Three days at Web Summit Lisbon gave us the kind of clarity you don’t get from a Zoom call or a neat product roadmap. It wasn’t just busy, it was concentrated: the right people, the right problems, and a very consistent pull toward practical AI that actually plugs into operations.
Web Summit itself is big enough to act like a real-world stress test for ideas, with 71,386 attendees from 157 countries, plus 1,857 investors from 86 countries and 2,725 startups from 108 countries. When you put that many founders, operators, and platform teams in the same place, the conversations stop being hypothetical and become very specific, very quickly.
And AI was everywhere. Web Summit reported AI and machine learning as the top industry represented on the exhibition floor, accounting for nearly one-fifth of exhibiting startups. That matters for hospitality because it changes expectations: hotel tech buyers are no longer asking whether AI exists, they’re asking where it fits, how it’s governed, and what it replaces in the daily load on teams.
An important detail to point out, is that Web Summit is built for intentional networking, including curated meet-ups and its Summit Engine matchmaking. That structure shapes the outcome: you don’t just meet people, you end up pressure-testing integrations, pricing models, and partnership routes in conversations that are far more direct than the typical “nice to meet you” conference loop.
Day 1
The Value of AI was Obvious
Day one felt like a repeat of the same pattern, in the best way. We’d explain ääni in plain terms: a human-sounding voice concierge, multilingual automation, and a way to capture revenue that leaks out through missed calls. And the response was immediate. Hotel teams got it. PMS people got it. Founders building adjacent products got it too.
What made those conversations feel grounded is that “missed calls” isn’t a secluded edge case. 40% of front desk calls go unanswered, which is a jaw-dropping number when you think about how many of those calls are booking-intent, changes, upsells, or high-friction questions a guest wants answered now. Once you accept that reality, the logic of AI concierge systems becomes less about novelty and more about basic service coverage.
There’s also another side to this that doesn’t show up in feature lists. Front desk teams are already managing check-ins, walk-ins, queue pressure, guest issues, and back-office tasks, all while the phone keeps ringing. So when someone says, “This is exactly the problem hotels need solved right now,” it’s not a compliment. It’s relief.
Day 2
PMS Talks Got Serious
Day two was where the tone changed from “interesting” to “let’s map the plumbing.”
Most of the day was spent with PMS platforms and PMS-adjacent teams who were actively exploring how to bring AI into their ecosystems in a way that doesn’t create chaos for hotels. The conversations were certainly to the point. They were structured around integrations, data access, workflow triggers, and what “good” looks like when a voice agent moves beyond answering questions and starts completing tasks.
This is the part that matters if you’re reading as a hotel operator or a platform team: voice AI is only as useful as the systems it can safely connect to. It’s actually a point that was made clearly, describing how hotel AI agents need deep integrations into the hotel tech stack, including the PMS, to handle real work rather than just talk about it. In hospitality, “helpful” often means “can it actually do the thing,” not “can it explain the thing.”
That framing shaped the best conversations we had. We talked through two-way data flows for bookings, guest profiles, room status, and upsells. We looked at how automated call handling can connect into real property workflows without creating a parallel universe that staff have to babysit. And we explored what it would take to make ääni feel native inside a wider PMS ecosystem, not bolted on.
PMS teams aren’t dabbling anymore, that much is clear. They’re looking for voice AI partners who can ship, integrate cleanly, and support hotels at scale without turning implementation into a six-month science project.
Day 3
Great Partnerships and Greater Pull
By day three, the focus turned to go-to-market, and honestly, that’s where the momentum became easiest to measure.
We met with potential resellers, hospitality tech partners, PMS integration teams, hotel groups, and management companies. The recurring message wasn’t “AI is exciting.” It was more practical than that: “We’ve needed something like this for years. When can we put it in?”
That’s an important distinction. In hospitality, excitement doesn’t pay for rollouts. Urgency does. The strongest partner conversations were rooted in operational pain: phones that don’t stop, staff stretched thin, and guests who don’t care why a call wasn’t answered.
Web Summit’s networking structure helped here too, because it’s designed to move people from discovery to follow-up quickly through its meetups and matchmaking. So instead of leaving with a pocket full of business cards, we left with specific next steps: follow-up meetings are already requested the next few months, and concrete pathways for integration or reseller discussions.
If you’re a hotel group or a management company, that’s the detail to watch for. “We should talk sometime” is conference noise. “Let’s scope integration and align on rollout mechanics” is the start of a real commercial path.
What it Confirmed
Zooming out a tad, Web Summit validated a few signals that keep showing up in our day-to-day work.
First, AI in hospitality is moving from experimentation toward operations, which lines up with how dominant AI and machine learning were on the Web Summit floor.
Second, platform teams are taking the lead, because the PMS is where the operational truth lives: inventory, rates, reservations, guest records, and the workflows staff rely on.
Third, voice AI is getting serious attention because the phone is still a primary channel for high-intent guest contact, and the cost of missing calls is real. When 40% of front desk calls go unanswered, even incremental improvement can change guest experience, staff load, and revenue capture in a way that’s easy to explain to stakeholders.
If you’re evaluating voice AI for your property or portfolio, here’s the checklist we’d use based on what kept coming up in Lisbon:
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Can it hand off to a human smoothly, without forcing the guest to repeat themselves?
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Can it support multilingual conversations at a standard you’d be comfortable putting on your brand?
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Does it integrate with your PMS in a way that supports two-way data flow, not just read-only lookups?
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Can it trigger real workflows, like logging requests, updating status, or routing follow-ups to the right team?
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Can you measure outcomes you actually care about, like recovered calls, bookings influenced, and time saved?
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What’s the implementation reality: timeline, support model, and what your front desk needs to learn?
From our side at Coir, Web Summit didn’t “change our direction.” It confirmed it thoroughly. AI-driven guest communication is becoming table stakes, PMS teams are actively looking for voice partners who can integrate properly, and ääni is already in the conversations where those decisions get made.