MCA Innovation Conference
AI in Hospitality: From Hype to Operational Impact
Meet Reputation at the MCA Innovation Conference 2026
8 October, 2026
Ham Yard Hotel, London
Hear Us on Stage
AI in Hospitality — From Hype to Operational Impact
AI in hospitality has had a long hype cycle and a short list of proof points. This session gets past the demos and into what's actually working: AI copilots for head office and ops teams, agentic AI in restaurants, personalisation built on customer data, labour optimisation and predictive forecasting — with real case studies rather than roadmaps.
Date: Thursday 8 October 2026
Time: 14:00 – 14:25
Panellists: Simon Power, Reputation; Rob Trippett, Heartwood Collection; Kerry Gilbert, Wagamama
Simon will be talking through what we see in the data across hospitality estates, where AI is genuinely shortening the distance between a guest's experience and an operator's decision, and where it's still mostly theatre.
Come and Say Hello
The day is packed, so it's worth booking ahead. Tell us your estate size and where you're feeling the pressure, and we'll come prepared: a look at how your locations are currently performing in local search and review sentiment, and where the gaps are against comparable brands.
Thursday 8 October 2026, Ham Yard Hotel, London
"One of the aims of bringing Reputation in was pulling that big data together so we can really understand it. The second aim was to put the power in our franchise partners' and restaurant managers' hands."
— Daryn Leggett, Head of Operational Excellence & Compliance
Every Site Generates Feedback Daily. Most of It Never Reaches an Operator.
UK hospitality is forecast to reach £102.8bn in 2026, and almost none of that growth will come easily. Costs are still climbing. Guests are still choosing carefully. The brands that pull ahead are the ones finding an edge in what they already have.
Most operators already have more customer intelligence than they can use. Every site produces reviews, ratings, survey responses and search signals every single day, a running commentary on service speed, food consistency, cleanliness and staff, site by site, shift by shift. Very little of it reaches the people who could act on it.
That's the gap Reputation closes. We help multi-site hospitality brands turn guest feedback and local search signals into something an ops director can act on this week, not a report that lands next quarter.
AI search is changing how customers choose. Know where your brand stands.
Hear Us on Stage
AI in Hospitality — From Hype to Operational Impact
AI in hospitality has had a long hype cycle and a short list of proof points. This session gets past the demos and into what's actually working: AI copilots for head office and ops teams, agentic AI in restaurants, personalisation built on customer data, labour optimisation and predictive forecasting — with real case studies rather than roadmaps.
Date: Thursday 8 October 2026
Time: 14:00 – 14:25
Panellists: Simon Power, Reputation; Rob Trippett, Heartwood Collection; Kerry Gilbert, Wagamama
Simon will be talking through what we see in the data across hospitality estates, where AI is genuinely shortening the distance between a guest's experience and an operator's decision, and where it's still mostly theatre.
Come and Say Hello
The day is packed, so it's worth booking ahead. Tell us your estate size and where you're feeling the pressure, and we'll come prepared: a look at how your locations are currently performing in local search and review sentiment, and where the gaps are against comparable brands.
Thursday 8 October 2026, Ham Yard Hotel, London
"One of the aims of bringing Reputation in was pulling that big data together so we can really understand it. The second aim was to put the power in our franchise partners' and restaurant managers' hands."
— Daryn Leggett, Head of Operational Excellence & Compliance
Every Site Generates Feedback Daily. Most of It Never Reaches an Operator.
UK hospitality is forecast to reach £102.8bn in 2026, and almost none of that growth will come easily. Costs are still climbing. Guests are still choosing carefully. The brands that pull ahead are the ones finding an edge in what they already have.
Most operators already have more customer intelligence than they can use. Every site produces reviews, ratings, survey responses and search signals every single day, a running commentary on service speed, food consistency, cleanliness and staff, site by site, shift by shift. Very little of it reaches the people who could act on it.
That's the gap Reputation closes. We help multi-site hospitality brands turn guest feedback and local search signals into something an ops director can act on this week, not a report that lands next quarter.
AI search is changing how customers choose. Know where your brand stands.
Hear Us on Stage
AI in Hospitality — From Hype to Operational Impact
AI in hospitality has had a long hype cycle and a short list of proof points. This session gets past the demos and into what's actually working: AI copilots for head office and ops teams, agentic AI in restaurants, personalisation built on customer data, labour optimisation and predictive forecasting — with real case studies rather than roadmaps.
Date: Thursday 8 October 2026
Time: 14:00 – 14:25
Panellists: Simon Power, Reputation; Rob Trippett, Heartwood Collection; Kerry Gilbert, Wagamama
Simon will be talking through what we see in the data across hospitality estates, where AI is genuinely shortening the distance between a guest's experience and an operator's decision, and where it's still mostly theatre.
Come and Say Hello
The day is packed, so it's worth booking ahead. Tell us your estate size and where you're feeling the pressure, and we'll come prepared: a look at how your locations are currently performing in local search and review sentiment, and where the gaps are against comparable brands.
Thursday 8 October 2026, Ham Yard Hotel, London
"One of the aims of bringing Reputation in was pulling that big data together so we can really understand it. The second aim was to put the power in our franchise partners' and restaurant managers' hands."
— Daryn Leggett, Head of Operational Excellence & Compliance
Every Site Generates Feedback Daily. Most of It Never Reaches an Operator.
UK hospitality is forecast to reach £102.8bn in 2026, and almost none of that growth will come easily. Costs are still climbing. Guests are still choosing carefully. The brands that pull ahead are the ones finding an edge in what they already have.
Most operators already have more customer intelligence than they can use. Every site produces reviews, ratings, survey responses and search signals every single day, a running commentary on service speed, food consistency, cleanliness and staff, site by site, shift by shift. Very little of it reaches the people who could act on it.
That's the gap Reputation closes. We help multi-site hospitality brands turn guest feedback and local search signals into something an ops director can act on this week, not a report that lands next quarter.
AI search is changing how customers choose. Know where your brand stands.
Hear Us on Stage
AI in Hospitality — From Hype to Operational Impact
AI in hospitality has had a long hype cycle and a short list of proof points. This session gets past the demos and into what's actually working: AI copilots for head office and ops teams, agentic AI in restaurants, personalisation built on customer data, labour optimisation and predictive forecasting — with real case studies rather than roadmaps.
Date: Thursday 8 October 2026
Time: 14:00 – 14:25
Panellists: Simon Power, Reputation; Rob Trippett, Heartwood Collection; Kerry Gilbert, Wagamama
Simon will be talking through what we see in the data across hospitality estates, where AI is genuinely shortening the distance between a guest's experience and an operator's decision, and where it's still mostly theatre.
Come and Say Hello
The day is packed, so it's worth booking ahead. Tell us your estate size and where you're feeling the pressure, and we'll come prepared: a look at how your locations are currently performing in local search and review sentiment, and where the gaps are against comparable brands.
Thursday 8 October 2026, Ham Yard Hotel, London
"One of the aims of bringing Reputation in was pulling that big data together so we can really understand it. The second aim was to put the power in our franchise partners' and restaurant managers' hands."
— Daryn Leggett, Head of Operational Excellence & Compliance
Every Site Generates Feedback Daily. Most of It Never Reaches an Operator.
UK hospitality is forecast to reach £102.8bn in 2026, and almost none of that growth will come easily. Costs are still climbing. Guests are still choosing carefully. The brands that pull ahead are the ones finding an edge in what they already have.
Most operators already have more customer intelligence than they can use. Every site produces reviews, ratings, survey responses and search signals every single day, a running commentary on service speed, food consistency, cleanliness and staff, site by site, shift by shift. Very little of it reaches the people who could act on it.
That's the gap Reputation closes. We help multi-site hospitality brands turn guest feedback and local search signals into something an ops director can act on this week, not a report that lands next quarter.
AI search is changing how customers choose. Know where your brand stands.
Why It Matters Now
Your Next Guest Is Choosing You Before They Ever See Your Menu
The decision happens on a phone. Someone searching "best burger near me", scrolling a maps listing, or — increasingly — asking an AI assistant where to eat tonight. The answer gets assembled from your ratings, your reviews, your opening hours, your photos and how recently anyone updated them.
For a multi-site operator, that plays out one site at a time. A single location with stale hours, unanswered reviews, or a rating half a star below the rest of the estate quietly drops out of consideration for everyone searching that postcode.
It's not a marketing problem. It's a footfall problem, and it's measurable.
Three Things to Talk to Us About
Come and find us at the breaks. Here's what we'd cover.
- Win the local search moment. Every site visible, accurate and ranking when guests search nearby, including in AI-generated answers, where your reviews and profile data decide whether you appear at all.
- Turn guest feedback into ops decisions. Sentiment mapped by site and by theme, so you can see which locations have a service problem and which have a food problem, without reading ten thousand reviews.
- Run the whole estate from one place. Reviews, listings, messages and search presence across every site and every franchisee, managed in one platform instead of a spreadsheet and a shared inbox.