AI is moving fast - but most hospitality teams haven't had the space to properly understand what it is, what it can do, or how to approach it in a way that's honest and genuinely useful.

This isn't a sales pitch or a tech demo for its own sake. It's a practical, no-nonsense session for operators who want to cut through the noise, get comfortable with the terminology, and leave with real things they can act on.

Hosted by Travis Fish (Ops Club) and featuring Matt Grimshaw from Youda, this session brings together voices from across hospitality tech and operations to give you a grounded, honest picture of where AI is right now — and where it's going.

What to expect

We'll kick off with an AI fundamentals overview — a plain-English breakdown of what all these terms mean, how they work, and what they are capable of now and in the near future. No jargon, no showing off. Just the stuff you need to know so you feel confident in any conversation about AI.

From there, Matt will walk through the tools you could install this week to get a meaningful productivity boost — the kind of basic tech stack (think Claude, voice-to-text tools, meeting notetakers etc) that any operator or head office team member should have.

The session then takes a three-horizons view: what you can do today, what you should be thinking about over the next 3–6 months, and where this is all heading. The real gains don't come from making individuals slightly more productive — they come from redesigning how work gets done. Agents that handle end-to-end tasks (not just copilots that make existing tools easier to use) are where the meaningful change happens.

You'll hear from additional speakers, including:

🤔 Christian from Tenzo on how reporting and insight tools are evolving — moving from data to recommended actions

💻 Steve from Chance Encounters, an owner who vibe coded his own automations - a real example of what's possible when operators take this into their own hands

🔮 Karan, who has built an AI agent for handling booking enquiries - a genuinely compelling use case for anyone managing inboxes for bookings

There will be time for Q&A, because the questions from the room are always where the best conversations happen.

Who should come

This session is open to anyone working in a multi-site hospitality operation — ops, people, finance, marketing. You don't need a technical background. You just need to be curious, and maybe a little tired of hearing about AI without anyone explaining it properly.

Ops Club Sessions: Practical AI for Hospitality