Frank Pitsikalis: Smarter AI for more personalised, human-centred interactions

At NoVacancy 2026, I sat down with Frank Pitsikalis, SVP and Chief Marketing Officer at Agilysys, to find out how the company’s systems help keep personal connections at the heart of hospitality.

Frank shared his insights on the future of AI in accommodation businesses, and how smart use of technology can increase RevPAG. 

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Gemma: For operators who may not be familiar with Agilysys, could you briefly explain what its technology does, and what problems it helps accommodation businesses solve? 

Frank: Agilysys is a global technology company that delivers cloud-native, microservices-based software, designed exclusively for hospitality. Our software encompasses PMS, POS, spa, golf, dining, and inventory management. 

What sets Agilysys apart is the unified ecosystem connected by open APIs. Agilysys places a single, living guest profile at its ecosystem core, enabling staff to coordinate workflows seamlessly, and allowing guests to book complete itineraries across multiple outlets in a single process. 

Gemma: I expect capturing a complete guest profile presents many benefits for hyper-personalisation for each guest. How does this help operators maximise total guest spend across the entire stay, and drive the shift from revenue per available room, to revenue per available guest? 

Frank: Hyper-personalisation is fuelled by capturing preferences, history, and real-time intent across all property touchpoints. Instead of pushing generic offers like room upgrades, it identifies cross-selling opportunities, such as linking room bookings to tailored spa treatments, activity packages, or dining preferences. By surfacing these recommendations automatically across digital channels and staff workflows, operators drive higher-margin ancillary revenue and maximise total guest spend across the property. 

The focus shifts from room rate alone, to capturing total guest spend across dining, wellness, golf and recreation. Generic marketing is replaced with real-time, behavioural recommendations, capturing a greater share of revenue across every property touchpoint. 

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Gemma: With this emphasis on unified guest profiles, last year Agilysys launched guestsense.ai, which builds intelligent guest profiles. How does consolidating guest data change the way staff interact with guests, and what operational improvements does it enable? 

Frank:It gives staff 360-degree visibility into spend, preferences, and history without searching through multiple system tabs. When you bring up a guest profile, AI will go through every comment that guest has ever made, every reservation, every request, and look at the complete guest history and preferences, and will then provide a short summary of who they are. The summary will be customised, based on whether the staff member is at the reservations desk, spa counter, or restaurant. 

Instead of being heads down, checking in a guest, the summary allows staff to interact face to face, and spend less time punching keys. It eliminates administrative digging, speeds up service, and ensures personalised interactions across every department. 

AI enhances human hospitality by equipping employees with real-time guest context, making service more human, not less. 

Gemma: What do you predict will be the next big leap forward for AI in accommodation businesses? 

Frank: The next big leap will be fully autonomous, agentic AI coordination. 

Hospitality technology will shift from rigid click-based screens to natural language interfaces for both guests and staff. This will be supported by background AI agents that continuously align scheduling, inventory, and cross-outlet pricing in real time to maximise total property profitability. 

This technology is getting better every day. Every six months, it seems to double in how natural the conversations are, and how well it can understand context. Plus, it’s much faster than a human. Using conversational AI, a phone call can be reduced from ten or twelve minutes down to just six. Every step a human takes in a phone call will take time, maybe just a few seconds, but it all adds up. 

Gemma: Are there opportunities for agentic AI to be used beyond guest bookings and service? By staff, for example, to simplify procedures? 

Frank: Yes, there are a lot of back-end tasks that AI can simplify for staff. Think of a chef in the restaurant kitchen. He looks down and sees this is his last box of tomatoes. He just taps the AI, and says ‘add three boxes of tomatoes to tomorrow’s order’. He didn’t have to stop what he was doing, log in to a system and manually update an order. 

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Similarly, the spa manager might see that tomorrow is busy, and they need two extra staff. The manager can ask the AI agent to source two staff members, and text them to offer them the shift. Through voice alone, there are so many functions staff can initiate without having to log in to a system and navigate through different screens. 

This all gives back time that they can spend interacting with guests on a personal level. 

Gemma: Finally, what have you found most valuable about NoVacancy this year? 

Frank: NoVacancy gives us exceptional access to customers and the ability to demonstrate our products in real time. There can be a tendency in this industry for operators to stick with what they know, and changing systems might seem too difficult. When we have conversations with operators, they can see the potential of Agilysys products, and we can demonstrate their simplicity and operational advantages. 

Again, it’s all about people-focussed interactions, whether we’re at NoVacancy, or a hotel where a manager is checking in a guest at their property.