AI strategy for hospitality
It's not rocket science.
I'm Joe Mullane, Director of Divergent Thinking at Pub Agent. For the past few years I have been absorbed by all things AI. Not because it is the new shiny toy, but because used correctly it will help humanity, and the things I love. Hospitality, above all. Early adoption keeps proving right: the point of AI is to hand people their time back, to spend where it matters most. In front of the customer. And to unlock data like it has never been unlocked before, so the decisions get better and better.
The thing I love most is problems. My appetite for curing them is greater even than my appetite for Italian cuisine, fine wine and great British beer. And those three run it close.
Where the value is
AI takes tasks, not jobs.
The greatest value of AI in hospitality today is time. Every task a machine absorbs hands an hour back to your team, and that hour belongs in front of guests, doing what only people can do: read the room, connect, tell the story.
Nobody ever went back to a pub because the rota software was elegant. They go back because someone remembered their name and their drink. The software's only job is to buy back time for the remembering.
What I do
Three things, done properly.
AI strategy you can follow
Most pub companies do not have an AI strategist. I am one, and I have run the pubs. I set clear strategy guidelines in plain English, build the processes behind them, and train your teams until it sticks. No fog, no jargon, no 200-page deck.
Turnarounds, without the mystery
I turn poorly performing businesses into high-performing ones, and the method is deliberately unglamorous. Fix the culture, train the people, refine the process, then let the data prove it. I have done it standing behind the bar, not advising from the side.
Be found where people now search
Customers ask ChatGPT and Google's AI where to eat and drink before they ever see your website. I audit how your business shows up in AI search and fix what the machines misread. SEO is about being found by humans. GEO is about being understood by machines.
The background
Three careers. One thread: make things work.
The engine room
Before pubs: business process re-engineering and strong trading rooms. Years of finding what was broken in the flow and removing it, with big teams of developers, analysts and quants doing the heavy lifting. And, honestly, a bit of divergent thinking. Connecting things that do not obviously belong together has always been the day job.
The pubs
Eight years as a Shepherd Neame tenant, running the Four Fathoms in Herne Bay and the New Flying Horse in Wye with my wife Jane. Award-winning, both. Hospitality is not a theory to me. I have lived over the shop.
Pub Agent
Now the two collide. Pub Agent works with pub companies and hospitality businesses on AI strategy, structured data and AI search visibility, and the operational intelligence hiding in their own estates. Current work includes one of Britain's oldest brewers.
Hospitality first. Data second. Story always.
The blog
Notes from the Frontier.
I write about what AI actually does for hospitality businesses: what to adopt, what to ignore, and how to keep the human bit human. Plain English, from real work.
Agentification: when AI replaces process, humans replace it with revenue
AI agents should absorb the admin, not the people. The operating rule that makes AI adoption work in hospitality, and the three-wave rollout that builds trust inside the business before it touches the guest.
Read it
Cheap AI is a trap if your data is trapped
The price of AI is falling fast, yet AI bills keep going up. The moat is not the model. It is your context, and whether a machine can actually reach it.
Read it
From SEO to GEO: the new front door
Guests now ask AI where to eat and drink before they ever see your website. SEO is about being found by humans. GEO is about being understood by machines. Here is what that changes.
Read it
Talk to me
If your team needs their time back, start here.
One conversation. Tell me what is underperforming: a site, a process, or how you show up when someone asks an AI where to go tonight. I will tell you honestly whether I can help, and what I would do first.