Ron Swidler on RMWorldTravel: AI Agents, Modular Construction and the Next Hotel Brand Extension

Our CEO, Ron Swidler, joined the October 17 edition of RMWorldTravel to talk about where hotel companies are getting it right. His through-line: the next advantage will not come from another sub-brand. It will come from owning the guest interface, building faster and extending loyalty beyond the hotel.

Robert Carey opened with a complaint most frequent travelers share. There are too many hotel sub-brands, and it is hard to tell which belong to which parent. Ron Swidler did not argue. The confusion is real, he said, and it reflects the strength of the loyalty programs the large hotel companies have built. Every new flag is one more place to earn and spend the same points.

That exchange opened Ron’s “Chief Travel Leader” conversation on RMWorldTravel with Robert & Mary Carey and Rudy Maxa, a nationally syndicated travel radio show carried on more than 630 AM and FM stations. In about ten minutes the conversation covered four questions owners, developers and brand executives are working through now: where the brands are putting their growth, what AI changes about the guest relationship, why hotel companies are moving into cruising, and whether modular construction has finally become real.

Ron’s answers share a pattern. In each case the opportunity is already visible, the first movers are already moving, and the cost of waiting looks like a mistake the industry has made before.

Brand growth is going to lifestyle and to new formats

Asked where hotels are getting it right, Ron pointed to the shift toward lifestyle and toward activations built for each location rather than repeated across a portfolio. The growth in branded lifestyle and boutique hotels, he said, comes from brands trying to create something specific to each market. “I give the brands a lot of credit for evolving their offerings to be a bit more unique for each setting.”

He also credited the diversification into new formats, including apartment-style offerings such as Apartment Collection by Hilton or Apartments by Marriott Bonvoy.

Our read for an owner weighing flags on a new project: the format decision now matters as much as the brand decision, and the activation plan for the specific location matters more than either.

The next OTA moment is the AI agent

“AI is the main focus of our business right now,” Ron said when Robert asked how we use it. We have written software to streamline our own operations and connect what was previously unconnected inside the company, and we are building platforms to serve developers, operators and brands more efficiently. AI is also how our 35-plus years of project work becomes something our teams can search, and how an early vision of a project can be shared with a client to get buy-in before the expensive work starts.

The bigger point was aimed at the hotel companies. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta and Apple are all working on next-generation travel agents, AI assistants that help a traveler plan a trip. Ron’s question: “What will the hotel companies do to create their own agents, to create the interface?” The opportunity he sees is a hotel company’s own agent that guides a guest from their past travel preferences, so the guest contacts the brand rather than a third party.

Then the warning: “If they don’t, frankly, they might follow the pattern they followed with the online travel agents, where they didn’t see the threat of online booking until it was too late.”

The interface is the asset. Whoever’s agent the guest talks to first sets the terms of the booking, and the hotel industry already knows what it costs to let someone else hold that position.

Cruising is a brand extension with a loyalty engine attached

Robert raised the growing connection between cruise operators and hotel companies from a traveler’s seat, having come to cruising later in life through Seabourn and now Regent Seven Seas. Ron, also a late convert, made the business case plainly: hotel companies should be expanding into cruising, especially at the high-demand luxury end.

He gave two reasons. The first is brand extension. “Think about it as a brand expansion and extension for those companies, particularly in global travel markets where some of the U.S. hotel brands are looking to get a deeper foothold.” The second is redemption. Points drive which credit card a traveler carries and where they stay on business. “Wouldn’t it be fantastic if the hotel companies also had the means to allow people to redeem their points on luxury cruises?”

Robert noted that it is already happening. The loyalty program, both agreed, is what will drive it. The ship is the product; the loyalty loop is the strategy.

Modular construction has moved from buzzword to a 30 percent saving

Asked about new-build trends, Ron acknowledged that lighting quality has improved as LED became affordable and available. But the trend he called most interesting is modular. “I know we’ve heard the buzzwords around modular for a really long time, but we’re actually doing it on a couple of projects right now, where we’re using offsite manufacturing to save over 30 percent in time and cost.”

The scale is smaller than people assume. One project is about 56 rooms; all of its interior walls were prefabricated offsite, shipped and craned into place. On other projects we are working with fully designed and built cabins, trucked over the road and set in place at properties in Yosemite, Sedona, Stowe and Mammoth. “I think the age of modular construction is finally arriving.”

Robert recalled a Manhattan hotel assembled from craned-in room modules roughly 15 years ago, when the method still looked unusual. Ron’s view is that adoption is now driven by cost and time, and the benefits have started to outweigh the cost. The decision that matters for an owner is timing: offsite manufacturing has to be chosen before design begins, because the design has to be drawn for it.

What the four have in common

Each of these is a place where hotel companies either already moved early or still can. Lifestyle brands, cruise extensions and offsite manufacturing are producing returns for the companies that committed first. The hotel-owned AI agent is the one that has not happened yet, and it is where the OTA lesson applies most directly.

Three decisions worth making now:

• Which interface your guests will use to plan their next trip, and whether your brand is in it.
• Whether the next project is being designed for offsite manufacturing or just priced conventionally.
• What your loyalty currency can buy beyond a room night.

Listen Now: Ron Swidler on RMWorldTravel, October 17, 2026. The full “Chief Travel Leader” conversation runs about ten minutes.

Quotes lightly edited for clarity.