John Padgett

Founder & CEO
Spaxial Interactive, Inc.

2026 Phocuswright Conference speaker

John Padgett Founder & CEO
John Padgett is Founder and CEO of Spaxial, a company developing an Experiential AI platform to help hospitality, entertainment and sports businesses deliver more personal experiences at scale.

For more than 30 years, Padgett has created guest experience innovations including Disney’s MagicBand, FastPass+ and Magical Express, and Carnival Corporation’s Princess Medallion. As President of Princess Cruises, he led the brand’s return from the pandemic shutdown, bringing 16 ships back into service, and launched Sun Princess.

His experience spans technology development, global operations and hospitality leadership. At Spaxial, he is focused on applying AI to real-time guest and operational context, equipping frontline employees to anticipate needs, coordinate service and create more meaningful human interactions.

Sessions

Tuesday, November 17, 2026
2:15 PM – 3:00 PM EST

Hospitality AI: The Great Push and Pull

AI is transforming hospitality, but the opportunity looks different depending on where you sit. Global brands want scale and control. Owners want financial returns. Operators want productivity and execution. Independent and boutique hotels want sophisticated capabilities without enterprise-level complexity. Established technology companies are reinventing their platforms, while AI-native innovators are challenging traditional software categories and operating models. All of them face the same test on property: whether AI can give frontline teams the real-time guest context to deliver a higher level of hospitality.Central question: How will AI reshape the way hotels are managed, operated, marketed, distributed, monetized and experienced, and who will control and capture the value?This is an interactive industry discussion, not a sequence of product demonstrations. Industry leaders from different stakeholder groups each speak for five minutes, unplugged with no slides, followed by open discussion and debate to explore opportunities, conflicts and practical solutions.

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