Lighthouse, a commercial operating platform for travel and hospitality, has launched Ernest, an AI assistant designed to bridge general AI models with hotel-specific operations. The system delivers intelligence, recommends actions and automates tasks across existing hospitality platforms. Ernest functions as a conversational interface that analyses data from property management systems, central reservation systems and booking channels. It provides competitive analysis, demand signals and management presentations whilst offering strategic recommendations based on hospitality context. With user approval, Ernest can automate tasks across more than 500 platform integrations. The AI assistant is currently available in beta for select customers, with broader global availability planned throughout 2026. Lighthouse positions Ernest as addressing fragmented systems and repetitive work facing revenue, marketing and distribution teams.

Lighthouse has acquired Hotelrank.ai, adding real-time analytics to its Connect AI solution. The integration enables hotels to monitor their rankings, perception and booking performance across AI travel platforms including ChatGPT, Gemini and Anthropic. Hotelrank.ai tracks how properties appear in AI-generated responses, monitoring citations, rankings and competitive positioning. Hotels can now measure their AI visibility scores, analyse direct versus OTA link distribution, and benchmark against competitors. The combined platform allows hotels to optimise for AI-powered discovery and direct bookings. CEO Sean Fitzpatrick stated that hotels mastering "agentic discovery and conversion" early will gain competitive advantage. The solution aims to prepare properties for future autonomous AI agent bookings, enabling them to capture increased demand from this emerging channel.