Pandora’s lunch box is open: artificial intelligence is already reshaping Brighton’s hospitality and tourism industry

Boho Gelato is an independent ice cream shop in Pool Valley, Brighton

If you’ve wandered down Western Road or bumbled through the Lanes recently, you’ll know our little corner of Sussex is seemingly still pretty much wall-to-wall independent hospitality, writes Nick Mosley.

Despite the slow march of the multiples, Brighton and Hove is chockablock with independent coffee shops, restaurants, pubs, cocktail bars and plenty of tiny, creative food businesses that – despite the talent and passion of their owners – I often really can’t see how they manage to survive what with all the other input pressures. Also, food and drink aside – despite the increasing number of the chain hotels in the city in the past decade or so – we also still have a pretty healthy number of independently owned bed and breakfasts and small hotels.

However over the hum of espresso machines and the clatter of knives and forks, things are undoubtably changing.

For the last decade or so, the story of eating out and staying local has been dominated by digital middlemen – known in industry jargon as aggregators. You’ll be familiar with them as they’re global household names that we all use on a daily basis: Amazon, Uber and UberEats, Deliveroo, Expedia, Booking.com, The Fork and TripAdvisor, JustEats, AirBnB, OpenTable, SevenRooms, ResDiary…

These booking portals, delivery apps, retailers and massive review sites have established themselves as the de facto consumer front door for all of us, happily pocketing chunky commission fees just for putting a local business on your mobile phone screen.

However, artificial intelligence is rocking up to rewrite the rulebook. The aggregators are still very much in the ring but they aren't the ringmasters any longer. AI is creeping into every corner of hospitality – from how commercial kitchens handle food waste to how someone sitting on the beach finds a table for supper. For our local independents, this new tech brings a few genuine wins but also some distinctly bitter pill-swallowing.

English's in East Street is the oldest restaurant in Brighton

AI is giving small, independent operators access to tools that used to be strictly reserved for global hotel chains and big restaurant multiples. If an independent business wants to show up near the top of Google search, traditionally it either has to splash out on pay-per-click ads or hand over a massive chunk of lolly to a third-party aggregator.

Conversational AI search works differently. When someone asks an AI digital assistant such as Google Gemini or Chat GPT for ‘a dog-friendly boozer in Hove serving good Sunday roasts and craft beers’, the AI doesn't just look at who paid the biggest commission – it scours direct websites, social feeds and live booking systems. So if a small venue keeps its web data clean, accurate and clear, it gets a direct route to the customer and completely bypasses the third-party aggregator middleman.

Its not just about marketing and getting bums on seats and heads in beds. Behind the pass, running an independent hospitality business is tightrope walk of razor-thin margins and eye-watering bills. This is where back-of-house AI is offering opportunity for those with the imagination to embrace it.

Smart algorithms can look at everything from local Sussex weather forecasts to historical booking patterns to guide a head chef or restaurateur as to how many covers to expect meaning less waste and a healthier bottom line.

Proactive B&Bs and small hotels can use smart, dynamic pricing tools that tweak room rates automatically based on what’s happening in the city – whether an expected festival or event at the Brighton Centre, railway engineering works, extreme weather, the list is endless – without needing a full-time revenue manager on the payroll.

At its heart, genuine hospitality has always been about making people feel looked after. Modern AI customer systems allow a small front-of-house team to remember that a regular guest has a food allergy, prefers a certain table or bedroom or – I very much hope – loved a bottle of Sussex sparkling last time they visited. That knowledge is powerful for the business whilst also making the guest feel remembered, recognised and respected.

But – as always – every upside has a potential downside so let’s not put on rose-tinted glasses just yet, Elton. Bringing AI into an industry built on human warmth carries risks – especially as the big tech platforms scramble to keep their grip on the market.

Whilst traditional aggregators might be losing their old search dominance, big tech – Alphabet (owners of Facebook), Apple, Google, Microsoft – are effectively building super-aggregators.

Unlike with traditional internet search engines, if a visitor leaves their whole weekend itinerary and booking process to an AI assistant, they might never actually see the website or social channel of individual independent pubs, restaurants or hotels. The unique character and narrative of those local businesses can be lost to a line of text in an answer box. When the AI platform controls the entire conversation, that personal connection between hospitality operator and guest is lost before anyone even steps through the door.

Also generative AI is renowned for making things up – digital hallucinations – and in hospitality that’s a recipe for disaster. If an AI assistant scrapes old web data and tells customers that a venue is open on Mondays – or insists a restaurant offers allergen free dishes when it doesn’t – that creates creates real operational headaches. Perhaps even worse from a financial perspective, rogue AI agents booking tables automatically could overwhelm reservation software with ghost bookings leaving tables sitting empty on a busy Friday night.

The Coal Shed in North Street, Brighton

And back to the heady world of hospitality marketing. As a longstanding food and drink writer for The Argus, I obviously have my own thoughts about human social media influencers and the not always positive impact they have on individual businesses and the integrity of our food and visitor economy. And I think we’ve all seen the damage a dodgy online review can do to a small business.

Generative AI makes this problem considerably worse with independent venues becoming wide open to automated bot attacks. That could be fake negative reviews generated en masse by bad actors or made-up positive reviews artificially inflating a rival’s rating. Disputing a fake review with a human at TripAdvisor, Deliveroo or Expedia was hard enough but trying to fix a computer’s skewed opinion of a restaurant or hotel is a whole different kettle of fish.

I’ve absolutely no doubt in my mind that AI will change the world; more fundamentally and faster than the industrial revolution and the atomic age. It will be a rapid process over the coming few years and many of the scenarios don’t sound particularly great for humanity.

However, I think, the impacts for our local independent hospitality and tourism businesses over the coming years boil down to two things. Firstly, businesses keeping web data tidy is non-negotiable; if a menu is hidden inside an old PDF, opening hours are wrong across the web or an existing booking engine doesn't talk to modern systems, AI assistants will just skip right past businesses.

Secondly, venues – and all those of us who work in the industry – really do need to double down on what a computer can’t do. An AI can tweak a booking, count up stock and summarise reviews, but it can’t pour a pint of Sussex Best with a genuine smile, cook a seasonal south coast fish to perfection, help a visitor on the street with a restaurant recommendation nor create the magical and memorable buzz of a great hospitality experience. Only people – currently – have soul.