In this episode of DRUID Talks, we sit down with Marco Correia, CIO at Mercan Properties, to Discover why hospitality and travel companies are turning to AI, learn the roadmap for successful AI adoption in hospitality, and see real-life examples of how companies are leveraging AI to boost productivity and customer experiences.

Kieran Gilmurray:

Hi, my name is Kieran, and I’m an automation and AI expert with many decades of experience. Welcome to today’s episode of DRUID Talks.

I’m thrilled to have Marco Correia, Chief Information Officer of American Properties, joining us to discuss hospitality tech.

Marco, welcome. How are you today?

Marco Correia:

I’m doing very well. Thanks for the kind invitation. Looking forward to exchanging ideas with you.

Kieran Gilmurray:

Marco, I’m excited about this, not only because you started in hotel management and worked every role, from barman to waiter to operations, but I remember you once told me you fell in love with IT and transitioned into that. There’s not much you haven’t done. For our audience, would you mind introducing yourself and telling us how you got started with AI?

Marco Correia:

Of course. I started in hospitality in the late ’80s and early ’90s, on the hotel management and operations side. As you said, I’ve done a bit of everything: barman, waiter, receptionist, night auditor, front office manager. Back then, hotels had a few computers, and I was managing those. I saw a business opportunity and started a small consulting firm in the mid-’90s supporting local hotels in Portugal. Later, I joined Orient Express as IT director for Portugal, climbing the corporate ladder until 2018, finishing as global head of IT. After some consulting, the pandemic changed everything. In 2021, I was invited to join Merckin as CIO, and here I am. My AI journey, like many others, really began in 2022 with ChatGPT. We were aware of RPA before, but AI became a key part of our story at Merckin.

Kieran Gilmurray:

Why Merckin? You must have had other options. What excited you about them specifically?

Marco Correia:

Several reasons. Personal choice, better work-life balance, and exciting projects. Merckin is a multi-brand hotel asset manager and operator: Hilton, Marriott, IHG, and others. Managing multiple brands with their standards is challenging but rewarding. The human factor here is amazing.

Kieran Gilmurray:

It’s always nice to find a home. You mentioned many great hotel brands, I’ve stayed in all of them, so maybe I’m due a discount!

Why are hospitality and travel companies so interested in Generative AI and Conversational AI?

Marco Correia:

Hospitality tends to lag behind other industries. Suddenly, we need to leapfrog and catch up. Everyone’s talking AI now. Hospitality is a people business, not about replacing humans with robots but helping humans do their jobs better and more efficiently. We face labor shortages and low-value repetitive tasks that demotivate staff, especially younger generations. After the initial buzz around general tools like ChatGPT, the industry realized it needed something more solid. That’s when Merckin chose a platform approach, DRUID, which changed the game.

Kieran Gilmurray:

Some develop bespoke AI solutions instead of choosing ready-built, supported platforms. Why did you choose the platform approach?

Marco Correia:

Several reasons. First, patchwork solutions lead to headaches. People often forget data security and protecting digital assets. That’s rule #1. Second, multiple AI tools create a huge, fragmented catalog. I love DRUID’s single-agent approach: behind the scenes multiple specialized agents (for HR, AR, marketing), but the user interacts with one agent. Third, guardrails, controlling data and outputs. Large language models (LLMs) can hallucinate errors, so integration with LLMs alongside tight control of your own data is vital. Finally, why reinvent the wheel? DRUID has native integrations with Salesforce, Office 365, Dynamics, and more. Patchwork means building all that yourself: costly and slow.

Kieran Gilmurray:

Exactly. Let the experts build the expert platform, so you can focus on your business and change management.

Is there a roadmap for successfully adopting Generative AI?

Marco Correia:

Yes, in my opinion, there are three fundamental pillars:

Education: teach your people what LLMs are, what prompts mean, and get rid of fear and bias. AI helps; it doesn’t replace.

Alignment: senior management must link business goals with AI strategy. They don’t need to be AI experts but must support AI initiatives aligned with strategic goals.

Ethics: especially in hospitality with vast private guest data, ethical data usage and behaviour is crucial.

Kieran Gilmurray:

That’s comprehensive: tech, business case, and responsible data use. Recently I heard of a company running 203 pilots but couldn’t tie most to business cases: a CFO’s nightmare!

Have you got real-life hospitality AI use cases?

Marco Correia:

We do. At Merckin, we’re early but past experimentation; we call it the crawl-walk-run approach. We started two projects, not pilots but with clear objectives. First, HR: we’re growing fast, but HR isn’t keeping pace. We launched an AI agent to handle repetitive, low-value HR questions like holiday balances or tax declarations, integrated with HR systems and Office 365. Second, marketing: we trained GPT in the corporate voice, but with multiple brands and channels (Hilton voice, Marriott voice, LinkedIn posts, Instagram content), we needed a platform to handle multi-brand, multi-channel content generation. Third, data insights: hotel brands don’t give API access, so we extract reports (CSV, XML) daily via RPA and AI, centralize data, and instead of building hundreds of dashboards, we have an agent that answers natural language queries about occupancy, revenue, etc. I saw a live demo at a DRUID event in London; it was impressive. Giving users the power to query data conversationally is game-changing.

Kieran Gilmurray:

And in a way, they understand it better, too.

Marco Correia:

Naturally. Conversation is conversation.

Kieran Gilmurray:

Is AI technology expensive?

Marco Correia:

It’s valuable, not very expensive. Like any new tech, prices will fall as adoption grows. The ROI is amazing, the time savings and benefits pay back costs quickly.

Kieran Gilmurray:

Almost an odd question; it’s about value, not cost.

Marco Correia:

Absolutely, it’s about value.

Kieran Gilmurray:

What advice do you have for hospitality and travel companies implementing Generative AI, based on your experience?

Marco Correia:

Train your people, train, train, train. Align AI with business strategy; senior management buy-in is key. And adopt a platform approach, not a patchwork of tools. Otherwise, you’ll end up with a messy ecosystem that’s impossible to control. Reduce tool count, concentrate efforts, and get better ROI with a platform like DRUID.

Kieran Gilmurray:

I hear that a lot: companies come to me to fix the mess after trying the opposite. Marco, thanks so much today. I learned a lot about hospitality and travel tech. I love the diverse use cases, especially the marketing one. Many think Conversational AI is just chatbots, but Generative AI is far more powerful. With a clear business case, AI isn’t expensive; it’s indispensable.

Sometimes our imagination limits us more than technology. Thanks for all the insights!

Marco Correia:

Thanks for having me. Great talking with you.

Kieran Gilmurray:

My pleasure. Thanks to everyone listening today. We’ll see you next time on DRUID Talks. Thank you all!

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