DISCOVERING
     HOSPITALITY

Hospitality is more than food, drinks, hotels, and restaurants—it is the art of creating experiences, building relationships, and turning passion into a meaningful career. Behind every successful hospitality business is a story of vision, resilience, creativity, and a willingness to keep learning.

The more interesting question is not whether AI can perform the receptionist's tasks. It is which tasks hotels will decide no longer require a receptionist at all—and what happens to the role when those tasks disappear.

Early in 2026, we decided to follow the career progress of a young Filipina whose lifelong dream has been to become a Hospitality professional.

During my staycation at Splendido Tagaytay Hotel and Country Club a few months ago, I had the privilege of meeting its Executive Chef Victor Legaspi whose culinary creations stayed palpable in my palate.

For beverage directors, this is the moment to start asking suppliers harder questions about site, harvest timing and cellar technique, rather than waiting for the finished wines to arrive on a sell sheet.

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that belongs only to the hospitality floor. It settles into the lower back after ten hours on tile, lingers in the wrists after carrying trays stacked three plates high, and shows up behind the eyes after a double shift spent smiling through complaints about cold coffee and slow kitchens.

Traveling around England for the past month taught me a lot about cheeses; although I knew some things, there was still some info that was new to me. Here are some of the things I learned about these delightful ones that I simply had to enjoy with a glass of chilled white.

Early in 2026, we decided to follow the career progress of a young Filipina whose lifelong dream has been to become a Hospitality professional.

Every reservation, stay, dining experience and preference is recorded somewhere. Yet if those insights fail to reach frontline employees at the moment of service, they deliver little value.

Wine has a habit of presenting itself as a finished thing. Pour it correctly, serve it at the right temperature, pair it with the appropriate dish, and the experience completes itself.

The State of Hospitality 2026: Sydney Edition, released by Bertoni Hospitality, found that 54% of hospitality businesses were either breaking even or operating at a loss over the past three months despite maintaining customer demand.

Wine has a habit of presenting itself as a finished thing. Pour it correctly, serve it at the right temperature, pair it with the appropriate dish, and the experience completes itself. This is, broadly speaking, true of the finest bottles in the finest circumstances. It is not, however, the whole story of how wine has been consumed across most of its history.

As artificial intelligence reshapes every corner of the modern workplace, Hilton's landmark workforce report offers a timely reminder: the competitive advantage that will separate industry leaders from the rest is not technology, it is the irreplaceable power of human connection.

In much of Britain's professional drinks world, cider occupied an awkward space: tolerated, occasionally celebrated in a rustic sort of way, but rarely taken seriously as a category capable of competing with fine wine. I was born in Cardiff City in Wales, and have always appreciated a good West Country cider, so am happy that, it seems, that era is quietly but definitively coming to an end.

The best sommeliers possessed an almost mythical ability to remember vintages, monitor drinking windows, track inventory, anticipate guest preferences, and maximize profitability from a cellar that often represented hundreds of thousands—or even millions—of dollars in inventory.

After sixteen years running hotels around the world, I've learned that every great stay begins not in the lobby, but in the hiring room.

At the center of the debate is a fundamental question: Can the Government raise additional revenue from tourism without undermining one of the country's most important economic sectors?

Across Asia, a profound transformation is underway in aviation. Premium carriers are doubling down on luxury, low-cost airlines are aggressively expanding into secondary cities, and governments are investing billions in airport infrastructure to stimulate tourism growth. These shifts are doing far more than changing how people fly. They are influencing where hotels are built, which destinations attract investment, and how travelers experience hospitality across the region.

Across much of Asia, domestic and short-haul regional travelers now account for the majority of hotel demand, the majority of repeat visitation, and increasingly, the majority of marketing return on investment.

The hospitality industry is undergoing a significant shift as operators increasingly embrace connected technology to create seamless guest journeys, improve operational efficiency and strengthen customer loyalty.