By Varis Niwatsakul - 11th June, 2026

What Hospitality Trends Reveal About the Future of Work

Skift Asia Forum 2026, a leading travel industry media and intelligence platform, brought together leaders across travel, hospitality, mobility, technology, and investment to examine how Asia is shaping the next era of guest experience. The event’s conversations centered on a few major shifts: AI moving from novelty to infrastructure, guest expectations becoming more frictionless and contextual, lifestyle brands becoming more niche and distinctive, and Asia increasingly setting global experience trends rather than simply following them.

For PLASTARC, the forum served as a valuable adjacent-industry signal scan into the future of work. Varis, a PLASTARC team member based between Bangkok and Amsterdam, attended to explore how hospitality and travel trends might translate into workplace strategy. The central lesson was clear: employees are increasingly behaving more like guests, and workplaces are increasingly competing with the best-designed experiences in everyday life.

Experience is becoming the product

In “What the next generation travelers want and will pay for it,” Laura Houldsworth, Managing Director APAC at Booking.com, described the rise of “passion-driven travel” and “modern milestones,” where people travel “just because” rather than only for traditional occasions.

For workplace, this raises a useful question: what is the office equivalent of a destination hotel? Employees are no longer drawn to the workplace only for desks and meeting rooms. They are looking for environments that support identity, belonging, wellness, learning, social connection, and memorable “magic moments.”

Ian Di Tullio, Global Chief Commercial Officer at Minor Hotels, described how “experience is the door to entry.” Travelers increasingly search for what they can do in a destination, particularly around F&B, wellness, lifestyle, and local experiences. He also emphasized that people are increasingly “buying the lifestyle,” particularly around longevity, wellness, and connected experiences.

This feels highly relevant to the workplace industry. Employees are no longer simply evaluating whether an office has desks, rooms, or amenities. They are evaluating the lifestyle and experience associated with the environment itself. The workplace increasingly needs to answer:

• What can I do here?
• What kind of energy or experience does this environment support?
• Does this place align with how I want to feel or be perceived?

Much like hospitality, workplace experience is shifting from functional utility toward emotional and experiential value.

Personalization is becoming contextual relevance

Another major lesson from the forum was that personalization alone is no longer enough. Hospitality leaders repeatedly emphasized contextual relevance, understanding what matters to someone in a specific moment.

In “Building a competitive edge in Asia’s changing premium market,” Ian Di Tullio, Global Chief Commercial Officer at Minor Hotels, emphasized that historical preference data is not enough. Guest experience depends on contextualized relevance, understanding what matters to someone now, not just what they liked before.

The workplace parallel is strong. Static personas and generalized employee categories increasingly feel outdated. People need different environments depending on their tasks, emotional state, social needs, and energy levels. The future workplace likely requires systems that dynamically adapt to changing needs rather than relying on fixed assumptions.

AI’s biggest opportunity may be enabling more human interaction

Although AI dominated nearly every session, one of the most interesting themes was that the best AI experiences may actually feel less technological and more human.

During the roundtable “Hospitality’s battle for influence in luxury and lifestyle,” Alan Watts, President APAC at Hilton, argued that AI should act as a facilitator of better service rather than replacing human interaction. He described how AI can reduce operational friction, allowing staff to spend less time on transactional processes like check-in and more time having open-ended conversations that demonstrate recognition, care, and attentiveness.

One particularly memorable idea was that AI can create “more eye contact.” Instead of employees or hospitality staff staring at screens, AI-enabled systems can handle operational tasks in the background while people focus on relationship-building and emotional intelligence.

This feels especially relevant to workplace environments. The future workplace should not simply automate processes for efficiency’s sake. Ideally, automation creates more space for mentoring, collaboration, coaching, social connection, and human interaction.

Connected journeys matter more than standalone moments

A recurring idea throughout the forum was that people increasingly expect connected, frictionless journeys across platforms and environments.

In “The superapp reality: what works, what doesn’t, and what’s next,” Phillip Kandal, Chief Product Officer at Grab, discussed how Grab’s success comes from reducing friction across mobility, food, payments, translation, and local services.

Similarly, hospitality leaders repeatedly emphasized “connected journeys,” where transportation, booking, wellness, F&B, and local experiences operate together as one ecosystem rather than isolated services.

The workplace implication feels increasingly important. Offices are no longer standalone destinations. They are part of a broader employee journey connected to commute patterns, scheduling, food, wellness, collaboration tools, and neighborhood experiences. The best workplace experiences may increasingly depend on how seamlessly those systems work together.

Workplaces should feel less generic and more culturally specific

In the roundtable “Hospitality’s battle for influence in luxury and lifestyle,” Alan Watts, President APAC at Hilton, discussed how lifestyle hotels appeal to niche audiences through distinct personalities, F&B vibes, and carefully matched service cultures.

This is a useful provocation for workplace strategy: what is your workplace niche? What is its tone of voice? What is the “vibe” of the environment? The future workplace may need to behave less like a generic corporate office and more like a branded, intentional hospitality experience.

Final reflections

One of the most valuable aspects of attending the forum was stepping outside the workplace industry itself. Adjacent-industry conferences like Skift help surface fresh ideas, challenge assumptions, and expose emerging experience expectations before they fully reach workplace environments.

Overall, the forum reinforced that future-of-work signals are increasingly emerging from hospitality, mobility, and consumer technology. Employees now expect workplaces to feel intuitive, culturally distinctive, emotionally intelligent, and frictionless, much like the best experiences in everyday life.