AI ADOPTION IS UP, BUT IMPACT ISN’T: HERE’S THE GAP TO CLOSE
Artificial intelligence has moved from buzzword to daily reality across hospitality, but a new global report and a live trial at a Sydney McDonald’s this month tell two very different stories about how ready the industry actually is to use it well. Together they offer a useful reality check for senior managers of pubs, clubs and hotels who are being pitched AI tools from every direction: adoption is happening fast, but turning it into a genuine operational advantage is proving much harder than switching the technology on.
The numbers say adoption is outpacing impact
The State of Distribution 2026 report, produced by RateGain Travel Technologies with NYU’s Jonathan M. Tisch Centre of Hospitality and HEDNA, surveyed more than 270 hotel brands and 58,000-plus properties across 141 cities and 53 countries, making it one of the most comprehensive snapshots of hospitality technology available. The headline finding is stark: more than half of hotels are now using or actively procuring generative AI, yet fewer than one in ten say it has cut their manual workload by more than 30 percent. Most operators are seeing incremental gains rather than the operational transformation the marketing around AI tends to promise. The report also found online travel agents continue to dominate direct hotel channels for bookings, even as properties spend more on AI-powered tools designed to compete with them. The underlying issue, according to the report, is not the technology itself but trust, data privacy and governance gaps that put a ceiling on how much decision-making hotels are willing to hand over to AI, even as they grow comfortable using it for assistance. As a result, many hotels are investing in improving the systems they already run rather than layering on new platforms, shifting from tools that simply record transactions toward ones that help commercial teams interpret signals and act with more confidence.
A Sydney drive-thru shows what early-stage AI actually looks like
That gap between ambition and reality is visible on the ground too. This month, McDonald’s became the first major fast food chain in Australia to trial AI order-taking at a drive-thru, running the system at its Schofields restaurant in Sydney’s west, mainly during overnight shifts. A digital voice greets customers with “Hello, I’m an AI assistant helping the crew,” and takes the order directly, with a human team member stepping in only when something goes wrong. McDonald’s Chief Restaurant Officer David McMullen described the goal in practical terms, saying the software “is designed to ultimately streamline the ordering process for our customers in drive-thru,” and stressed the trial “is absolutely not about taking anyone’s jobs.” Schofields restaurant manager Kim Carroll said the aim locally was to free up staff time “to focus more on the customer experience and do cleaning tasks, focus more on making beverages.” The system is not yet flawless. In one instance, it struggled when a customer tried to change a Coke to a Sprite mid-order, and a crew member had to complete the transaction manually. Australia is only the second market globally after the United States where McDonald’s has tested this technology. McDonald’s is not alone in this space locally either, with Hungry Jack’s already running a comparable AI voice system at several of its own locations.
Why the gap matters more than the hype
Read together, these two stories point to the same lesson for venue operators of any size. AI tools are genuinely useful for narrow, well-defined tasks, whether that is taking a straightforward drive-thru order or answering a plain-English question about last month’s covers, but they are not yet a substitute for the judgement, adaptability and warmth that hospitality still runs on. The hotels seeing real impact from AI are not necessarily the ones spending the most on new platforms, they are the ones being disciplined about which specific, repetitive tasks they hand over, and keeping a person available the moment something unexpected happens, exactly as McDonald’s has built into its own trial.
Operational directions for venue managers
Before investing in any AI tool, pubs, clubs and hotels should map the two or three most repetitive, time-consuming tasks their team already does, whether that is answering routine phone enquiries, taking straightforward orders during predictable low-complexity shifts, or compiling performance reports from several systems. Those are the tasks most likely to deliver a genuine return, because they are narrow enough for current AI to handle reliably and mundane enough that staff time is better spent elsewhere. Resist the pressure to adopt a broad AI platform simply because competitors are talking about it. The RateGain report’s own data shows that widespread adoption has not translated into widespread impact, so the venues getting ahead are the ones treating AI as a targeted tool for specific problems rather than a strategy in itself, and building in a visible, easy way for customers and staff to reach a human whenever the technology reaches its limits.
Sources:
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7NEWS, “Would you like fries with that? McDonald’s AI takes the order” — https://7news.com.au/technology/would-you-like-fries-with-that-mcdonalds-ai-takes-the-order-in-australian-first-c-22923387
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com.au, “Macca’s becomes latest fast food giant to trial AI in drive-thru after scrapping initial rollout” — https://www.nine.com.au/lifestyle/food/mcdonalds-australia-ai-drive-thru-trial-20260925-p610i2.html
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Hospitality Net, “More Than 50% of Hotels Use AI, but Under 10% See Real Impact, Finds State of Distribution 2026 Report from RateGain, NYU SPS and HEDNA” — https://www.hospitalitynet.org/news/4134384/more-than-50-of-hotels-use-ai-but-under-10-see-real-impact-finds-state-of-distribution-2026-report-from-rategain-nyu-sps-and-hedna
