Insights & Writing
Public thinking on hospitality, technology, and what’s missing.
The Proxenia Foundation publishes research, analysis, and long-form writing on the intersection of hospitality and innovation — with particular attention to Central Florida and the structural conditions that shape what gets built here. The work is ongoing. The argument develops over time.
Series 01 · The Hospitality Innovation Gap · Ongoing
A developing argument about the structural conditions that have kept hospitality technology from taking root in the world’s largest hospitality markets — and what it would take to change that. Written by Scott Hill, Founder & Executive Director.
Movement 1 · The Global Hospitality View
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The $150 Billion Disconnect
Central Florida sits at the intersection of two enormous economies that rarely talk to each other. One is tourism. Visit Orlando puts the regional hospitality…
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The Most Overlooked Innovation Platform in the World
Walt Disney World employs roughly 80,000 people, making it the largest single-site employer in the United States and one of the largest concentrated workforces anywhere…
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The Guest Journey is a Technology Stack
What most people experience as a trip is, in reality, the coordinated output of dozens of independent technology systems that were mostly built separately, by…
Movement 2 · The Ecosystem Gap
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The Economics of Standing Still
Imagine a general manager at a 200-room hotel. She has been running this property for eleven years. She knows its rhythms — the winter conference…
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Where the Innovation Actually Comes From
If you’ve spent any time inside the hospitality industry, or adjacent to it watching from the technology side, you’ve probably developed a working theory about…
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The Pressure That Won’t Relent
Previously we imagined a general manager running a 200-room hotel on a 4% net margin. She gave a tech solution entrepreneur forty-five minutes, then sent…
Movement 3 · The Orlando Context
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What Hospitality Cities Get Wrong
The Director of Operations for a mid-sized restaurant group in Central Florida keeps a running list on her phone — not tasks, but problems. Technology…
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Hidden in Plain Sight
Central Florida’s hospitality economy is enormous and well-documented. What sits beside it is the peanut butter to the chocolate. The Orlando Economic Partnership puts the…
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The Research Frontier Next Door
There is published research on what happens when a robot delivers room service and something goes wrong. Not the mechanical failure — the human one.…
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The Invisible Interchange
Drive south through Florida on the Turnpike and you will, at some point, find yourself running nearly parallel to I-95. Two major roads, serving much…
Movement 4 · The Proxenia Thesis
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The Gathering Storm
In February of this year, Marriott CEO Anthony Capuano announced on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call that Marriott was building a direct booking integration with…
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The Best Time to Plant
There is a particular kind of knowledge that accumulates only through years of standing inside a problem. The front desk manager who has watched the…
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The Proxenia Thesis
The word hospitality has been flattened. In common usage it describes an industry category, a line on an org chart, a section of the stock…
Series 02 · From Traffic to Trafficking · Coming Soon
The human side of Hospitality in Central Florida
Series 03 · Beyond the Near Horizon · Coming Soon
The technologies shaping the future of Hospitality