5 ways online training can attract and retain talent across all levels of the workforce

By Drew Smith

The hospitality industry is knee-deep in budgeting season, and there is no better time to begin equipping hotel teams with the right tools and knowledge to operate efficiently, deliver seamless guest experiences, and maintain brand consistency. One of the most essential components of workforce communication is the Learning Management System (LMS). Today’s technology providers are redefining the way hotel teams are continuously trained, and new, intuitive tools contained within modern LMSs are gaining traction across the industry.

Because hotel operations are inherently complex, with multiple departments working together in real time, communication needs to be consistent and error-free. But high turnover rates and language barriers can make that a challenge. This is where user-friendly training tools become invaluable.

Benefits of Online Training

Online training enables management and Human Resources teams to onboard new staff quickly while reinforcing consistent procedures across departments. Using a self-guided, online training portal, operators can introduce team members to workforce automation tools, enabling them to learn at their own pace. This is especially helpful for properties that have frequent new hires or seasonal workers, as it minimizes downtime and ensures employees are up to speed quickly.

With an online learning hub, managers can assign role-specific training modules and track progress. Staff can complete interactive tutorials, watch video walkthroughs, and access support resources from any device. This flexibility is crucial in an environment where people are constantly on the move and may only have short windows for training.

An intuitive interface, real-world application examples, and the thoughtful design of training content are key to success. Many companies feature generic or overly technical documentation. This is not beneficial; staff want tools that are practical, visual, and written in hospitality-friendly language. Seek out a platform with role-specific training paths — for instance, front desk agents and engineers see only the tools they’ll use relevant to their tasks.

Training materials should contain real-time learning and continuous updates to reflect system enhancements and new features. Users should not be left to figure out changes on their own; new tutorials should be rolled out in tandem with software updates, ensuring no one is left behind.

Make Training Fun

Research shows that gamification is one of the most successful methods for motivating employees to actively participate in training. This process turns learning into a game by assigning points or badges to employees as different training levels are completed. Rather than perceiving training as a mandatory task, gamification makes it interactive, enjoyable, and goal-driven.

As people climb up the leaderboard, they gain recognition from their peers and managers. This can foster friendly competition and encourage continuous improvement. Instead of training being perceived as passive or mandatory, gamification makes learning fun, and it fosters friendly competition and peer recognition. By encouraging continuous improvement and recognizing effort with certifications, everyone wins. Employees stay motivated throughout the learning path. The organization achieves higher course completion rates. And certification feels like a reward and recognition of effort, not just a compliance requirement.

Meeting People Where They Are

People want to learn on their own schedule without lengthy in-person sessions. Managers, too, appreciate the ability to track completion and ensure accountability. Equipping staff with training tools that are simple, clear, and accessible is key. Multilingual support and mobile accessibility also help overcome language and device barriers, further simplifying training across diverse teams. In an industry where time, clarity, and consistency are everything, easy-to-use training tools are proving to be a game-changer.

Here are 5 ways online training can attract and retain talent across all levels of the workforce:

1. Streamlines Onboarding with Speed and Consistency

The initial phase of learning on the job can be overwhelming. Online training allows new team members to:

·   Start learning immediately — even before their first day.

·   Learn at their own pace, revisiting content as necessary without feeling rushed.

·   Access standardized, consistent information across all departments and properties.

·   Receive role-specific training — focusing only on what’s relevant to their job from day one.

New hires should be able to receive role-specific guidance through step-by-step tutorials, videos, and knowledge checks. This eliminates the guesswork, reduces the burden on managers for in-person instruction, and allows employees to build confidence faster.

2. Enhances Flexibility and Accessibility

Online training meets employees where they are:

·   It’s mobile-friendly, so staff can train during downtime or from different locations.

·   It supports multiple languages, making it inclusive for diverse workforces.

·   It offers visual and interactive content, which is easier to absorb than text-heavy manuals.

This flexibility is especially attractive to younger workers and tech-savvy employees who expect digital tools to be part of the workplace. It also removes barriers for those with non-traditional learning styles or limited prior training experience.

3. Attracts Talent with a Professional, Supportive Environment

Today’s workforce — particularly Millennials and Gen Z — looks for companies that invest in their development from day one. A strong online training program signals that the employer:

·   Values employee success and growth

·   Provides structured support for advancement

·   Cares about making work easier and more rewarding

By promoting these training tools during recruitment and orientation, hotels can differentiate themselves in a competitive labor market and appeal to workers seeking a long-term opportunity.

4. Increase Retention by Reducing Frustration and Burnout

When employees are properly trained and feel equipped to do their jobs, they’re more likely to:

·   Perform better, with fewer mistakes

·   Feel confident and empowered, leading to greater job satisfaction

·   Stay longer, because they’re less stressed or confused by unclear expectations

Online training helps employees continuously develop their skills. Access to resources and updates keeps teams engaged, reducing turnover caused by frustration or lack of support.

5. Supports Managers and Improves Team Integration

Online platforms enable managers to:

·   Monitor training progress and completion

·   Identify knowledge gaps early

·   Onboard multiple people simultaneously without overwhelming supervisors

·   Ensure employees are equipped to use tools effectively, maximizing the company’s investment in technology.

This makes the integration of new hires into the team smoother, more scalable, and more effective, improving morale and collaboration for everyone.

The bottom line is this: Today’s Learning Management Systems ease onboarding by making it faster, clearer, and more accessible while also helping employers attract forward-thinking talent and retain workers through ongoing support and development. It is not just a training tool — it’s a strategic advantage.

Agentic Hospitality’s Brad Brewer to explain why these three actions are essential for hotels seeking to thrive in the AI era at Destination AI Conference next week in Washington, D.C.

[LOUISVILLE, Ky.––September 23, 2025]––Hotels are at a crossroads. For decades, they’ve leaked valuable guest data, surrendered the booking journey to third-party platforms, and watched lifetime loyalty slip away. At the , Brad Brewer, Co-Founder and Chief AI Officer of , will deliver a keynote showing how hotels can break free with three simple but powerful actions: Retain. Reclaim. Reinforce.

In a session titled, Agentic Hotel Distribution: Owning the AI Era of Travel, Brewer will outline a protocol-first vision powered by the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to help hotels:

• Retain the conversion details they’ve been giving away for decades. Hotels leak their most valuable data daily—guest intent, cart actions, loyalty behavior—while OTAs monetize it. Agentic AI ensures hotels own every click, query, and preference.

“It’s like keeping the blueprint of your customer instead of letting someone else sell it back to you,” Brewer says.

• Reclaim the guest journey from intermediaries. AI-native orchestration puts the booking button back on the hotel’s surface, giving guests personalized, loyalty-aware journeys instead of generic OTA funnels.

“This isn’t about another widget or chatbot. It’s about reclaiming the journey from discovery to checkout,” Brewer says.

• Reinforce direct bookings by building loyalty and lifetime value at scale. Every interaction becomes fuel for upsells, repeat visits, and loyalty growth, strengthening hotels’ long-term resilience.

“Direct bookings aren’t just more profitable — they’re the foundation of lifetime value,” Brewer says.

 is the inventor of. He has more than 20 years of experience in travel tech and AI, and he pioneered theto help hotels bypass traditional online travel agencies (OTA’s) for direct, personalized revenue. His company, Agentic Hospitality, is redefining hotel distribution for the AI era with protocol-first infrastructure that empowers properties to regain control of guest data and booking channels. Its flagship platforms—the Agentic Hospitality Cloud and —equip hotels of any size to compete with global OTAs and reclaim ownership of their guest relationships.

“When hotels retain the signals, reclaim the journey, and reinforce their own booking channels, they move from dependency to resilience,” Brewer says. “That’s the only way to win in the AI-native travel landscape.”

The next era of hotel distribution won’t be won by OTAs or legacy systems. It will be owned by hotels that embrace Agentic AI. In this Destination AI session, attendees will discover how AI-native surfaces, loyalty portability, and regulatory shifts are creating a rare opening for hotel independence. Real-world examples, including —a catalyst of Agentic Hospitality—will illustrate how even small properties can now compete head-to-head with global platforms.

Vital Prediction

“By 2026, an independent hotel—not Marriott, Hilton, or Expedia—will be the first to reach one billion loyalty-aware interactions, powered by open MCP distribution and personalization at web scale,” Brewer says.

His three-step call to action for hoteliers is clear:

1. Adopt MCP to make (ARI) universally accessible and AI-ready.
2. Deploy for hotels and resorts to deliver contextual, loyalty-aware booking flows.
3. Apply the Agentic Hospitality three R’s to break OTA dependency and build resilience.

“Hotels that act now will own the AI era of travel. Those that wait will fund the intermediaries of the next 20 years,” Brewer says.

To learn more about Agentic Hospitality and its flexible deployment-as-a-service models, Tag Manager enabled AI assistants, and AgentSite, visit

This month in Washington, D.C., , Co-Founder and Chief AI Officer of , will deliver a stern warning to hoteliers: “Seize agentic hotel distribution now and become indispensable, or don’t, and remain invisible.”

In a presentation at the titled: “Agentic Hotel Distribution: Owning the AI Era of Travel,” Brewer will explore how autonomous AI agents, real-time personalization, and structured hotel data are reshaping distribution, loyalty, and profitability for the next decade. He will challenge hoteliers to confront the seismic shift underway in travel distribution as booking migrates from websites and apps to AI-native platforms. He also will discuss how hotels can build an AI-native commerce layer today that will become the default layer for all future bookings.

“Travel is shifting from websites and apps to AI-native surfaces where the conversation is the booking,” Brewer said. “AI is not an add-on—it’s infrastructure. And if hotels don’t own it, they won’t survive. With new , travel preferences will only need to be set once, and the web will adapt around them. Every rate, room, local activity, and perk will be filtered through persistent, personalized logic. Hotels that act now can anchor that experience in their own AI stack. Those that don’t will hand off the guest journey to third parties.” 

Brewer, a hospitality technology innovator, is transforming how hotels and resorts compete in the AI era. He has more than 20 years of experience at the intersection of travel, AI, and structured data, and has pioneered agentic AI systems that give hoteliers control of their agentic hotel distribution, loyalty, and guest personalization. A recognized industry voice, Brewer led critical contributions to Schema.org standards for hospitality, ensuring hotels and resorts could surface rich, AI-readable data across search and booking platforms. Under his leadership, Brewer launched the TravelOS Model Context Protocol (MCP) and —tools that were inspired by the need for direct conversational commerce and loyalty-aware AI personalization among Brewer Digital clients such as global travel brands Travel + Leisure Co., Drury Hotels, Red Lion Hotels, and G6 Hospitality. 

In his presentation, Brewer will:

• Trace the industry’s reliance on the OTA XML standard in 1999 that handed Expedia, Booking, and Google effective control of hotel distribution. Today, OTAs and Google capture more than 60 percent of hotel digital demand, leaving hoteliers burdened with high commissions, little ownership of guest data, and weakened loyalty.
• Unveil a NEW playbook — powered by Agentic Hospitality’s AI-native infrastructure — that gives hotels the ability to reclaim the guest journey. By leveraging Model Context Protocol (MCP) and AgentSite endpoints, hotels can capture guest intent, score and route that intent with SAR + MCP’s Intent Matrix, and seamlessly convert queries into direct bookings, upsells, and loyalty engagements.
• Highlight the aggregator MCP story as a real-world example of orchestration in action.
• Share findings from Universal Orlando Resorts, one of the world’s most competitive resort markets. Despite millions invested in guest experience, Universal was found to be missing essential structured data — including LodgingBusiness, HotelRoom, Offer, and Review schema — as well as real-time inventory, rates, and availability markup. The result: AI systems cannot “see” their offers, forcing AI-native queries like “show me Orlando suites near Volcano Bay with family perks” to default to OTAs. Ads control search today; it's broken and hotels have given up on paid-to-play.
• Explain how Agentic Hospitality protects hotels in the AI era: shielding profitability by blocking high OTA commissions, safeguarding guest data for long-term marketing and engagement, and restoring loyalty by enabling hotels to fully own repeat business and direct bookings.
• Argue that new regulatory frameworks, such as the Digital Markets Act (DMA), are not working with suppliers; rather they are causing chaos and change by gatekeepers in the European Union, further disrupting the OTA and Google duopoly and opening new opportunities for hotels to reclaim share. It’s time for a course correction—one that actually protects suppliers, not gatekeepers and intermediaries.

“AI-native infrastructure is the North Star for hotels,” Brewer said. “Without it, hoteliers will always be renting their guests from someone else. I encourage all Destination AI attendees to join the movement to own the AI era of travel. We’ve already done it for Brewer Digital clients Wyndham and the Houstonian Hotel, Club and Spa. The next success story could be yours.”

To learn more about Agentic Hospitality and its flexible deployment-as-a-service models, visit

Austin, Texas, USA – 16 September 2025: Cendyn, a global integrated hotel technology and services company, has found hotel customer acquisition costs (CAC) are down 19% year-on-year (YoY) as a result of utilizing AI in Google’s Performance Max for travel goals (PMTG).

A newer channel in Cendyn’s analysis set, PMTG, increased hotel bookings and revenue by more than 4x across all regions, according to the . Drawing on aggregated data from the Cendyn Digital Marketing Platform (DMP), the Performance Index identified a 262% surge in conversion rate (CVR) and improved cost efficiency due to the intelligent application of AI with guest data to find high-value audiences.

The report also highlights soaring media costs, which rose sharply year-over-year (YoY), increasing by 20% to 40% across digital platforms. Cendyn discovered that Google Hotel Ads (GHA) cost-per-click (CPC) rates rose 14%, reducing click volume despite continued advertiser demand. Cendyn relates the sharp rise in media spend to intensified competition, increased bidding pressure from online travel agencies (OTAs), evolving regulations, and macroeconomic headwinds.

Overall, the first half of 2025 has uncovered a number of critical industry trends directly impacting hotel visibility, booking performance and marketing budgets. Assessing performance across Google’s digital marketing products for January – June 2025 versus the same period in 2024, the report warns that without investing in AI and utilizing visibility opportunities within PMTG, hotels will see digital marketing ROI significantly deplete, having a profound impact on bookings and revenue.

Luke Markesky, SVP, Global eCommerce, at Cendyn said: “With advertising costs rising faster than many budgets, hotels must continue to evaluate and evolve their digital strategies to strategically employ AI to make a real impact to gain the right visibility to drive high-value bookings. Through this report, hotels gain insights to understand the impact of increased competition, regulatory changes, and evolving traveler behavior on digital marketing performance, while navigating the opportunities of AI. Hotels that invest strategically and utilize valuable guest data can sustain growth, capture market share, and emerge as leaders in a competitive, privacy-conscious, and increasingly AI-driven advertising environment.”

The Cendyn Hotel Digital Marketing Performance Index delivers actionable intelligence by evaluating adoption trends, cost dynamics, and performance metrics across major digital hotel advertising channels. Designed to help hospitality marketers make informed decisions, the report empowers hoteliers to utilize AI in order to optimize spend, preserve visibility, and capture demand in an increasingly crowded market.

The is available now,