Insights Type: Thought Leadership

As we continue the research journey toward the HSMAI Foundation’s next State of Talent report, I recently had the opportunity to spend time with members of HSMAI’s Rising Leaders Councils. I wanted to hear directly from emerging leaders about how changes in hospitality’s commercial model are showing up in their careers—how they are developing, how much exposure they are getting across commercial disciplines, how AI is changing their work, and how they are thinking about their own career progression. 

It was an important conversation, and one theme stayed with me: the expectations of commercial leadership are broadening faster than many of our traditional career pathways. 

Sales, marketing, revenue management, distribution, digital, loyalty and analytics are increasingly interconnected. Technology is accelerating that convergence. Organizations are centralizing some capabilities, outsourcing others, and asking leaders to operate across a much broader commercial landscape. 

For people building careers in this environment, functional expertise remains important. But increasingly, it is only part of the equation. 

Building breadth in a world of convergence 

Our Rising Leaders conversation reinforced the importance of cross-functional experience. Participants clearly valued opportunities to understand disciplines beyond their own, yet those opportunities were not always part of a formal development path. 

For many, career development was something they were actively navigating themselves—seeking mentors, volunteering for broader projects, learning from colleagues in other disciplines and making thoughtful decisions about which roles and experiences would build the capabilities they would need next. 

One participant captured it particularly well: 

“Career paths aren’t linear anymore, so you have to really think about the job choices you’re making internally in the organization, and also what roles can really drive your development outside of the organization.” 

I think there is an important lesson in that observation. 

Owning your career is not a new idea. 

Previous generations of leaders also had to seek out experiences, build relationships, take risks, find mentors and sometimes make lateral moves to acquire skills they did not have. Organizations can—and should—provide learning opportunities, feedback, exposure and clarity about what successful progression looks like. But no organization can completely map a career for us. 

Career development has always required personal agency. What may be different today is the complexity of deciding which experiences will matter most. 

The apprenticeship model is changing 

For decades, hospitality developed commercial talent through experience. People learned by doing the work, observing more experienced leaders and progressively taking on larger responsibilities. But the work itself is changing. 

AI, automation, centralized services and external partners are beginning to perform some of the analytical, administrative and production work historically undertaken inside commercial organizations. That creates efficiencies, but it also raises an important talent question: 

As we redesign the work, are we also thinking carefully enough about how people will learn the work? 

If some traditional stepping-stone responsibilities disappear or change substantially, we will need to think differently about how future leaders acquire judgment, commercial instincts and operating experience. 

That does not necessarily mean recreating yesterday’s career paths. It may mean building new ones. 

Cross-functional projects, exposure to different parts of the commercial organization, stretch assignments, mentoring and a stronger understanding of the financial implications of commercial decisions may become even more important. 

AI changes the work—and the learning agenda 

AI was already very much part of the working environment for the Rising Leaders we spoke with. Participants described using it across content creation, marketing activities, reporting and analysis. But becoming proficient with AI tools is only one dimension of readiness. 

As technology takes on more execution, human capability will increasingly need to move toward judgment, problem solving, interpretation and decision-making. For emerging leaders, that means asking not simply, How can AI help me do my current job? but also, What capabilities do I need to develop because AI is changing my job? 

That same question applies much further up the organization. 

This is not only an emerging-leader issue 

While my conversation with the Rising Leaders Councils provided one valuable perspective, our broader State of Talent work is examining these changes across the commercial leadership pipeline. 

And some of the greatest pressure may actually be occurring among established leaders. 

Across the industry, organizations are operating with increasingly disciplined organizational structures while AI, automation and new operating models continue to reshape how work gets done. In many cases, experienced leaders are being asked to absorb broader responsibilities, lead across functions and technologies, manage increasingly complex organizations and continue delivering results with fewer resources. 

For someone who has spent years becoming very good at a particular discipline, that can represent a significant professional transition. The question of career development therefore does not end when someone reaches a director, vice president or C-suite role. If anything, the need to keep learning may be accelerating. 

The established commercial leader may need to develop AI fluency, stronger financial acumen, broader cross-functional understanding, new approaches to leading technology-enabled teams and the ability to determine which work should remain internal, which should be automated and which may be better accessed through external expertise. 

Career ownership is becoming a lifelong requirement. 

A new commercial career landscape 

One of the ideas we will continue exploring through the State of Talent research is what a successful commercial career looks like as the operating model changes.I don’t believe the answer is simply that organizations need to provide more development. Nor is it that individuals are entirely on their own. It is a shared equation. 

Organizations have an important role in creating environments where people can learn, gain exposure, receive meaningful feedback and take on greater responsibility. 

Individuals have an equally important role in understanding where the industry is going, identifying the capabilities they will need and actively seeking the experiences that will prepare them for what comes next. 

That applies whether someone is three years into their hospitality career or thirty. As we continue the State of Talent research, there are several questions I believe are worth asking: 

• Are we building commercial talent with enough breadth to operate across increasingly interconnected disciplines? 
• As AI, automation and new operating models change the work, how will people acquire the experiences and judgment traditionally developed through doing that work? 
• Are we treating development as something that continues throughout a commercial career—not something that ends once someone reaches leadership? 
• And perhaps most importantly: are we all taking enough ownership of keeping our own capabilities relevant as the industry changes around us? 

The commercial organization of the future will almost certainly look different from the one many of us grew up in. Our challenge is not simply to prepare the next generation to lead it. 

It is to make sure all of us are continuing to learn fast enough to lead in it.