By Brad Van Orsow
As summer winds down and the robust vacation season slows, it’s time for resort and venue operators to shift gears and ramp up for budget season. Fall offers the perfect opportunity to take a step back, evaluate what worked, what didn’t and new opportunities to improve both operations and revenue in the coming year. With advances in experiential technology and AI, businesses can plan smarter, crafting memorable guest experiences that align with evolving expectations while staying budget conscious.
With Fall also comes a surge in experiential travel. September, October and November are revered for their weather and immersive experiences tied to nature, food, sports and cultural traditions. Fewer crowds, lower prices, better deals and the need for a pre-holiday reset also beg for last-minute getaways. Unlike peak summer vacations, fall travelers often spend more on short, experience-rich getaways. Data from mid‑2025 shows that one-night trips cost an average of $700 per night, compared to $396 per night for week‑long vacations, a clear signal that guests are willing to pay a premium for quality, experience-rich escapes.
Now is the ideal time for hospitality venues to market local experiences and monetize fall-themed offerings, such as:
- Sports and tailgating experiences—Football season consistently drives demand, and operators don’t need to wait for the playoffs to see results. Packages built around college and pro games such as pre-game parties, fan lounges and stadium transportation, create strong opportunities to capture fan bookings.
- Culinary and harvest events—Seasonal dining and beverage experiences remain a top draw. Wine tastings, brewery tours, farm-to-table dinners and chef-led culinary events can be complemented with guided hikes, photography outings and rooftop gatherings designed for fall travelers.
- Festivals and cultural events—Oktoberfest celebrations, local craft fairs and music or arts festivals bring visitors into secondary and tertiary markets. These can be elevated with wellness-focused offerings such as spa packages, yoga sessions, fireside lounges, and weekend retreats that align with cooler weather.
While these activities are a big draw to travelers, the actual “booking” of these events can be a real turn-off, especially if each activity needs to be scheduled independently on multiple sites, and the systems facilitating the reservations are fractured and do not connect or communicate with one another. So, what does it take to remove this chaos and turn frustrated lookers into one-click bookers?
It requires an Agentic AI infrastructure to serve as the backbone of booking, personalizing, routing and converting every guest signal into real-time conversational commerce journeys, and a property experience-management system (PXMS) to monetize and manage the experience-based inventory such as pool-side cabanas, restaurant reservations, lounge tables, small conference rooms, equipment rentals and much more, either as packages or a la carte bookings. Operators who prioritize these technologies in their budgets will be the ones capturing more revenue and guest loyalty.
Experiences are the draw, but it’s the AI infrastructure powering the booking process and the guest itinerary crafted by the resort’s PXMS that drives the loyalty, repeat visits and incremental income. With AI agents communicating at the front end, and PXMS monetizing experiential bookings on the back end, everyone wins.
Rooms will remain the foundation of hotel revenue, but the modern guest journey is far richer and more dynamic. Every seat, space and experience is an asset that can now be dynamically priced, booked in advance, and easily tied into the larger guest ecosystem.
Fall season is budget season
As AI reshapes how guests’ book, taking a “wait-and-see” approach is no longer viable. The budgets set this fall will decide which operators capture tomorrow’s most significant ancillary revenue streams.
Early adopters will gain not just diversified revenue but also the intelligence that comes from every transaction with data that sharpens personalization, pricing and product strategy. Guests will gravitate to properties that make experiences easy to discover and book, leaving the laggards behind.
Budgeting for PXMS and Agentic AI now isn’t just about keeping up, it’s about claiming a leadership position in 2026 and beyond. The winners will be the operators who turn every seat, space, and service into a sellable, scalable part of the guest journey.
Brad Van Orsow is the director, marketing at UrVenue.
This is a contributed piece to Hotel Business, authored by an industry professional. The thoughts expressed are the perspective of the bylined individual.
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Source: hotelbusiness.com
