HITEC 2026: Revinate's Ivy targets automation of up to 80% of routine guest inquiries

Hospitality technology's marquee annual event, HITEC 2026, ran June 16–18 in San Antonio and produced a clear through-line: agentic AI has moved from concept to commercial product across both property-level operations and online travel.

Revinate brings decision intelligence to guest communications

Revinate used the San Antonio stage to introduce Ivy, a decision-intelligence layer embedded across its existing platform. According to Hotel Dive, Ivy is built to automate up to 80% of routine guest inquiries — a metric that points to significant potential relief for front-desk and messaging teams fielding high volumes of repetitive requests.

The product reflects a strategic bet that hospitality operators want automation deeply integrated into tools they already use, rather than bolted on as a standalone chatbot. By threading Ivy through the Revinate platform, the company aims to make automated responses contextually aware of a guest's profile and history.

Routine inquiries — check-in times, amenity availability, Wi-Fi credentials — consume a disproportionate share of staff attention. Redirecting up to 80% of that volume to an automated layer frees personnel to focus on higher-complexity service moments that are harder to systematize.

Priceline's Penny extends the agentic push to online travel

The agentic momentum at HITEC was not confined to property management software. Priceline's assistant Penny arrived as a parallel signal that the online travel sector is racing toward the same architectural shift, with the assistant designed to handle both customer support cases and search discovery within a single interface.

The dual function is notable: support and discovery have historically been siloed workflows, served by separate tools and teams. Penny's design collapses that boundary, suggesting Priceline sees agentic interaction as the primary surface through which travelers will both find and manage bookings.

For hospitality technology vendors, the competitive implication is direct. As OTA platforms make AI-driven assistance native to the booking experience, property-level operators face growing pressure to match that fluency in their own guest communications.

What the HITEC announcements signal for operators

Taken together, Ivy and Penny illustrate how the industry's center of gravity is shifting toward systems that can reason and act on behalf of users, rather than merely retrieve information. Operators attending HITEC 2026 faced a market in which two very different types of platforms — CRM-driven property tech and consumer-facing OTAs — are converging on the same foundational idea.

For hotel technology buyers, the near-term question is less about whether to adopt agentic tools and more about where to start. Revinate's approach of layering intelligence into an incumbent platform lowers the integration barrier, while Priceline's investment in Penny raises the bar for what travelers will increasingly expect from any hospitality interaction.

HITEC has long served as a barometer for where hospitality technology investment is heading. The 2026 edition made clear that agentic AI is no longer a speculative category — it is the organizing principle around which major vendors are now building.