It’s the world’s largest tech conference, bringing together over 70,000 attendees from 160+ countries and more than 1,000 speakers. We’re going to showcase ääni to the global tech community and connect with hospitality operators who are genuinely curious about what AI voice technology can do for their businesses.
This is a perfect opportunity for demonstrating a practical solution to a problem that costs restaurants, hotels, and spas real money every single day.
Why This Conference Matters for Hospitality
Web Summit brings together an unusual mix of people. You’ve got hospitality operators sitting next to venture capitalists, tech developers speaking with boutique hotel owners, spa managers comparing notes with AI engineers.
That convergence matters because hospitality has a communication problem that technology can actually solve.
43% of daily calls to restaurants go unanswered. That translates to roughly £220,000 in lost annual revenue for an average venue. Your front desk can’t always pick up. Your reception team is busy with guests standing right in front of them. Meanwhile, potential bookings ring out, enquiries go nowhere, and opportunities disappear.
The AI customer service market is projected to reach £38.3 billion by 2030, with 95% of customer interactions expected to be AI-handled by the end of this year. These figures reflect a change in how businesses handle the relentless demand for instant, round-the-clock communication.
One attendee from a previous Web Summit captured something that holds relevance: “What I really like about Web Summit is that you have people from completely different backgrounds. Whether you’re a CEO, investor, startup or student, everyone is on the same page and ready to learn from each other”.
That’s exactly the environment where hospitality innovation happens. Not in isolation, but through conversations between people solving similar problems in different ways.
What We’re Bringing to the Conversation
ääni is an AI phone assistant built specifically for premium hospitality businesses.
It answers calls 24/7 with 98% accuracy, handles bookings, responds to enquiries, and integrates directly with existing reservation systems. It speaks multiple languages, understands context and operates within full GDPR compliance. When someone calls your restaurant at 11pm or your spa on a bank holiday, ääni picks up and handles the conversation naturally.
It’s already working for hospitality venues that couldn’t afford to lose another booking to an unanswered phone.
The Web Summit conference focuses on practical AI implementation rather than speculation, which is important. Companies come to demonstrate what actually works, not what might work eventually. That distinction matters when you’re dealing with luxury hospitality, where guest experience can’t be experimental.
We’re positioning ääni alongside other AI solutions that have moved from development to deployment. This year is being called the operationalisation year for AI. The conversation has quickly turned from “what could AI do?” to “what is AI doing right now?”
For hospitality operators, that means getting hands-on demonstrations with solutions that solve today’s problems – without creating tomorrow’s complications.
Where Hospitality Meets Tech Innovation
There’s a reason major hotel groups like Marriott, Hilton, and Peninsula Hotels have already implemented AI concierge services. They’ve recognised that guest expectations have changed faster than traditional staffing models can accommodate.
You can’t hire someone to answer phones at 3am just in case. You can’t justify full-time multilingual reception staff for seasonal enquiries. But you also can’t afford to miss calls from guests who’ll simply book elsewhere if no one picks up.
This is where hospitality businesses benefit from attending events like Web Summit, even if they don’t consider themselves ‘tech companies’. The innovations happening in healthcare AI, financial services automation, and retail customer experience all share common threads with hospitality challenges. The underlying question is always the same: how do you scale personalised service without compromising quality?
At Web Summit Vancouver earlier this year, much of the discussion centred on AI moving into highly regulated, high-stakes sectors like healthcare and personal finance. Hospitality operates under similar pressure. Get it wrong, and you’ve damaged your reputation. Get it right, and you’ve enhanced every guest interaction without adding headcount.
The gap between what hospitality businesses need and what’s actually available has been narrowing. Voice AI that understands regional accents, booking systems that sync in real-time, responses that sound genuinely helpful rather than robotic. These capabilities exist now, which is why we’re bringing ääni to Lisbon rather than talking about it in abstract terms.
That’s what we’re hoping to find. Not just interest in ääni, but conversations with operators who are thinking seriously about how voice AI fits into their specific operation.
Let’s Connect in Lisbon
If you’re attending Web Summit and you run a restaurant, hotel, spa, or any premium hospitality business, we’d like to meet you.
We’ll be there, available for genuine conversations about how ääni works in practice. We can show you the interface, walk through real call scenarios, and discuss implementation without the usual sales theatre. You can reach us via LinkedIn or message directly through our website before the event, or find us during the conference itself.
For those not heading to Lisbon, we’re happy to arrange a remote demo. The technology works the same whether we’re explaining it in person or over a video call. What matters is whether it solves your specific communication challenges.
We’ll also be sharing insights and observations from the conference as it happens. Web Summit tends to surface patterns about where technology is actually heading, as opposed to where people think it might go. Those patterns often prove useful for hospitality operators trying to make informed decisions about AI adoption.