Cliste Hospitality brought together an audience of hoteliers, investors, banks, and other key tourism industry stakeholders at their second annual conference this week in the Dublin Royal Convention Centre, with a full house of almost 400 industry professionals. With a theme this year of Embracing The Future, exploring significant areas of discussion and disruption across hospitality, the focus was firmly on AI, sustainability and future technologies. John Mullins, Executive Chair at Amarenco, an independent green energy producer, highlighted the need for a coherent national energy policy.

Alongside a focused series of curated panel discussions, talks and presentations MCed by Anton Savage, a series of polls were taken the day using the Slido App which found that 54% of attendees said they already use AI in their business to some extent, 21% said they never use it and 25% reported they rarely use it.

Paul Armstrong, future technology advisor, gave a useful and frank presentation on the short term impact of AI in hospitality encouraging attendees to be bolder, figure out the first thing to be solved in their business with AI, start small and expand from there. Speaking after the conference Paul said, “AI has the potential to make and save the Irish hospitality industry hundreds of millions of euros when applied sensibly. The challenge to the companies is to focus on the right jobs for AI to be applied to both inside and outside their businesses. Most of all, the opportunity to be bold and show the world what great Irish hospitality can look like with AI is one not to be squandered.”

The afternoon session included a Hospitality Experts panel with John Brennan, Chairman of Klarnet Hospitality and former CEO of Amaris Hospitality and Jury’s Inn, Geraldine Rosney, former proprietor of the award-winning Killeen House Hotel, Killarney, Mary Fitzgerald, founder and director of Fitzgerald’s Woodlands House Hotel, Adare and Pat McCann, former CEO of Dalata with the key takeaway being that AI can co-exist with traditional human aspect of hospitality.

“We are really happy to have a full house and with the level of positive feedback from attendees,” said Paul Fitzgerald, CEO of Cliste Hospitality, after the event. “The engagement throughout the day with each panel discussion and presentation produced some great learnings, particularly around AI and future technologies. Building on last year’s inaugural conference, we feel that we have achieved this conference’s goal of helping attendees to have a clearer view of both the challenges and the opportunities that lie ahead for hospitality on this island.”

“We were delighted to deliver this second annual conference to our industry colleagues and to build a panel of speakers that could really tackle the theme this year of Embracing The Future,” said Sean O’Driscoll, Director of Hotels, Cliste Hospitality. “It has been an extraordinary few years for the industry and we understand that there are still many challenges ahead, but we hope that attendees have left today feeling they have a deeper understanding of how technology can help their business and understand also where caution is advised.”