Why Your Hotel Doesn't Remember You Anymore | Agilysys Hotel Technology | ATM 2026 | Praveen Paul
In this interview with Travel And Tour World at ATM 2026, Praveen Paul, Vice President (MEA) of Agilysys, discusses how unified hospitality technology is solving one of the industry's biggest problems hotels forgetting their guests and reshaping guest experience across the Middle East. Key highlights: 1. Agilysys works exclusively with hotels as customers, a purely hospitality-focused tech company. 2. Despite some regional challenges and ATM's schedule having moved a couple of times, the show exceeded expectations, with strong foot traffic and walkthroughs, serving as a great branding exercise for the company. 3. Praveen Paul explains that hotel stays are no longer just about the room, guest experience must be viewed holistically, including F&B, wellness, and other revenue centers, not just bed revenue. 4. Agilysys offers a unified, cloud-native ecosystem (PMS, POS, SBA) that connects all these revenue centers into a single system, rather than disparate, poorly-integrated tools. 5. A key pain point addressed: most hotels "forget" guests after they leave, forcing repeat guests to re-enter the same information on every visit. 6. Agilysys' hyper-personalization strength comes from giving hotel operators a unified guest profile that tracks guest activity across the entire hotel, spa visits, dining, activities, and more. 7. This unified data allows hotels to better understand and personalize the guest experience across every touchpoint, not just room stays. 8. Paul notes that while cities like Dubai have grown rapidly, hotel technology has lagged behind, closing that gap requires systems that communicate well with each other. 9. For Agilysys, success at ATM 2026 was primarily about brand-building, they are a relatively new, growing brand in the Middle East with a limited customer base so far. 10. Key wins from the event included increased brand recognition among hotel groups, meeting hotel representatives face-to-face, and connecting with technology partners also exhibiting at the show. 11. Paul highlights ATM as a valuable platform for bringing the industry together in one place after a long wait, with strong pent-up energy from attendees. About Travel And Tour World: Travel And Tour World is a global travel media platform covering travel, tourism, hospitality, aviation, MICE, cruise, and luxury travel, with readership across 195 countries. [Agilysys, ATM 2026 Dubai, Hotel technology, Hyper-personalization hotels, Unified hotel tech stack, Agilysys VP MEA interview ATM 2026, Unified hotel tech stack PMS POS SBA, Hyper-personalization guest experience hotels, Hotel guest profile data unified system, Agilysys hospitality technology Middle East, Why hotels forget returning guests, Agilysys hospitality tech, Praveen Paul Agilysys VP, Agilysys cloud native ecosystem, Agilysys Middle East hotels, Hotel technology trend 2026, Guest personalization trend hospitality, Cloud native hotel systems trend, ATM Dubai 2026 travel tech, Hospitality data AI trend] #HotelTechnology #HospitalityTech #GuestExperience #TravelAndTourWorld #CloudNativeHotels #MiddleEastHospitality #PraveenPaul #HotelInnovation #TravelTech