of theme parks, historic or natural sites, or sporting events. Recently, something else has been drawing tourists to some places: technology.

Home to Walt Disney World, Universal Studios and SeaWorld, Orlando, Fla., has little trouble bringing in visitors — a record 75 million of them in 2018, to be exact — but Mayor Buddy Dyer wants to make sure their experience in the city, not just the parks, is top-notch.

“To accommodate visitors of that [number], you have to continuously figure out how to use technology,” Dyer said. In fact, in-vehicle GPS navigation got its start in Orlando, helping tourists safely get from the airport to their hotels, and the city was the first to try electronic tolling on highways. Now, Orlando International Airport is pilot testing facial-recognition technology to ease checkpoint crowds for international flights.

Your experts belong here

Every story in MarketScale Hospitality starts with a company putting its general managers, operations leads, and brand teams on the record. Buyers are already reading this topic. The only question is whose experts they find.

Owners and operators buy from people who understand the property, and your teams prove it in their own words.

Get your team featuredSee how it works15 minutes, straight to a calendar.
B2B Weekly

The week in Hospitality, and sixteen other industries, every Monday.

Ten stories, one-line takes, five minutes. Free.

Hospitality: are you visible to AI?

Before they reach out, Hospitality buyers ask AI engines which vendors to trust. Explore how your experts, customers, and partners can become useful content for buyers and AI search.

Free plan

You just read one Hospitality expert. Your company is full of them.

This article was produced through MarketScale. The same platform turns your general managers, operations leads, and brand teams into the articles, video, and social content Hospitality buyers are searching for. Create a free workspace and see it with your own people. No credit card, no demo required.

NPS +73 · 1,000+ creators · 38+ countries

What you get, free

Your own MarketScale workspace, up to 10 people
One professional video edit a month for qualifying companies
Media requests to your crowd, remote recording, AI writing tools
$0, no credit card, nothing that expires

More Hospitality Insights

If a competitor's move triggers your rate change, that is market-based pricing, not dynamic

If a competitor's move triggers your rate change, that is market-based pricing, not dynamic

Lighthouse writer Joe Hanly published a ten-strategy hotel revenue management guide on Hotel News Resource on September 8, ranking real-time dynamic pricing first. Its most useful content is a test: a hotel whose rate changes mostly follow a competitor's move is running market-based pricing, whatever it is called internally. A companion explainer says audit the compset and rate plans first.

  • 01Market-based and dynamic pricing both watch competitors; the line Lighthouse draws is whether a competitor's rate is the trigger or one input alongside local events, booking pace and market trends.
  • 02Properties that have gone years without a structured rate-plan review often carry more active plans than anyone tracks, and those legacy floor rates and stay restrictions sit under any pricing engine layered on top.

Sep 18, 2026

STR: Summer 2025 was the weakest in four years

STR: Summer 2025 was the weakest in four years

STR said summer 2025 was the weakest U.S. hotel summer in four years: as of an Aug. 22 weekly report (with two weeks left), hotels had sold 1.4 million fewer room nights than summer 2024 and top 25 market weekday RevPAR was down 2.3% in mid-August. STR said business travel plateaued while leisure held up weekends. Hotel Dive reported widespread U.S. RevPAR growth in Q1 2026, making 2025 the comparison base.

  • 01Weekday performance is a key read on business travel: in the week ending Aug. 16, 2025, top 25 market weekday RevPAR fell 2.3%, per STR; in that same update, non-metro and rural areas posted a 0.7% full-week RevPAR gain.
  • 02The 2025 demand loss was concentrated, not spread evenly: STR traced 45% of the economy-class decline to 10 markets, with Houston and Las Vegas alone near a quarter of it, so a national average can hide a very different local picture.
  • 03The gap between occupancy on the books and occupancy actually realized, flagged by CoStar in Las Vegas, Houston, Philadelphia and Orlando in June 2025, is a sharper thing for a revenue manager to track than headline RevPAR.

Sep 18, 2026

Aimbridge's LIFT tool flags hotel staffing gaps before the financials do

Aimbridge's LIFT tool flags hotel staffing gaps before the financials do

Aimbridge Hospitality has rolled out LIFT, an in-house labor tool, portfolio-wide. It puts forecasting, scheduling and on-floor actuals into one view, and pilot hotels saw the largest productivity gains in housekeeping and laundry. For owners, Aimbridge positions it as a way to spot staffing variance sooner than waiting for month-end financials.

  • 01Hotel Business describes LIFT as a proprietary tool that Aimbridge has launched across its own portfolio, which turns labor analytics into a point of comparison between third-party operators.
  • 02Housekeeping and laundry were where pilot hotels saw the biggest productivity gains, which suggests demand-driven scheduling tools have the most room to act in departments where daily workload swings with occupancy.
  • 03Aimbridge has not published numeric pilot results; the signal to watch is whether it releases labor-cost or GOP flow-through figures from the full rollout, which would give owners a real benchmark.

Sep 17, 2026

Explore More Hospitality Insights

Read more expert perspectives from across Hospitality.

Browse Hospitality Hub

For Hospitality teams

See how Hospitality teams use MarketScale →

Executive Thought Leadership

Explore Channels

Industry news, analysis, and expert perspectives

Professional AV›Engineering & Construction›Education Technology›Healthcare›Energy›Software & Technology›Retail›Business Services›Industrial IoT›Sports & Entertainment›Transportation›Sciences›Building Management›Food & Beverage›Architecture & Design›Hospitality›Marketing Tech›
Keep exploring

More from Hospitality

Hospitality hubMore expert Hospitality coverage.Explore →Executive Thought LeadershipLead the guest-experience conversation.Explore →LocktonService expertise, on camera.Explore →State of B2B MarketingWhat is working in B2B marketing now.Explore →

For B2B teams

Your experts could be publishing here

Stories like this one run on content MarketScale captures from real practitioners. See how your team's expertise becomes coverage in Hospitality and beyond.

Book a 15-minute demo

Or call us. No forms required. We pick up. 214-945-2512