Since December 2024, HT editors have been keeping an eye on Las Vegas’ newest hotel attraction: Otonomus Hotel. Scheduled to open in July 2025, the brand believes it will be the first AI-powered hotel in the United States. In an exclusive interview with HT, Otonomus Hotel founder and CEO Philippe Ziade gives us a sneak peek behind the scenes of how this hotel will operate and the technology it has created to ensure it can offer guests a brand-new stay experience.

From Real Estate to Room Keys

Ziade wasn’t always a hotelier at heart. In fact, he was originally a real estate developer and mechanical engineer. However, he saw a financial opportunity after the 2008 market crash to take foreclosed homes and turn them into Airbnb properties. As he managed these properties, Ziade realized that Airbnbs offered a product travelers really wanted—multiple bedrooms and bathrooms in one living space—but didn’t provide a consistent, high-quality brand experience.

“I wanted to provide the best of both worlds. So, I came up with a concept where the entire hotel floor contains interconnected rooms. Then we created an AI-powered booking engine that allows guests to reserve up to six bedrooms. At check-in, AI will assign rooms to the guest and will automatically unlock the connected doors, allowing them access to a multi-bedroom space.”

Ziade’s booking engine uses an attribute-based selling (ABS) model, a concept that has been discussed for years among hoteliers and is gaining traction. The ABS model allows guests to choose from a variety of soft attributes—such as housekeeping frequency and noise levels—to further customize their stay. The technology enables guests to pre-order amenities for their room in advance—such as groceries, pet essentials, and other necessities—ensuring a seamless experience designed with the guest's comfort and convenience at the forefront.

“The AI-powered system and the engine that we created combine luxury-level service with the flexibility and affordability that modern travelers seek today.”

Your Stay, Your Way

During the onboarding process, Ziade’s AI technology seeks to better understand the guest in two ways. First, it scrapes the internet and collects thousands of data points on each guest based on social media interactions. Second, it engages guests in a game to gather more personalized insights. For example, it might prompt: “You’re two questions away from getting a free drink during your stay,” or “Answer three more questions and receive a discount on dinner.” The onboarding process is entirely optional—guests can choose to skip this stage if they feel it's too intrusive. What makes the technology truly special is that it puts the guest in control, allowing them to personalize their experience on their own terms.

These questions are highly personalized. For instance, “Are you a vegetarian?” or “How do you like your coffee prepared?”

“Then the AI takes these results, merges the data with social media insights, and creates a digital twin of the guest that allows for more personalized marketing and interactions from Otonomus. We gain insights into how the guest will behave during their stay, including how much they’re likely to spend, what they’ll spend their money on, and which promotions will be most relevant to them.”

Once a guest arrives on property, the AI continues to track and collect data to refine their profile. It monitors everything from the guest’s preferred room temperature to their language settings in the app, as well as every communication with the hotel’s virtual assistant.

At checkout, the AI assesses how well its predictions matched the guest’s actual behavior and spending. If there is a discrepancy, the AI again uses a gamified approach to interact with the guest, asking targeted questions to understand what happened and why—so it can improve future recommendations.

Building the Brains of Otonomus

Currently, Otonomus Hotels employs 50 engineers who have been developing the hardware and software needed to bring this concept to life. From food and beverage software to the booking engine and the sensors and locking mechanisms for connecting rooms, Otonomus has been directly involved in creating the entire tech stack required to operate the hotel.

“When we started, it wasn’t part of the original plan for us to build all of this technology in-house,” Ziade said. “But we quickly learned that third-party software and hardware technologies frequently don’t communicate with each other. Vendors own their data and don’t like to share it. Our vision wasn’t going to work if we relied on others because we need to be the ones in control of the data—from collecting it to analyzing it.”

This control is especially important in an era where data privacy is paramount.

“Because we control the data, we can be extremely transparent with our guests about how it’s being used,” Ziade explained. “We tell them we’re merely the custodians of this data. If you want to come in and wipe all your data from our system, you can do that at any time.”

The Democratization of Personalization

For decades, hotels have tried to offer guests personalization, but success has typically been limited to luxury travelers, Ziade notes. Today, AI is allowing hotel brands like Otonomus to democratize personalization and make it accessible to all guests. However, this reliance on AI and data should not lead guests to assume their experience will be impersonal or robotic.

“We live in the ‘Augmented Era,’ as I like to call it,” Ziade explained. “None of this tech is meant to replace human interaction or hospitality. The magic comes from combining the personalization that AI can offer with a deeply human touch. No matter how efficient your system is or how much you know about a guest, what they’ll ultimately respond to is an employee’s body language, their smile, etc. And that’s what they’ll get from our staff members—employees who are happy to see them and who know exactly what they like.”