How The Hotel Brussels turned one Kassandra AI insight into 1,600 extra room nights

At a glance

The Hotel Brussels, a 423-room independent hotel, used Kassandra AI to take a fresh look at its corporate business ahead of the 2027 budget. By pairing Kassandra's analysis with the judgement of its sales, revenue and business development teams, the hotel has built 1,600 additional room nights and €300k+ in extra revenue into next year's plan.

• 1,600 room nights: Additional corporate room nights in the 2027 budget
• €300k+: Additional revenue compared with what the same accounts produced in 2026
• 1,000 room nights: From new accounts the team retargeted and signed
• 600 room nights: From growing and renegotiating existing accounts
• +2 points: Contribution to the hotel's 2027 occupancy

About The Hotel Brussels

The Hotel Brussels is a 423-room independent hotel about ten minutes on foot from the European institutions. Its business includes corporate accounts, meetings and events, groups and crew.

Anne-Catherine Vanolande, General Manager, presents the hotel's budget to Pandox together with her Finance Manager, Director of Business Development and Revenue Manager. Together, they use Kassandra AI, Juyo's AI agent, to help prepare their business reviews and budgets.

The challenge

While preparing the hotel's 2027 budget, the team asked Kassandra what they could do better next year.

Kassandra's answer pointed at an opportunity in corporate business. Given the hotel's location so close to the European institutions, she highlighted the volume of corporate travel linked to those institutions in the city and the room the hotel had to grow its share of it. That business also tends to come with strong rates on dates when the city is under pressure, so the opportunity mattered for revenue as well as occupancy.

The challenge was turning that into a plan. Deciding which accounts to target and at what price means weighing negotiated corporate rates against discounted public rates and the acquisition cost of each channel, the kind of analysis that can take hours or days in Excel.

The solution: Kassandra's analysis, the team's judgement

Kassandra did more than name the problem. She told the team where to look: travel linked to the European institutions is mostly booked through travel management companies on the GDS, so rather than cold-calling, the hotel should start by analysing its GDS production by channel and pattern. That gave the team a clear brief, and the work moved quickly from insight to action.

The Director of Business Development, the sales team and the Revenue Manager then sat down together to decide which accounts to pursue. This is where the human side made the difference. Kassandra can see thousands of room nights of potential, but she cannot know that a particular account always books a competitor because it is a few hundred metres from their headquarters, or what lies behind another client's choice of hotel. The sales team brought that context, and the revenue manager made sure every target made sense on price.

"The team approach is something I would not underestimate, because Kassandra can see thousands of room nights, but they might be produced in the airport area."

Anne-Catherine Vanolande, General Manager

Kassandra also helped the team weigh the trade-offs that usually take hours in a spreadsheet. A discounted public rate produces seven nights a week but carries a high acquisition cost, while a negotiated corporate rate fills mainly Tuesday to Thursday at a much lower cost. In a few minutes, Kassandra could set out the priorities, the first accounts to target and the ones that would not be worth the effort.

Once the approach had worked for accounts linked to the European institutions, the team applied the same thinking to its whole corporate portfolio. They reviewed what the competitive set was winning and why, renegotiated existing agreements, and went back to an account they had assumed was out of reach on price. A small change to that rate alone is expected to bring a couple of hundred extra room nights in 2027.

The results

The new corporate strategy is now built into The Hotel Brussels' 2027 budget as 1,600 additional room nights and €300k+ in additional revenue compared with what the same accounts produced in 2026. Of those room nights, 1,000 come from new accounts the team reconsidered, retargeted and signed, and 600 come from growing existing accounts through renegotiated rates and conditions. Together they contribute two percentage points of occupancy for 2027 across the hotel's 423 rooms.

Anne is clear that the comparison is like for like: crew and meetings business are held level in the budget, so the uplift comes from the corporate work that started with Kassandra. It is also more profitable business, because negotiated corporate accounts carry a much lower acquisition cost than discounted public rates.

"They will get an attractive rate and we will get an attractive return. So it's a win-win."

The benefits go beyond rooms. The hotel's sales team handles corporate accounts and meetings together, because the companies whose employees stay with the hotel are often the same ones organising meetings and events. Guests who already know the service and the food and beverage make it much easier to win their next event.

The exercise also changed how the budget meeting itself went. Everyone around the table had consulted Kassandra too, so the hotel team arrived with the same questions and their answers ready.

"We had done our homework. We were not discovering where we were challenged, because everyone in front of you has also consulted Kassandra and knows what question to ask."

How the team works with Kassandra

The team built its trust in Kassandra step by step. In the early days, they would put the month-end P&L on one screen and ask Kassandra questions they already knew the answers to, such as room nights and ADR by segment last month or performance against budget year to date. Where Kassandra fell short, they asked what she needed and fed her the missing reports.

"It's a co-conversation. I'm telling you what I know, you tell me what you know, and then together we see where we can get. That made us really trust the system."

Above all, Kassandra helps the team prioritise. Before a 45-minute meeting between sales, finance and business development, they use Kassandra to work out what matters most, so the discussion starts with the real issue rather than anyone's gut feeling. Every three months, the team runs the same set of prompts to get a helicopter view of the property:

1. Can you do an executive summary of the overall performances at The Hotel, Brussels?
2. What are our five key successes?
3. What are our key challenges?
4. Where should we act first to drive change?

The team sees the last one as the most important. As Anne puts it, AI will always give you a hundred ideas, and sometimes you just need to know where to start.

Anne's advice to other GMs who are unsure about AI is simple: you have nothing to lose by trying it. Start with easy questions you can check, validate the answers, and build from there.

What's next

The work Kassandra started has also opened up wider strategic conversations for the team about how the hotel competes for corporate business in the years ahead. In Anne's words, it started from a single remark by Kassandra about being ten minutes' walk from the European institutions and went much deeper than that.

"The right question to the right person, without losing time. If we have a 45-minute meeting, let's start with what matters the most. It's not a gut feeling."

Want to see what Kassandra AI could find in your hotel's data? Book a demo with the Juyo team.