As summer winds down and the robust vacation season slows, it’s time for resort and venue operators to shift gears and ramp up for budget season. Fall offers the perfect opportunity to take a step back, evaluate what worked, what didn’t, and new opportunities to improve both operations and revenue in the coming year. With advances in experiential technology and AI, businesses can plan smarter, crafting memorable guest experiences that align with evolving expectations while staying budget-conscious.
With Fall also comes a surge in experiential travel. September, October, and November are revered for their weather and immersive experiences tied to nature, food, sports, and cultural traditions. Fewer crowds, lower prices, better deals, and the need for a pre-holiday reset also beg for last-minute getaways. Unlike peak summer vacations, fall travelers often spend more on short, experience-rich getaways. Data from mid‑2025 shows that one-night trips cost an average of $700 per night, compared to $396 per night for week‑long vacations, a clear signal that guests are willing to pay a premium for quality, experience-rich escapes.
Now is the ideal time for hospitality venues to market local experiences and monetize fall-themed offerings, such as:
- Sports & Tailgating Experiences – Football season consistently drives demand, and operators don’t need to wait for the playoffs to see results. Packages built around college and pro games such as pre-game parties, fan lounges, and stadium transportation, create strong opportunities to capture fan bookings.
- Culinary & Harvest Events – Seasonal dining and beverage experiences remain a top draw. Wine tastings, brewery tours, farm-to-table dinners, and chef-led culinary events can be complemented with guided hikes, photography outings, and rooftop gatherings designed for fall travelers.
- Festivals & Cultural Events – Oktoberfest celebrations, local craft fairs, and music or arts festivals bring visitors into secondary and tertiary markets. These can be elevated with wellness-focused offerings such as spa packages, yoga sessions, fireside lounges, and weekend retreats that align with cooler weather.
While these activities are a big draw to travelers, the actual “booking” of these events can be a real turn-off, especially if each activity needs to be scheduled independently on multiple sites, and the systems facilitating the reservations are fractured and do not connect or communicate with one another. So, what does it take to remove this chaos and turn frustrated lookers into one-click bookers?
It requires an Agentic AI infrastructure to serve as the backbone of booking, personalizing, routing, and converting every guest signal into real-time conversational commerce journeys, and a property experience-management system (PXMS) to monetize and manage the experience-based inventory such aspool-side cabanas, restaurant reservations, lounge tables, small conference rooms, equipment rentals and much more, either as packages or a la carte bookings. Operators who prioritize these technologies in their budgets will be the ones capturing more revenue and guest loyalty.
Experiences are the draw, but it’s the AI infrastructure powering the booking process and the guest itinerary crafted by the resort’s PXMS that drives the loyalty, repeat visits, and incremental income. With AI agents communicating at the front end, and PXMS monetizing experiential bookings on the back end, everyone wins.
Rooms will remain the foundation of hotel revenue, but the modern guest journey is far richer and more dynamic. Every venue seat, space, and experience is an asset that can now be dynamically priced, booked in advance, and easily tied into the larger guest ecosystem.
Fall Season is Budget Season
As AI reshapes how guests’ book, taking a “wait and see” approach is no longer viable. The budgets set this fall will decide which operators capture tomorrow’s most significant ancillary revenue streams.
Early adopters will gain not just diversified revenue but also the intelligence that comes from every transaction with data that sharpens personalization, pricing, and product strategy. Guests will gravitate to properties that make experiences easy to discover and book, leaving laggards behind.
Budgeting for PXMS and Agentic AI now isn’t just about keeping up, it’s about claiming a leadership position in 2026 and beyond. The winners will be the operators who turn every seat, space, and service into a sellable, scalable part of the guest journey.
About the Author
Brad Van Orsow is the Director of Marketing at UrVenue, driving innovation and growth in hospitality. With 15+ years of experience, he blends creative strategy with data-driven insights to enhance brand engagement. At UrVenue, he leads the marketing efforts helping individual venues, hotels, resorts, and mixed-use entertainment facilities unify bookings and optimize operations. A Business Administration graduate from the University of Nevada, Brad has worked with top travel, hospitality, and entertainment brands. He’s passionate about leveraging technology to simplify hospitality and shares insights through thought leadership and industry events. Book a live demo with UrVenue and take the first step toward a more profitable, connected, and efficient future.
About UrVenue
UrVenue is a SaaS-based hospitality technology company that pioneered the best-in-class Venue Management System (VMS), providing innovative solutions to sell and manage experiences for independent venues such as nightclubs, dayclubs, lounges, eatertainment, brand activations, special events, and mixed-use food and beverage environments. In 2022, the company introduced the industry’s first Property Experience Management System (PXMS), now known as UrResort—a sister platform specifically designed to sell, manage, and monetize experiences for hotels and resorts, all-inclusives, integrated resort casinos, and enterprise hotel organizations. Since 2011, UrVenue’s technology has been the trusted solution for organizations such as Fairmont Banff Springs, Caesars Entertainment, MGM Resorts International, Wynn Resorts, Club Med, Circa Resort & Casino, Tao Group, Resorts World, The Venetian, Mohegan Sun, and Zouk Group. UrVenue has also been a multi-year finalist for the Skift IDEA Awards. For more information, visit urvenue.com. Follow us on social: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.
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