AI As The Unexpected Hospitality Tailwind

Originally published on Hospitality Real Estate Summit June 1st 2026.

As artificial intelligence makes daily life feel increasingly automated, hospitality may become a more compelling investment proposition.

Technology in hospitality is often discussed through the lens of efficiency: faster ordering, better booking systems, digital menus, and back-office automation. But as artificial intelligence moves deeper into the wider economy, Chris Cornforth, CEO and co-founder of Harvest Hospitality, sees a more interesting shift emerge. 

Unlike many sectors now facing the threat of digital substitution, hospitality still depends on physical service, human presence and real-world experience. A pub cannot become software as the front end of the business remains stubbornly human, while the back end can become far more intelligent.

“We’re in a really unique position to combat the rise of AI,” says Cornforth. “We can utilise it in our businesses to better manage what we do and deliver more value to our customers.” He points to a range of operational applications, from better marketing, ordering and stock management to more efficient ways to understand what is driving venue performance.

The pub as the antidote to screen life

Post-Covid, society is grappling with an underlying resentment towards digital experiences. With an incessant desire to connect with others, third places are seeing a resurgence, and hospitality-driven spaces satisfy our craving for social and human connection. 

Informal, local and socially flexible, the pub is an invaluable space that is not home or work, but a familiar environment where people can gather without formality or special occasion. That flexibility is paramount for investors. For Harvest, there is limited interest in narrow venues built around one type of customer. Instead, they look for large-format pubs with multiple revenue streams and enough physical space to serve different groups simultaneously. 

Cornforth talks of changing drinking habits; “Even as drinking habits shift, we’re seeing a real move back to pubs. People want to be out and see friends, but they can’t entertain at home like they once could. The pub is the perfect place for that.”

From sports clubs to gaming, pickleball courts to golf simulators, each element gives customers another reason to visit and multiple streams of revenue. The aim is to create a multi-dimensional venue that serves several versions of local life at once. The mistake for investors would be to pigeonhole their offerings, as the best pubs do not just sell food and drink – they sell proximity, atmosphere, ritual and belonging. 

A commercially viable asset 

Hospitality investment is more sophisticated than buying a venue and waiting for the market to lift. The key, according to Cornforth, is finding underperforming assets in high-growth areas where population, household formation, infrastructure investment and local spending power can support multiple revenue streams over time. Harvest is not buying nostalgia; it is buying demographic depth.

“It’s all about location first and understanding the demographics,” he says. “From there, we determine whether we can add value or not.” Learning the lesson early, Cornforth says the group once acquired an asset without looking closely enough at the underlying demographics. The experience led Harvest to develop what it now calls its selection criteria: a quantitative set of metrics that determines whether the group will enter a town, suburb or region.

Equally important is what Harvest avoids. Cornforth says the group is cautious about areas where agriculture or mining heavily influence the local economy, because both can make spending vulnerable to external shocks. Agricultural regions can be hit by drought, while mining towns can suffer when resources are exhausted and operators leave. For a business built around long-term community use, volatility matters.

Romanticising investment

Pubs are emotionally attractive assets. They are visible, social and culturally understood. The dream is simple: buy a pub, improve it, watch the cash flow and enjoy owning part of a familiar local institution – but that simplicity is deceptive. Pubs are operationally intensive and the commercial reality is far more complex.

A pub may sit on valuable land, but performance depends on a multitude of factors: the operator has to understand the market, the missing customer segments, the revenue streams and the community demand sitting beneath the surface.

Cornforth compares it to buying a boat: attractive in theory, expensive and demanding in practice. “They love the idea of it,” he says. “But they love to get out of it as well.”

The romance of ownership can disappear quickly when the investor is confronted with staffing problems, rising costs, poor systems, weak margins or a venue that does not perform as expected. “Things go wrong when non-hospitality people invest in pubs,” says Cornforth. “They don’t understand the asset they’re buying and what the drivers of the revenue are.”

It takes an (experienced) team

Pubs are expensive assets for individual investors, making direct ownership unrealistic. Fund structures allow investors to gain exposure to hospitality assets without needing to buy or operate a pub themselves.

“It’s really challenging right now for an independent operator to run a pub in Australia,” says Cornforth. “The cost of goods is really high. They’re not benefiting from any procurement or scale advantages. They don’t have the systems or the IT to actually monitor cash and stock.”

Scale, in this context, is not just about owning more venues, but having the infrastructure to operate them properly. A larger group can negotiate better supply terms, invest in systems, compare performance across assets, spot problems earlier and deploy capital more strategically. It can also access deals that smaller investors may never see until the strongest opportunities have already been taken.

The asset attracts capital, but value is created by knowing what, where and when to buy; what customer segments are missing; which revenue streams can be added; and how to run the venue well once the doors are open. Pub investment is now an operator’s game, and the investment case depends on whether the operator can convert place, people and behaviour into long-term asset performance.

Conclusion

The art is not simply to add amenities, but create more reasons to visit. Each addition must give the pub another function, audience and potential revenue line. Drinking alone is no longer a sufficient foundation for long-term hospitality performance; families expect more from a local venue, younger customers want experiences rather than just food and beverage, and communities need places to gather. The venue must work harder to justify the visit.

The risk for investors is treating the pub as a simple property play. The opportunity is understanding it as operating real estate. The land, building and licence matter, but they only become valuable when matched with the right management, data, capital improvements and local customer strategy. In that sense, the strongest pub investments are not necessarily the ones that look most attractive from the bar stool. They are the ones where the operator can see what others miss.

These themes will be explored at the Hospitality Real Estate Summit, where industry leaders, investors, developers and operators will come together to discuss the opportunities shaping the next generation of hospitality assets.