Here is an uncomfortable truth. While 77% of South African hoteliers say they are actively exploring new technology to streamline their operations, fewer than 38% are using AI in revenue management, and more than a third have no AI strategy at all. That’s according to the 2025 HAMAC South African Hoteliers Report, reflecting a sector collecting brochures and calling it progress.
Globally, hotels using AI-driven revenue management report an estimated 17% increase in total revenue compared to those still relying on traditional methods, with over 86% of hoteliers internationally already depending on AI for forecasting and demand analytics. South African operators are not competing against each other; they are competing against that benchmark. And right now, the maths is not kind.
To understand why this matters as much as it does, you need to understand that South Africa’s hospitality and tourism industry contributes significantly to the economy, supporting millions of jobs, earning foreign exchange, driving rural economies, and anchoring the country’s international identity in ways that no other sector replicates. And, the government’s Tourism Growth Partnership Plan is targeting a contribution of 10% of GDP and 2.5 million jobs by the end of the decade. These are not modest ambitions. They are the kind of numbers that require the sector not just to recover, but to evolve.
While the accommodation sector’s 10.4% income growth year-on-year is real and hard-won. But raw revenue recovery is not the same as competitive positioning. A sector can be busier than last year and still be falling behind the field. This is a sector of national consequence being asked to carry significant economic weight, at the very moment it faces one of its most serious long-term risks: a structural gap between digital aspiration and operational reality that, left unaddressed, will compound quietly until it becomes very loud indeed.
Survival infrastructure is eating the innovation budget
The reason this gap exists is not ignorance, and it’s not laziness. It is something more structural. The industry’s available capital and managerial bandwidth are being consumed by the business of keeping the lights on, literally.
Over 192,000 power cuts occurred across South Africa in 2022, resulting in business closures and job losses sector-wide. Capital spent on generators, boreholes, and reverse osmosis plants is capital that cannot simultaneously go toward revenue management systems, data infrastructure, or the AI-enabled tools that are now standard in competitive markets.
When asked where they would invest if electricity and water were resolved, only 7.7% of hoteliers said technology, according to the HAMAC report. Meanwhile, the top priorities were people development and refurbishment. That tells you everything about what a crisis does to investment priorities. More than half of South African hoteliers have already delayed property upgrades due to funding constraints or economic uncertainty. So when the choice is between fixing what is broken and building what is new, the broken thing wins every time. But while you are fixing it, the world keeps moving.
The capability gap Is just as dangerous as the capital gap
Even where a budget exists, the human capacity to deploy technology effectively is often missing. FEDHASA Cape Chairperson Lee-Anne Singer has said directly that there is a serious lack of skills to drive technology integration in South African hospitality, particularly given the converging demands of property technology, hotel technology, travel technology and financial technology.
The sector’s own data reinforces this: leadership was cited by hoteliers surveyed as the most critical skills gap, cited by 71.4% of respondents, with soft skills close behind at 59.2%. These are the capabilities needed to interrogate AI outputs, manage digital systems with confidence, and build the data-informed culture that makes technology investment worthwhile rather than wasteful.
BCG’s 2025 global analysis found that fewer than 10% of hospitality companies could be described as genuinely “future built” in terms of AI capability, with only 25% in an “AI-scaling” phase where strategy is beginning to generate real returns. If that is the global picture, the South African subset is trailing a field that is itself still finding its footing. The window to close this gap is open, but it will not stay open indefinitely.
Training institutions carry significant responsibility here. South Africa’s Department of Education has already acknowledged that tourism curriculum and skills development programmes must be designed to bridge the gap between the education system and the workplace. However, the honest assessment is that this has not translated into the digital fluency the current moment demands. Graduates arrive equipped for the industry that existed, not the one that is emerging.
We need coordinated action
South African hoteliers are resilient. They have ridden out COVID, loadshedding, uncertainty, and kept their properties running through conditions that would have closed businesses in more stable markets. But resilience is not a digital strategy, and surviving is not the same as competing.
The solution requires action from the entire ecosystem. The government must treat reliable infrastructure as a precondition for sectoral competitiveness. Training institutions must embed data literacy and digital fluency into every hospitality curriculum as a core requirement. Industry bodies must build practical capability support and shared frameworks that individual operators cannot develop in isolation.
Recovery to a pre-digital baseline is not the same as readiness for the next five years. The industry is at a fork. One path leads to competing seriously on the global stage, the other leads to becoming a niche destination with charming properties and an analogue back end. But the window for making a choice in which path we take is narrowing faster than most people are prepared to admit.
- Anton Gillis, Co-Founder & CEO of HAMAC
