Everyone is talking about AI right now. But almost no one is talking about the real shift that is coming next: Industry 5.0. And here’s the key:
It’s not about automation.
It’s not about efficiency at all costs.
It’s not about removing people from the process.
NB: This is an article from Catala Consulting
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It’s about bringing humans back: smarter, stronger, and more central than ever.
In fact, if you work in hospitality, you are already halfway there. You just might not know it yet.
What Is Industry 5.0?
For the past decade, we have been living through Industry 4.0: the age of automation, algorithms, and always-on optimisation (or at least trying to get there).
In hotels, that’s looked like:
Revenue management systems crunching demand data 24/7
Chatbots handling late-night guest queries
Smart locks and self-check-ins reducing front desk staff
All useful. All important. But all focused on removing friction, not creating deeper value.
Industry 5.0 flips that script.
It asks a new question:
“What happens when humans and AI collaborate. On purpose?”
The Formula: Humans + AI + Sustainability
This is the real definition of Industry 5.0:
- AI does the processing.
- Humans do the thinking.
- Sustainability sets the direction.
That means using AI not just to go faster, but to go better:
- To support teams, not replace them
- To design systems that are meaningful, not just efficient
- To align tech decisions with long-term impact. not just short-term profit
And for hotels, this unlocks a huge opportunity.
Because hospitality has always been about the human experience. We already understand nuance. Emotion. Context. The things machines still struggle to replicate.
What’s changing now is this:
We’re getting better tools.
The question is whether we’ll use them to amplify the human or automate it away.
What This Looks Like in a Hotel Setting
Let’s make it real. Here’s what Industry 5.0 looks like in practice, compared to the legacy 4.0 approach.
