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2023 AAHOA tech pitch competition

AAHOA, the leading hotel owner’s association in the nation, recently celebrated its most triumphant annual convention to date. Held in Los Angeles from April 11-14 this year, AAHOACON 23 showcased a wealth of innovative solutions, culminating in the much-anticipated AAHOA Tech Pitch Competition. Tasked with evaluating a myriad of impressive ideas, a panel of five…

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Key takeaways

01

AAHOA, the leading hotel owner’s association in the nation, recently celebrated its most triumphant annual convention to date.

02

Held in Los Angeles from April 11-14 this year, AAHOACON 23 showcased a wealth of innovative solutions, culminating in the much-anticipated AAHOA Tech Pitch Competition.

03

Tasked with evaluating a myriad of impressive ideas, a panel of five…

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AAHOA, the leading hotel owner’s association in the nation, recently celebrated its most triumphant annual convention to date. Held in Los Angeles from April 11-14 this year, AAHOACON 23 showcased a wealth of innovative solutions, culminating in the much-anticipated AAHOA Tech Pitch Competition. Tasked with evaluating a myriad of impressive ideas, a panel of five judges, experts in technology and hospitality, ultimately crowned Virdee’s guest experience technology platform as the winner. Designed to optimize staff efficiency and boost both profitability and guest contentment, Virdee’s platform stood out as a game-changer for the hotel industry.

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Foundry’s 2026 Cloud Computing Study, cited by CIO, reports IT leaders expect 26% of IT budgets to go to cloud computing in the next year and that 74% accelerated cloud migrations in the last 12 months. At the same time, CIO’s coverage of Robert Half Technology’s 2026 IT salary report shows AI/ML engineers at a $170,750 median salary and a striking capability gap, with only 7% of leaders saying they have the capabilities to complete prioritized projects and 65% expecting to upskill existing staff. Separate reporting from Nextgov on senior appointments in the Pentagon CIO office, and Government Technology’s account of Illinois’ multi-agency data-sharing MOU, indicate large organizations are staffing for cloud capability development, operational excellence, and cross-domain data governance, not just for lift-and-shift migrations. For enterprise operators, the operational consequence is clear: cloud programs are increasingly won or lost in internal platform engineering, adoption enablement, and CFO-aligned governance, because those are the chokepoints that determine whether higher cloud spend converts into usable services and measurable outcomes.

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AI agents are pushing access controls and testing into the data layer

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