Amsterdam has delivered tulips, canals, and more bicycles than most of us can dodge, but this week, it also delivered a sharp wake-up call to the hotel industry. Tech provider Ireckonu is waving a big red flag about the growing tendency of hoteliers to merrily feed guest data into public artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT, and the fallout, they say, could be very nasty indeed.
“We are seeing many hotels experimenting with generative AI without the necessary checks and balances. This is not only a legal risk but also a threat to the trust hotels have built with their guests over years,” cautions Jan Jaap van Roon, Ireckonu’s CEO, with the solemnity of a man who’s watched one too many operators try their luck with Silicon Valley’s latest toy.
The peril of pasting into the void
The problem, in a nutshell, is this: ChatGPT and its cousins are not built to babysit your guest data. Feed them names, room preferences, booking histories, or heaven forbid, passport details, and that information may bounce around servers in jurisdictions with privacy protections as thin as a budget airline seat cushion. Worse still, such data could be retained or even used to “train” future models. Imagine explaining to a regulator why a chatbot in California suddenly knows Mrs Smith from Sydney likes her pillows firm and her martinis dry.
With GDPR fines hovering like vultures and guest trust hanging by a thread, the industry risks more than just red faces. It risks lawsuits, reputational damage, and no marketing budget can sweeten headlines.
The case for private AI
So, what’s the remedy? Ireckonu argues hotels should build and use private, internal AI models trained within their digital ecosystems. Personalised service and streamlined operations can still happen without leaking Aunt Margaret’s check-in details to the cloud.
“Hotels must invest in secure infrastructure, train their staff, and establish clear internal policies for AI use. Tools like Microsoft Copilot, securely integrated into internal systems, offer a much safer alternative than pasting data into public platforms,” adds van Roon.
In other words, stop giving your house keys to strangers and start installing locks you actually control.
A call for global standards
Ireckonu isn’t content with wagging its finger at hotels alone. The company calls for industry-wide guidelines involving hotel groups, technology providers, associations, and regulators to establish standards and share best practices.
“We cannot wait for a scandal to force change. The industry must lead by example and ensure accountability from technology providers and from ourselves,” van Roon insists.
After all, this industry has spent decades perfecting the art of personalised service. Guests expect their privacy to be guarded with the same diligence as the minibar key, not casually outsourced to an American server farm.
Who is Ireckonu?
For those unfamiliar, Ireckonu is an Amsterdam-born hospitality tech specialist known for its middleware and Customer Data Platform (CDP) solutions. Its technology helps unify sprawling hotel data systems, giving operators the holy grail of “one guest, one profile.” From boutique boltholes in Paris to giant chains spanning Asia and North America, Ireckonu has carved a niche in enabling personalised, efficient, and data-driven guest journeys.
The firm, which employs over 75 staff across three continents, is also expanding into personalised marketing automation, another area where AI will play a central role. But they always stress, with privacy as the guiding star.
Why this matters
This is not some abstract technology quibble. Hospitality is built on trust, and guests don’t like surprises, least of all those appearing in a data-leak headline. A warm welcome, yes. Their personal details appearing in a machine-learning dataset, absolutely not.
For hotels, the choice is becoming stark: embrace AI with rigour, governance, and secure infrastructure, or risk seeing the customer trust you’ve spent decades building dissolve faster than a complimentary chocolate in the minibar.
The lesson? Regarding guest data, discretion is still the better part of valour even in the age of artificial intelligence.
By Jason Smith
