2026 State of Work Report

What STR operators actually want AI to do

In creating this report, Breezeway surveyed over 200 hospitality professionals worldwide. Here's what we learned.

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The short version

What this year's data says

The themes are familiar: staffing, communication, and proving your value to owners. The details show an industry with a more mature, more discerning relationship with automation.

65.7% want AI for adaptive scheduling

and 56.8% for predictive maintenance, compared with 42% for guest messaging.

55% of missed work is caught by an inspector

Inspections are the real safety net.

79.9% kept owners by showing operational performance

Only 11.8% have automated any owner reporting.

Nine chapters on the work behind every stay

A snapshot of where the industry stands today, plus five actionable takeaways for 2027.

Turnovers, inspections, and how little room for error operators have
What portfolio size does and doesn't fix
Where automation lives today and what operators want AI to do next
Near-perfect reviews and the pressure to keep improving
Why guest services are a capacity decision
Staffing, turnover, and the recognition gap
How proving your value wins and keeps contracts
The operational challenges operators name most
Three shifts from 2025 to 2026

Every year, this survey tells us the same essential thing in a hundred different ways: hospitality doesn't happen on its own, and it doesn't happen without the right information reaching the right person at the right moment.