Travel & Hospitality
Product strategy and AI from someone who's built the technology, run the businesses, and served the guests.
This isn't a consultant who read a case study about hospitality.
Most product consultants parachute into an industry, learn the vocabulary, and leave with a slide deck. I've spent years inside travel and hospitality — not just advising, but operating. Building the technology, running the restaurants, pouring the wine, and serving the guests.
That means the advice comes from someone who knows what it feels like when the POS goes down on a Friday night, what happens when a vendor's demo doesn't match reality, and why the "AI solution" that looked brilliant in a pitch deck falls apart when a line cook needs to use it.
Consulting for travel companies
My previous firm, Nine Labs, worked with travel companies on product strategy and digital experience design. This is where the industry expertise began — understanding how travelers research, book, and experience trips, and how the technology behind those moments shapes the business.
Operating a wine bar
Three years behind the bar. Moved from advising to operating and learned the realities of hospitality firsthand: margins, staffing, guest experience, and the yawning gap between what tech vendors promise and what actually works on a busy Saturday night.
Running a dual-concept restaurant
I currently operate Lucky Hare Bar & Grill and Night Train Pizza in Big Canoe, Georgia. Multi-unit operations, managing teams, dealing with POS systems, supply chain, seasonality, and every operational challenge restaurant operators face daily. This isn't past tense — it's happening right now.
Building Donna
Couldn't find a restaurant management tool that gave operators the insights they needed without the complexity they didn't. So I built one. Donna is an AI-powered restaurant operations platform that turns Square POS data into clear, actionable intelligence. Proof that I don't just advise on AI — I ship AI products.
Launching Savarin & Co.
A luxury wine and food travel company targeting affluent couples for curated experiences in Spain, France, and Italy. Built on direct relationships with winery and vineyard owners. This keeps me actively embedded in the travel side of the industry — not just hospitality operations.
The point: I've been on every side of this business. Consulted for travel companies, operated hospitality businesses, built AI-powered technology for the industry, and launched a travel venture. That combination is rare — and it's what makes the advice different.
The guest relationship starts long before the trip — and most brands are wasting the moments in between.
Airlines, hotel groups, cruise lines, tour operators, and travel platforms are sitting on enormous amounts of behavioral and transactional data — and most of it is being used for basic segmentation at best. The real opportunity is in how that data shapes the product experience: booking flows, loyalty programs, corporate travel services, room merchandising, ancillary revenue, and the moments between purchase and arrival that most brands ignore completely.
AI is accelerating every part of this — dynamic pricing, personalized itineraries, predictive operations, conversational booking, intelligent revenue management. The question isn't whether to invest. It's where the leverage actually is for your business, and what's vendor hype dressed up as innovation. The implementations that actually work are grounded in how travel and hotel operations really function — not how they look in a vendor demo.
What I help with
- Product strategy for booking, loyalty, and ancillary revenue
- Room merchandising and multi-brand differentiation strategy
- Corporate travel product design and service model optimization
- Guest experience design across digital and physical touchpoints
- AI readiness assessment and integration roadmap
- Mobile and e-commerce platform strategy
- Technology vendor evaluation and build/buy/partner decisions
- Competitive positioning as AI-native players enter the market
Who this is for: Airlines, hotel and resort management groups, cruise lines, travel technology platforms, destination marketing organizations, short-term rental platforms, tour and experience operators.
Results from the field
14% increase in brand loyalty
Helped a global airline redesign how they serve corporate customers — simplifying the service model, reducing operational costs, and measurably strengthening the relationships that drive repeat bookings.
$18MM in new annual revenue
Helped a global hotel brand rethink how they merchandise rooms differently across brands — moving from one-size-fits-all listings to differentiated positioning that better matched each brand's value proposition and guest expectations.
12% revenue growth
Helped an international hospitality group redesign their mobile and e-commerce systems — improving the booking experience, streamlining the purchase path, and unlocking revenue that was being lost to friction in the existing platform.
I own a dual-concept restaurant & built an AI-based platform to run it. This isn't theory.
Restaurants, bars, food and beverage distributors, and importers don't need another consultant who's never closed a kitchen on a Saturday night or negotiated a container of wine through customs. The gap between what technology promises and what actually works in hospitality operations is enormous — and it's a gap I live inside every day.
I own a dual-concept restaurant. Kitchen operations, managing teams, POS systems, supply chain, seasonality — every challenge operators face daily. When I couldn't find a management tool that gave us the insights we needed, I built Donna, an AI-powered restaurant operations platform. The advice you'll get comes from someone on both sides of the counter.
For distributors and importers, the challenge is different but connected: tight margins, complex logistics, legacy systems, and workflows built on spreadsheets that made sense ten years ago. AI and automation aren't about replacing people — they're about eliminating the repetitive, error-prone work that burns time and margin so the team can focus on the relationships and decisions that actually drive the business.
What I help with
- Operational AI strategy — what's real, what's noise
- POS data activation and business intelligence
- Multi-unit standardization and technology roadmap
- Menu engineering and recipe costing optimization
- Guest experience and digital ordering strategy
- Workflow automation and process optimization
- AI-powered demand forecasting and inventory management
- D2C channel strategy for brands going direct
Who this is for: Multi-unit restaurant operators, bar and nightlife groups, food & beverage distributors and importers, F&B brands going D2C, hospitality SaaS companies, hospitality management groups.
Results from the field
$1.3MM in annual savings
Helped a $30MM food and beverage supply chain company streamline their core workflows — identifying where manual processes were burning time and margin, and building a technology roadmap that eliminated the most expensive inefficiencies first.
Donna — AI for restaurant operators
Couldn't find a tool that gave operators the insights they needed without the complexity they didn't. So I built Donna — an AI-powered platform that syncs with Square, delivers visual dashboards, menu engineering, recipe costing, team performance tracking, and an AI assistant that answers plain-English questions about the business. Born from operator frustration, built by someone who lives the problem every day.
"We need a product strategy but our leadership team doesn't include a product person."
Most hospitality companies are run by operators and finance people. They buy technology but don't have someone who understands how to evaluate it, build it, or integrate it strategically. I fill the fractional CPO role with deep industry context.
"We're being sold AI from every vendor — what actually matters?"
AI concierges, AI pricing, AI scheduling, AI everything. The pitches are relentless. I've built AI products and can separate the signal from the noise. I start with the business problem, not the technology.
"Our guest experience needs to evolve but we don't know how."
Whether it's a hotel group rethinking digital touchpoints, a restaurant group standardizing operations across locations, or a travel tech company redesigning their booking flow — I bring UX expertise grounded in how hospitality guests actually behave, not how they behave in a product manager's imagination.
"We have data but aren't using it."
Hospitality generates massive amounts of transactional, operational, and behavioral data. Most of it sits in POS systems, PMS platforms, and spreadsheets doing nothing. I built Donna specifically to solve this problem — turning raw data into decisions.
"We need to modernize our technology without disrupting operations."
Hospitality can't just "move fast and break things." Guests are checking in, orders are being placed, staff is on the floor. Technology transitions need to be planned with operational reality in mind. I've lived this tension as an operator.
Assessment
Not sure where to start? A structured diagnostic of your product, technology, or AI readiness — delivered by someone who understands hospitality operations from the inside. Starting at $3,500.
Project
A defined project with a defined outcome. Product strategy, AI integration, guest experience redesign, technology roadmap — scoped to your challenge. Starting at $15,000.
Retainer
Ongoing fractional CPO advisory for hospitality companies that need senior product and AI leadership without the full-time hire. Starting at $8,000/month.
"J has helped us deliver amazing value to our customers time and time again. His ability to take nebulous concepts and drill down until they become quality products is second to none."
"For J, nothing is impossible. He knows how to get things done, even on ridiculously short notice. A great eye for small details but never forgets the high-level strategy."
"J shows you how to ask the right questions, dig into the core of the challenge, and drive towards results-based solutions."