Subjects: The good, the bad and the eye-roll, three predictions for how AI will transform hospitality in 2026, glassware, event intelligence: the pricing edge operators can’t afford to ignore
Authors: Olivia FitzGerald, Carey Benn, Phil Mellows, Joel Robinson
The good, the bad and the eye-roll by Olivia FitzGeraldAs the cool breeze rolls in, the windows frost over and festive celebrations approach, operators everywhere are preparing for tighter schedules and higher demand.
Each December, guest volumes and spending soar, but so do guest expectations – and disappointments – with service pressures often leading to a dip in guest satisfaction.
This is why now is a great time to start thinking about which pitfalls most often impact net promoter scores (NPS), and share evidence-based recommendations on how operators can elevate both team morale and guest experience at this critical time.
The bad, the eye-roll
The festive period is the time when the hospitality sector rightly expects its tills to ring and its venues to buzz, but each year, our data at 125 tells us that a paradox plays out. While December routinely delivers the highest guest volumes and spend per head, we also witness a dip in NPS, a telling sign that guest experience is at risk just when expectations soar highest.
From 2024's Christmas Unwrapped report, we found that where the yearly average NPS for a non-festive visit sat at 65, this dipped to 58 during the Christmas period. In support of this finding, our more recent State of the Nation report, looking at consumer behaviour from nearly 26,000 respondents, told us that the average NPS for a “special occasion” also drops to 50. But why?
For most guests, the festive season is one of the most prized stretches on the calendar: special occasions, reunions and rare nights out are treasured. The moments when guests are least willing to compromise – and rightly so. For operators, stakes are not only higher, but the pressure on teams and systems is intense.
This pressure is paired with the current economic climate, where the cost of living is having a bigger impact than ever on guests’ decision making. Data suggests this affects everyone of all ages and locations – 38% of people have cut back on midweek meals, placing an even higher emphasis on how special these occasions are when they do go out.
Value perception has shifted because of this, with value for experience becoming a key measure in place of value for money. So, with all of that in mind, what key areas should we look out for as Christmas approaches?
- Service lapses: in 125’s latest State of the Nation, we found a high correlation between poor service factors and very low (detractor) NPS rates. Among these are drinks wait times, bill payment process and table quality.
- Getting the basics right: During the festive season, guests forgive speed but not food basics – 20% of guests that complained about the “speed of service” still went on to be a promoter compared with only 5% of guests who complained about the over or under cooking of food.
- Ambience and delivery: when choosing where to go, festive atmosphere is almost as important as the food options when guests choose where to go. Out of the circa 24,000 surveyed, only 27% of guests said their visits felt more special than a regular visit during the week commencing 23 December, down by 5% from the week commencing 2 December. When it comes to focusing on these areas, overlook either at your peril.
The good – what can operators do to combat these trends?
That said, the seasonal dip is not inevitable. Operators who outperform recognise that exceptional experiences come down to preparation, focus and investing in people, not just processes. Here are our key recommendations to help teams not only survive the festive rush, but turn high expectations into new, loyal advocates:
- Cut down menu noise: refine festive menus to focus on crowd-pleasers and ensure every team member knows the product inside out. Bear in mind that last year, less than a quarter of guests dined on a set menu, with nearly half choosing the regular menu. Don’t just focus on marketing your festive offering and keep an eye on the service quality of anything you add to not affect other crucial guest experience touchpoints.
- Service rituals: double down on basics: table ready on arrival, drinks topped up, dishes leaving the kitchen together. These are what guests notice most, especially now. According to our report, only 34% of respondents felt as though their drinks were topped up throughout their visit. Not only did this leave room for customer experience detraction, but also creates lost revenue.
- Don’t forget the atmosphere: keep an eye on your feedback and act against any areas that are detracting from your experience overall. Are chairs broken? Is the music too loud? Fixing these issues will not only benefit you during this period, but well beyond.
- Empower your people: happy, well-supported teams serve happier guests. Keep an eye on shift patterns, track both team morale and guest feedback side-by-side, and reward exceptional performance in real time. Our data shows a high correlation between guests mentioning team members who share their knowledge and high NPS. So, investing time with new team members in menu tasting and training can really pay dividends.
- Late bookings: Even if your Christmas bookings are looking slimmer than expected, you shouldn’t always rely on your current projections. Last year, two thirds of all guests booked within four weeks of their visit date, and 40% of all bookings were made within the last two weeks, with 85% of them being for parties of two to eight. So, don’t let any of the above slip, even if you aren’t expecting a landslide of covers – continue to test your booking systems, experience the booking journey that your guest does, and be sure to keep a constant eye on availability.
Every year brings new challenges, but every festive season is also a fresh opportunity to learn, adapt and delight. By focusing relentlessly on people and experience, hospitality can thrive, even when expectations are at their peak.
Olivia FitzGerald is managing director at guest insights platform 125 Data & Insights
Three predictions for how AI will transform hospitality in 2026 by Carey BennArtificial intelligence (AI) has already started reshaping hospitality, but 2026 feels different. After working with 20-plus restaurant and pub groups across 1,800-plus venues, I'm seeing patterns emerge that point to three significant shifts next year.
The real opportunity isn't just about replacing manual work – it's about elevating the experience for both guests and teams.
1. Marketing and sales teams will actually get time back
Talk to any sales and marketing director at a 30-plus site group, and they'll tell you the same thing: their team drowns in inbox management. Fielding enquiries about group bookings. Answering repeated allergen questions. Responding to feedback. Handling changes or cancellations.
One client's marketing team was spending 15-plus hours per week managing inbound emails alone. That's nearly two full working days before they've done any actual marketing. Another client's sales team was spending 40% of its time on enquiries that never converted.
In 2026, AI will take on the bulk of this front-line work – not through chatbots, but via natural, conversational tools that integrate directly with booking systems, CRMs and guest communication channels.
Across our customer base, we're already seeing AI handle 60%-70% of inbound enquiries without human intervention. Response times have dropped from hours to minutes. One team reduced its email backlog from 200-plus messages to under 20 within a week of switching it on.
This isn't about replacing people. It's about stopping your sales team from spending Tuesday afternoon answering "do you do gluten-free?" for the 47th time, when it could get 30% of its week back to plan your Valentine's campaign or analyse why your Thursday lunch covers are down 15%.
The best hospitality marketing teams thrive on creativity, connection and commercial thinking – not inbox firefighting.
2. True one-to-one guest marketing becomes possible (and measurable)
Personalisation has been a buzzword in hospitality for years, but it's been limited to first-name email tokens and vague segmentation. The data's too fragmented, the systems are too clunky and the effort is too manual to do it properly at scale. 2026 will be the year this actually works.
AI can now pull data from multiple sources – booking platforms, feedback tools, loyalty systems and point of sales data – and turn it into something genuinely actionable. Not just “here’s everyone who visited in the fourth qurter” but “here's Sarah, she visits on paydays, always orders a Martini, celebrates her birthday with you every year and hasn't been in for eight weeks”.
Marketing stops being about broadcasting the same message to everyone. Instead, it becomes about personalised moments of relevance.
A guest who usually orders a whiskey sour gets a WhatsApp when a new similar serve launches. Someone who’s dined three times but never orders dessert gets targeted with a limited-edition sweet offer. A regular who always books Friday nights gets early access to a new evening menu.
And critically, this becomes measurable. “We sent 50,000 emails and got 8,000 opens” transforms into “we sent 2,000 highly targeted messages and generated £12,000 in tracked incremental revenue”.
One of our clients is running birthday campaigns that convert at 10% – that's 10% of people who receive a birthday message that then make a booking. Their generic “come back again soon” campaigns convert at 2%. The difference is relevance. Targeted engagement at the right moment costs less and earns more than broadcasting to everyone.
3. Front-of-house teams will walk into service knowing their guests
The front-of-house team is the beating heart of any hospitality business. But it’s often working blind – relying on memory, manual notes or hastily scribbled comments in the booking system. One of the most practical developments for 2026 will be AI-assisted pre-shift briefing tools.
Before service, the manager opens a short, automatically generated brief. It includes who's booked in, their visit history, spending patterns, typical orders, special requests and flags for VIPs or celebrations. It highlights regulars who haven't visited recently and notes which tables tend to drive higher spend per head.
We're currently building this functionality now. We hear it from operations teams all the time: “I spend 20 minutes before service frantically checking systems and trying to remember who’s who. The opportunity to walk in with confidence, and my team knows exactly how to make each service personal, would be a game changer for guest experience.”
Instead of a generic service, teams get context. Table 12 is a regular who loves trying new wines. Table eight is celebrating an anniversary. Table 15 hasn’t been in for three months, so they need a warm welcome back.
For managers, it takes the stress out of guest prep. The AI surfaces what matters, summarises feedback from previous services and flags operational focus points for the day.
Service quality becomes more consistent and more profitable because your team walks in already knowing how to delight today's guests.
The result
AI isn’t coming for hospitality jobs, but it’s here to remove the repetitive work that stops teams from doing what they do best: creating great experiences, driving revenue and connecting with guests.
2026 will be the year AI moves from novelty to necessity in hospitality. The businesses that get ahead will be those that see it not as a shortcut, but as a way to amplify what hospitality does best – creating meaningful, memorable experiences for every guest, every time.
Carey Benn is the chief executive of Guestwise
Glassware by Phil MellowsNormal members of the public call them “glasses”. The trade calls them “glassware”. Already, you start to feel these ordinary everyday objects might be more important than people suppose.
Of course, if it wasn’t for glassware, drinks would fall on the floor. But there’s more to it than that. Many’s the time when I’ve looked at the glass in my hand and sighed. “Something wrong with the beer?” they’d say. No, I’d say, it’s the glass – explaining that’s it’s dirty or the wrong shape or whatever, and that was the end of the conversation.
You’d think those who make a business of serving drinks would be more receptive, but sometimes I wonder. Dirty glassware gives more frequent cause for complaint than bad beer, in my exhaustive experience. Except, unless there’s a definite smear of lipstick or something, you don’t complain. You carry on. And sigh.
Mostly it’s that thing with the bubbles, where the carbon dioxide has attached itself to particles of dust, or worse. Or the head on the beer subsides as swiftly as the mousse on a saucer of Champagne. Probably on account of grease. Although, if you’ve been eating crisps, you might have done it yourself. Have to watch out for that.
So, what I’m thinking is, pubs and bars and restaurants need to elevate the importance they attach to glassware. Not just for beer, but the glass arguably affects the beer-drinking experience in more ways than other drinks, it seems to me.
Take the disappearing head. As I learned on a trip to Buenos Aires with Stella Artois many years ago, drinking lager through a thick head of foam really does make it taste different, sweeter and smoother. I’m not sure why I had to go all the way to Argentina to find that out, but it was a nice lunch anyway.
I’m not going to go on about how to achieve clean glassware because you know all that. There must be a case, though, for pushing it up the agenda among staff. Seeing a bartender check the glass before they fill it would be immensely reassuring.
Another cause for complaint that customers never complain about is the choice of glassware. I am prompted to write on this subject by an uncharacteristic outburst from beer writer Will Hawkes, who produces an essential monthly round up of happenings in London. On a visit to Exale brewing’s new pub, the Black Eel in Dalston, his bounding enthusiasm for what sounds like a brilliant conversion of a grade II-listed pie and mash shop (I must go) is tripped up by, you guessed it, the glass his pint of cask ale is served in: “a dimpled handled jug – the worst drinking vessel on earth”.
He may be right. I don’t know whether jam jar cocktails are still a thing, but now I think of it, I have sent back beer in a dimpled jug and politely requested that it be decanted into a straight, notwithstanding the subsequent loss of carbonation.
Occasionally, bar staff will ask you “jug or straight?”, which I suppose is playing it safe, but does imply that this is merely a matter of personal taste – as that beauty lies in the hand of the beholder. And it’s true that in my hand, the dimpled jug looks plug ugly. Beer guru Rupert Ponsonby once compared it with “a boxer’s swollen lip”, but he also put solid science behind his smack to the kisser.
The disproportionate diameter of the brim, he calculated, means that the drinker is missing out on 70% of a beer’s aroma, and therefore much of the flavour.
This may or may not have been the reason why dimpled jugs, predominant in the 1970s, had virtually disappeared from pubs by the 21st century. To spin some sort of a theory on that fact, perhaps the greater appreciation of beer driven by the Campaign for Real Ale had done for it.
Yet, now it’s back. Although it’s mostly a London thing, I reckon. Why? There’s a certain breed of pub in the capital that’s very concerned about appearing authentic and seems to believe this is authentic glassware in which to serve cask beer, rustic and unrefined.
There’s much to be said about the authenticity of authenticity. Perhaps another time. But it strikes me that these pubs are nevertheless likely to be selling more Guinness, which exhibits a contrasting approach to glassware – modern, clean lines and unabashed branding. Obviously, splitting the “G” is a passing fad, but it points to, again, just how important a glass can be.
Phil Mellows is a leading industry commentator
Event intelligence: the pricing edge operators can’t afford to ignore by Joel RobinsonDynamic pricing gets most of the attention in hospitality, but the biggest driver of demand isn’t a surge model – it’s the calendar. Concerts, match days, school holidays and local events around each site shift footfall in ways that are entirely predictable.
The real question is whether your pricing and menus move with them. Operators are leaving margin on the table every week – not because demand is unpredictable, but because their systems can’t keep up with what’s already known.
Christmas makes this painfully clear. It isn’t a special case; it’s simply the loudest version of a pattern that runs all year. Demand rises and falls around events, yet most teams still struggle to respond quickly because approval cycles are slow, systems aren’t connected and every change requires a mini-project in its own right.
Where operators lose value
Events shape real behaviour: covers, dwell time, spend per head and even product mix. But the operational reality around events is messy. One team is building a seasonal menu and another is creating a matchday offer; marketing is producing assets and EPoS programming becomes the final bottleneck. Menus land late, price changes arrive in patches, and teams spend the first week of December scrambling to fix it. The issue isn’t the ambition. It’s the process behind it – one that isn’t built for speed or variation.
Christmas shows the symptoms, not the cause
December exposes the cracks: scattered systems, manual reprogramming, mismatched price bands and sign-off delays. Operators often make their best margins from festive bundles and premium seasonal lines, but the workflow behind them is fragile. And if December is the only time you switch on an event strategy, you’re leaving margin untouched for the other 11 months.
Event-led pricing without the complexity
One national price band can’t serve a West End site the same way it serves a suburban family pub. A Premier League fixture doesn’t impact every location equally. And a half-term lift in one area can leave another completely flat.
A more intelligent approach is to let events dictate where and when pricing or menu changes matter – without creating more work for teams. With the right event data feeding a connected menu and pricing engine, operators can:
● Lift premium lines ahead of concerts
● Trigger pre-theatre bundles automatically when the pattern fits
● Run family offers only where half-term genuinely impacts footfall
● Adjust local price points without multiplying manual variants
When this becomes systematic rather than ad hoc, the commercial impact compounds. A year-round event engine is far more valuable than speculative surge pricing. It gives operators a repeatable, reliable way to act on predictable demand.
A playbook that scales
A strong event engine has four parts:
1. A single view of every event
National moments, local happenings and micro-events tied to individual sites.
2. Clear commercial rules
Define which events trigger menu switches, bundles, upgrades or modest price adjustments.
3. Frictionless deployment
Push updates to EPoS, apps, websites, kiosks, delivery platforms and print – without the usual approval choke points or EPoS queues.
4. A feedback loop that improves each cycle
See what landed well, what didn’t and refine the approach for the next event.
This isn’t just efficiency. It becomes part of your commercial advantage.
Why this matters now
Margins are tight and demand is uneven. Operators can’t afford pricing or menu decisions that lag behind predictable events. A calendar-led approach gives you a forecasting tool you already possess – you’re simply not using it systematically.
Christmas may be your biggest moment, but it shouldn’t be the only time the business adapts to what’s happening around each site. The calendar is your most reliable pricing lever: predictable, local and, with the right tools, effortless to deploy at scale.
Operators who build event intelligence into their commercial systems won’t just win December – they’ll unlock margin across every season and every location they operate in.
The calendar is already shaping your demand. The question is whether your pricing is keeping pace – not once a year, but every week of it.
Joel Robinson is the founder and chief technology officer at Openr
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