In this week’s episode of Hotel Moment, Aradhana Khowala, CEO of Aptamind Partners, joins Revinate CMO Karen Stephens with a sobering perspective on the state of hospitality and global tourism. Aradhana explains the ways hospitality has become “extractive” — leaving little in the way of community growth and human flourishing. But, even so, Aradhana offers hope that more hoteliers can pivot to regenerative tourism and start giving back locally — ultimately supporting their guests and staff appropriately in times of political, social, and economic turmoil.
You’ll also be surprised to hear why Aradhana thinks AI still isn’t “good enough” — explaining how some AI tools mask broken legacy systems and processes with shiny tools, but that true AI development and success leads with personalization.
Tune in to discover how you can become a more responsible hotelier in every sense of the word and work towards being part of an industry that uses tourism to create a sense of peace when the world is in chaos.
Meet your host
As Chief Marketing Officer at Revinate, Karen Stephens is focused on driving long-term growth by building Revinate’s brand equity, product marketing, and customer acquisition strategies. Her deep connections with hospitality industry leaders play a key role in crafting strategic partnerships.
Karen is also the host of The Hotel Moment Podcast, where she interviews top players in the hospitality industry. Karen has been with Revinate for over 11 years, leading Revinate’s global GTM teams. Her most recent transition was from Chief Revenue Officer, where she led the team in their highest booking quarter to date in Q4 2023.
Karen has more than 25 years of expertise in global hospitality technology and online distribution — including managing global accounts in travel and hospitality organizations such as Travelocity and lastminute.com
Watch the video
Transcript
Aradhana Khowala – 00:00:00: Historically, tourism has been extractive as an industry. I know speak about sustainability, but if you’re not adding back more than you take, net-net, you are extractive as an industry. Regenerative growth, and it’s not just in tourism, it’s in all kinds of businesses, is where you add back to a place more than you take. And that’s not just to the place, it’s building businesses that are actually enriching or adding to the ecosystem, empowering the communities, and prioritizing human well-being alongside profit.
Intro- 00:00:41: Welcome to the Hotel Moment Podcast presented by Revinate, the podcast where we discuss how hotel technology shapes every moment of the hotelier’s experience. Tune in as we explore the cutting-edge technology transforming the hospitality industry and hear from experts and visionaries shaping the future of guest experiences. Whether you’re a hotelier or a tech enthusiast, you’re in the right place. Let’s dive in and discover how we can elevate the art of hospitality together.
Karen Stephens – 00:01:10: Hello, and welcome to the Hotel Moment Podcast. I am your host, Karen Stephens, the Chief Marketing Officer of Revinate. And today we are joined by a true visionary in the hospitality and tourism sector, Aradhana Khowala. Aradhana is the CEO of Aptamind Partners, a consultancy focused on regenerative tourism development. With over two decades of experience across five continents, she has played a key role in shaping some of the most ambitious sustainability initiatives in the industry. From her work with the Red Sea Global in Saudi Arabia to her insights on AI-driven Travel personalization, Aradhana is at the forefront of changes transforming the Travel and hospitality landscape. We’re thrilled to have her here today to discuss innovation, sustainability, and how women can break through the glass ceiling in leadership roles. So I have to say this conversation with such an amazing leader is really a treat. I hope you enjoy it. We get a little controversial here, my friends, which I think is a good thing. There’s a lot going on in the world. Aradhana is based in London. She’s worked all through the Middle East and globally, in fact. She sits on a ton of advisory boards. She’s done TED Talks. She really knows this space. So I think her insights on resilience and how we as an industry can thrive and survive with everything going on, and also her take on AI, is really, really cool and not something you hear every day. So here you go. I give you Aradhana. Hello, Aradhana. Welcome to the podcast. It’s a pleasure to have you here.
Aradhana Khowala – 00:02:36: Thank you for having me, Karen.
Karen Stephens – 00:02:37: I have been so excited for this discussion. So I really encourage our listeners. I did an intro there, but I really encourage you to go out on social and find Aradhana’s profile. You’ve done so many cool things within the industry. So I really just want to make sure our listeners understand who we’re talking to here. So you’ve had a really impressive career spanning multiple continents and industries. So tell us what initially inspired you to get into hospitality and the luxury sector.
Aradhana Khowala – 00:03:03: I think it was human error. I pretty much escaped medical schoo, and I had no clue what I was getting into. But travel is my only and one true addiction in life. So I knew this is what I wanted or this is the direction I wanted to go in. But I didn’t have a structured, firm plan in place when I started.
Karen Stephens – 00:03:23: That’s so cool. I find that it’s interesting when you talk to people at this part in their career, how that weaves through life. I think often young people are like, I need to pick one thing and stick with it. But I find that often life kind of brings about different changes. So can you just give our audience a little bit of an idea? Where did you grow up? What’s your background? Where are you living now? Just a high level of who you are and where you’re from.
Aradhana Khowala – 00:03:45: So I was born in India, in Delhi, which is where I grew up. I’ve worked across five continents and I pretty much shape tourism strategy. I have worked in 85 different countries where you are advising presidents, prime ministers, and global CEOs on how do you unlock tourism’s potential, but not just as an economic driver, but as a force for good. So a force for human advancement. My speciality is I lead the charge on regenerative tourism and I’m talking long before it became fashionable. One of the things I also push for is wellness and inclusion and true diversity to become core pillars of hospitality as a business, not just side notes. I sit on multiple boards. I chair global think tanks. That’s pretty much it. And London is home.
Karen Stephens – 00:04:30: London. I love London. I lived there myself as well many years ago. And what a wonderful, cool, multicultural city. You can get anywhere from London quickly. So what a fantastic place to be.
Aradhana Khowala – 00:04:42: And you can hear multiple languages when you’re walking the streets. It’s a walkable city. 25% or 21%, don’t hold me to the exact percentage, is actually forest. So you forget it’s a city with 15 million people, but you have greenery everywhere. I can’t think of many cities in the world that offer that. It’s a great place to raise kids.
Karen Stephens – 00:05:01: That’s right. Royal Parks. I love it. Okay, so you talked a little bit about regenerative tourism. So can you talk us through how that differs from traditional tourism? What do you mean when you’re talking about regenerative tourism?
Aradhana Khowala – 00:05:14: So look, historically, tourism has been extractive as an industry. I know speak about sustainability, but if you’re not adding back more than you take, net-net, you are extractive as an industry. Regenerative growth, and it’s not just in tourism, it’s in all kinds of businesses, is where you add back to a place more than you take. And that’s not just to the place, it’s building businesses that are actually enriching or adding to the ecosystem, empowering the communities, and prioritizing human well-being alongside profit. So it’s not just an idealistic dream, it’s, I think, becoming a business imperative. And increasingly, businesses that fail to adopt this mindset will have to pay a price in the long run, either through reputational damage, environmental harm, or social backlash. It’s going to come. So at some point, we’re going to see leaders realizing that they need to change their mindset that only values volume and actually make a leap into how do you actually prioritize values. So it’s not just about thinking how fast you want to grow. How do you grow in a way which is, it’s right? It’s good for the people. It’s good for the planet. And that doesn’t mean you’re abandoning the financial success. You’re just kind of reframing it. And that’s what sustainable growth really is. You have to create value. But that does require bold decisions that may not pay off immediately, but will compound over time. But that puts off a lot of people from making the leap.
Karen Stephens – 00:06:48: Isn’t that interesting? Because it’s the short-term gains of profitability, but you’re not looking at the long-term gains of… I loved how you called out kind of your reputation as a brand. So you’re not doing it necessarily just for the reputation. But people, I believe, want to support businesses that are good for other people and good for the planet. So I love that concept.
Aradhana Khowala – 00:07:08: Look, when something doesn’t work, we blame the leadership or we hold the leadership accountable. So as travel and tourism industry, we are no exception. We have really fallen short when it comes to our sustainability efforts. It’s failed on a structural level. It’s failed at a leadership level. And what we need is systemic change. But what we are doing is really tinkering at the edges and calling that a green gloss. But it’s not really systemic change.
Karen Stephens – 00:07:34: I think the other thing that I picked up there when you talked about wellness, you’re not just talking about wellness in terms of the wellness industry for consumers. You’re talking about the wellness of the employees as well.
Aradhana Khowala – 00:07:45: Well, absolutely. And I think that is the most thing. I mean, the overall size of the industry, it’s now $6.3 trillion, and self-care, employee wellness, business wellness, all of them are intrinsic parts of it. And I think it’s also the holistic nature of wellness. We can’t just say, I look at this part of the wellness, but not really. So it’s spiritual wellness. It’s holistic.
Karen Stephens – 00:08:08: It’s the whole thing. Yes, I love that. So, of course, everybody is talking about AI, AI. That’s the number one. I just got back from high tech here in the United States. And AI is the big buzzword. So how do you see that coming on? When you talk about staff, you talk about wellness for employees. What’s your take on AI and how that’s going to impact the industry?
Aradhana Khowala – 00:08:28: I mean, you will know this a lot more than I do, because I know this is what Revinate focuses on. But I call it, Karen, we’ve had, as a Travel industry, a bit of an innovation drought. I mean, let’s call it out. This is an industry that touches billions of lives. And, travel and hospitality, we have barely evolved in how we operate digitally. I mean, of course, lots of things have improved. The interfaces are sleeker. The search bars feel faster. But the underlying mechanics, what you call the real plumbing, which is not seen, of how bookings are priced, distributed, and fulfilled. I’m going to be controversial, but I think it’s still rooted in early 2000s logic. So, yes, we have the AI wave and it’s everywhere. But again, how much of it is lipstick on legacy? Most of what we bill as AI today in travel, it’s either a glorified chatbot that’s answering pre-fed queries. It’s a recommendation engine that’s tuned to boost conversions. Or in the best case scenario, we have probably a very clever UI tweak that’s layered on the same old booking stack. So for me, it’s not really a leap in innovation. It’s kind of incrementalism of some form, because as a traveler, then you and I, and this is despite us being from the industry, when we are trying to book a holiday, we are still jumping across 10 tabs to piece together different pieces. Suppliers are burning budgets to claw visibility. And there is nothing which is holistically designed, personalized. I mean, it’s still out of reach for most. And what really is sad from my perspective is I don’t think the system is broken. I think we have normalized the brokenness as this is the best we can do, which I think is sad. It’s changing. I’m optimistic.
Karen Stephens – 00:10:14: Yeah. Lipstick on legacy might be my new favorite catchphrase. I love that. One thing we talk about at our company is like AI isn’t going to do you any good if your data is all over the place. And that’s exactly what you’re talking about. If a system doesn’t know, have one place to go to to get all the details. And you got to be like, because that’s what the humans do. We just saw a recent study where for most hotels, it takes two to four days to compile reporting on a monthly basis because you have to look at so many different things. So AI isn’t going to help you do that if it doesn’t know where to look, right?
Aradhana Khowala – 00:10:45: Absolutely. And I think it’s, look, where we are getting to is we still have one part of the value chain, which is human. Imagine we had something, and it’s something that I’m working on, one of the projects I’m working on, which is a startup, and I can’t name names yet because it’s still under wraps. But imagine what the very architecture of how we transact in travel is, if we take it back to the old souks, the bazaars, where you’re actually in the marketplace, bargaining, actively engaging, if they could reimagine the entire value chain. So imagine if there was a platform where you have two AI agents speaking directly to each other. So it’s my AI agent, not me, my AI agent who understands me, my preferences at a cognitive level, not just from prompt that I’m giving. So it’s intelligence and it’s emotions to an extent. So my AI agent is speaking and negotiating now directly with the AI agent or systems of hotels, airlines, local vendors. And I’m not talking static listings. I’m talking about real-time personalized negotiation like we would see in a souk or a bazaar or a marketplace. So you just kind of say, okay, this is my intention, a quiet weekend by the sea. I need excellent Wi-Fi. It needs to be kid-friendly and I need everything, flights, local guides, and all of that can be orchestrated without you lifting a single finger. And it’s not fiction. It’s the new direction. I think the next generation of platforms are all building forward, future forward. And towards this, it’s AI-to-AI commerce, humans talking to bots, like I said, not bots pretending to be concierge, which is what we see, but actual AI agents negotiating with intelligence between them.
Karen Stephens – 00:12:30: Well, that’s a really exciting concept. I think what’s interesting about that is for so long, travelers, we’ve been voluntarily giving up our data. We know that if I tell you what I like and you personalize offers to me, that’s going to convert. And I don’t mind giving you my data if you do it right. If you’re sending me a bunch of stuff that’s irrelevant after you’ve asked me all these things, I’m over it. But if you think about companies like Revinate and other companies that have deep guest data at the property level, but also across properties. So I think what you’re talking about here is being able to unlock that data. So I don’t have to tell you what Karen’s AI bot persona is. If we’re intelligent enough, we can see from all of the travel that I’ve done.
Aradhana Khowala – 00:13:10: Exactly right. And think about the opportunity, how we can turn every social interaction into a potential deal, right? You’re pretty much collapsing the entire booking tunnel from hours to seconds. And then you’re in control as a person who’s booking. And the suppliers are in control, too, because they don’t have to dump stuff, last-minute pricing, whatever. I have nothing against OTAs, but also you have the opportunity of taking the middleman out of the picture.
Karen Stephens – 00:13:36: Right. Well, we’re very much not against it. Yes, we are. So we talk about direct booking. I think especially I mentioned high tech before. In addition to AI, the other thing that everybody’s talking about is bookings are pretty soft. I mean, I’m sitting in the United States. We’ve had a dramatic fall off in international Travel. We know the reasons why for that as certain markets. So I think the folks here are really struggling with how to fill rooms today, how to make sure that you’re not just, again, dunking your rates, throwing it out to a distribution channel that’s costing you 20 to 30% on top of it. So in this environment, how should hotels think about how they start to take more command of getting those direct bookings in and attracting the right guests into their hotels?
Aradhana Khowala – 00:14:18: It’s a very complex one. And as you rightly say, this is a time when we have 107 armed conflicts happening in some part of the world. The war is in the news. The travel bans is what we read off every morning. But it’s a global phenomena. And what we don’t recognize, it’s very painful because tourism is so much more than leisure. Travel is. It’s an economic lifeline. And I’m talking at a global level. The amount of revenue that the Middle East as a region where I do a lot of work would have lost in the last few months, it’s unprecedented. I mean, Israel alone has lost an estimated three and a half billion in tourism revenue since the conflict started. In Egypt, there is at least one person in a family who’s employed in the travel and tourism sector. They employ millions. And now with everything that’s happened, they’re looking at a 20 to 30 percent drop in revenues. It’s a fragile economic recovery, which is going to get the biggest boom. Like, come on. I mean, it’s not just bad timing. And there are many other countries who have probably been spared the direct conflict, but they have seen bookings plunge 35% year on year. So the 3,000 flights that are getting canceled in 48 hours, we have 45 different countries, including mine in the UK, where there were travel advisories that were issued saying avoid all travel. And we forget that, of course, safety is first. But from our industry’s perspective, it completely paralyzes local economies and hotels are emptied. Cruises are rerouted. Insurers pull back and it takes sometimes months for something what we call is a small blip. It’s not a blip. It’s a full on crisis. And I think it’s also a wake up call for our sector. Because think about it, Karen, if you have a diplomatic problem, you have an embassy. If there is a financial issue, there are central banks that regulate these things. If there is a health issue, there is the CDC, Center for Disease Control, and World Health Organization. But travel and tourism, we have silence. I mean, we are 11% of the global GDP. 1.5 billion people annually Travel across borders. That’s one in six months to us. But when it comes to moments of real world geopolitical crisis, we don’t have a war Room. We don’t have a command center. We don’t have a global voice to represent our interest and represent the interest of the small little mom and pop players who you’re talking about. These are not big hotel chains necessarily, right? It could be small, medium, in some cases, micro enterprises. And the worst case is in a lot of governments, even the tourism ministry is sidelined because they’re excluded from national emergency response structures. As a result, when you have a crisis like we are seeing now, travel and tourism becomes the first casualty and the last to recover.
Karen Stephens – 00:17:05: It really does. I think you hit on a couple of things that I want to touch on. So we talked before about the impact of staff. It’s the people in the hotels, but it’s also, as you mentioned, it’s the mom and pop selling bottled water to the people who get off the cruise ship. So that the impact to the economy goes all the way down in a lot of countries. And then also, and I saw this in a LinkedIn post that you had, and I don’t remember the exact words, but at the end of the day, people see war, and they just go, I’m not going anywhere near that. And it’s thousands of miles away, in some cases. War in the Middle East and Thailand’s impacted. It’s just everybody contracts, right?
Aradhana Khowala – 00:17:41: Absolutely. And you’re 100% right. It’s so interconnected and global in scale. It’s terrifying. And because we don’t have that unified leadership, so there is no green zone Travel corridor protocol, as an example. So how can we identify the safe corridors in volatile regions? How can we preserve essential mobility? How can we avoid a total industry collapse? We are the best agent of peace out there. Tourism is not a casualty. It’s a catalyst. And it’s about time we acted as one. I mean, there is no better agent of peace. Because once you travel to a destination, you can never hate the place and the people.
Karen Stephens – 00:18:20: Amen to that. I want to really underline that. I think the more people that can get out and experience different cultures, different people, foods, music, that’s how you bring about understanding, appreciation of other cultures. And that’s number one for me. So what can a hotel do? I mean, you know, I think we always talk about the importance of having your guest data and understanding at a deep level where all of your guests are coming from so that you can proactively communicate. But in the absence of having, as you said, like a centralized organization or somebody that speaks for tourism, what advice do you give hotels to figure out how to navigate this way, especially if you’re not in a war zone but you want to be able to draw in? Your bookings are falling regardless.
Aradhana Khowala – 00:19:04: I think you have to take a long-term view, and you just have to be very resilient, and that we are as an industry. Look at how well we came together during the COVID crisis. I mean, you speak a lot about innovation. The amount of innovation we saw between 2020 and 2023 was unprecedented. And that was also the three years where there was a lot of funding that went into Travel tourism startups. But coming back to your questions on hotels, I think do the right thing and prioritize the long-term view is what I would say. Because, if we make short-term calls and quick fix decisions, it’s never right. It’s hard. I know easier said than done. But I think just take a long-term view and do the right thing for your guests, for your employees. Because how well you look after your people is ultimately how your guests are looked after. And if you do the right thing at the most difficult times, people remember and they always come back.
Karen Stephens – 00:19:56: Resilience is a word. I mean, when I hearken back five years ago to COVID, resilience is what got a lot of companies through. Whether you were serving the hospitality sector or the tourism sector, you were a hotel yourself. So I think that that’s a word that is appropriate again in this time. It’s like, how do you navigate that? And I also love the idea of really thinking, taking it down to doing the right thing for your people. And it’ll come throughout the other side.
Aradhana Khowala – 00:20:20: And I think we’re also very good as an industry. We do well when we are pushed to a corner, which is what we saw during COVID. I mean, think back of all the cool things we achieved in like 18 months. And then there’s been a lull after that, but that we won’t talk about. But we introduced touchless tech across airports, hotels, restaurants, right? I mean, there was a dynamic route planning. There was digital nomad visas. We came up with all of these real-time pricing, all of these really cool things in 18 months flat. So we do really cool things as an industry when we are pushed to it and are not given the options. And we don’t get funding anyway. So that’s a good thing because…
Karen Stephens – 00:21:01: We’re scrappy.
Aradhana Khowala – 00:21:01: We’re scrappy as an industry. Exactly. I mean, of all the funding, it’s 1% of all startup funding that goes to travel and tourism. It’s shocking. So there is the volume angle. And I’m talking not just one year. I’m talking over the last 15 years where travel and tourism as an industry contributes 10 to 11% of the global GDP. But we get 1% of overall startup funding across all industries. I mean, food delivery startups get 7%.
Karen Stephens – 00:21:29: Wow. Why do you think that is?
Aradhana Khowala – 00:21:32: Multiple reasons. I think there is the value angle. So if I dissect the 1% that comes to travel and tourism, I think it tells a different story. So there is the volume angle and there is the value angle. Where does that 1% go? That 1% only goes to hospitality startups. So as an example, in the last few years, it was all about short-term rentals. And it was about business travel facilitators, which is startups in the space who are providing corporate solutions like expense management software and things like that. It’s really not going into things which are completely transforming the industry. So it’s not really sustainable, innovative. It’s still low-risk, high ROI, familiarity-based choices, not really true innovative choice.
Karen Stephens – 00:22:19: And true innovation. Well, I know you can’t mention the name of the startup, but I’m excited to see what that is. I really am. So going back to, you talked a little bit about the Middle East, and I know that you are also in the luxury sector is where you also specialized. The Middle East has more development around luxury hotel stock than anywhere in the world. So can you just talk, and I know obviously not great what’s going on now with the wars that are there, but can you just talk about what the potential is out of that region, wars aside, with what we’re seeing as hotel stock and the luxury? I mean, because it’s really a different level when you talk about luxury in some of those places.
Aradhana Khowala – 00:22:55: For sure. And I think it’s also extra special because it’s in the region. What we’re seeing is financial will and political will come together in ways that it’s not easy to bring it together, if that makes sense. We’re talking about $800 billion of active investments in the region as we speak. And I’m not counting the overall project size. So Neom, which is Saudi Arabia’s $500 billion techno-futuristic city, is aiming to build a land of the future and aims to reshape global travel completely. There is Red Sea Global, where we’re looking at 50-plus resorts. It’s going to contribute $5.5 billion annually to the Saudi GDP. There are projects in Egypt, which is a $35 billion project. It’s a coastal mega-project funded partly with UAE investment. They’re seeking to completely redefine the Mediterranean. Iraq has a big project. I think it’s $20 billion. It’s a land corridor which is connecting the Gulf to Europe. Qatar is doing multiple things. Bahrain is great. Oman is championing sustainable tourism. So I think, I mean, it’s what we’re seeing in terms of scale and speed. It’s unprecedented. And I would go so far as to say that they’re not just vanity projects because they’re really existential bets on a post-oil future. The sad part is where you have geopolitical crisis like you do, they also get dangerously exposed.
Karen Stephens – 00:24:20: That’s interesting. I love it talking about they can see that the future is going to move away from oil and gas. And yes. Comment about my own country. I wish that we would get that at a higher level. But anyway, yes, that’s interesting. So that the tourism comes out. And if it’s sustainable, regenerative, is like you’re talking about. That’s really exciting.
Aradhana Khowala – 00:24:41: And also, at the end of the day, it’s about the people. It’s the people argument. Because in this region, we have the population, like in some countries, 70% of the population is below the age of 30. So what other industry could be better in really employing a whole lot of youth and giving them the promise of a bright future than travel and tourism? Because we don’t have that benefit in the Western world, not in the U.S., not in Europe, where in some countries we have a degrowing population. But in the Middle East, when you have so many young people, you need an agenda and a strategy, which is very pro-employment and pro-skills development.
Karen Stephens – 00:25:18: Right. Absolutely. It’s fascinating. It really is. So obviously you’re a powerhouse, Aradhana. Obviously you’re sitting in a lot of boardrooms. You have your own company. You advise a lot of companies. So what advice can you give to other women who are listening to this that are thinking about how do I grow my career, and especially in hospitality and technology? Like what advice can you give young women out there at the start of their careers?
Aradhana Khowala – 00:25:41: Okay, a few. I would say anyone who is thinking about leadership, young men, women, both, anyone in the younger generation, I think my advice would be to not underestimate the power of your vision as an individual and what you can do. Because at the end of the day, Karen, leadership is not about making money. It’s about making a difference. And you will see that through history and even in the future, the ones who will actually change the world will be the ones who leave the world better. And that only happens by challenging the status quo. So as a young man, woman leader, you have to cultivate resilience. You have to lean into your values, which I think is extremely important. Build coalitions of like-minded people who understand the importance of what you’re trying to do. Start small experiment and be willing to fail spectacularly. I mean, stay committed to the picture. We live in a very funky world. I have a teenager and the pressure that young kids have today, the pressure to conform to dictates of society. It’s a whole lot. So I just want to tell people that the people who will shape the future will be the ones who will not be going or chasing after a quick win. They are the ones who will challenge the status quo and redefine what success means to you. So work from your heart and don’t worry about rules. Break them.
Karen Stephens – 00:27:08: I love that. Aradhana, this has been an amazing conversation. Very inspirational. I really appreciate you taking the time. Thank you for being my guest.
Aradhana Khowala – 00:27:15: It’s been a pleasure. Thank you very much for speaking to me and having me.
Outro- 00:27:23: Thank you for joining us on this episode of Hotel Moment by Revinate. Our community of hoteliers is growing every week, and each guest we speak to is tackling industry challenges with the innovation and flexibility that our industry demands. If you enjoyed today’s episode, don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and leave a review. And if you’re listening on YouTube, please like the video and subscribe for more content. For more information, head to revinate.com/hotelmomentpodcast. Until next time, keep innovating.
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