At Food Hotel Tech 2026, a panel discussion brought together leaders from hospitality, foodservice, and human resources to explore a topic that has become increasingly strategic: talent retention.

In an industry where turnover remains one of the biggest operational challenges, the issue extends far beyond HR. It directly impacts service quality, customer satisfaction, and ultimately, business performance.

One key idea emerged from the discussion: employee experience is now one of the strongest drivers of customer experience. And digital tools can play a crucial role in strengthening it.

Hotels, restaurants, and contract catering businesses all share the same reality.

Service industries are facing labor shortages, changing expectations from younger generations, and a growing demand for meaningful work.

For Peggy Gasté, founder of PrimUp and former executive of the Coolangatta Group, retention starts with clear objectives and recognition.

Within her businesses, implementing transparent performance indicators combined with incentive programs helped retain nearly 90% of participating employees.

But beyond compensation, the real challenge lies elsewhere: helping employees clearly understand what is expected of them and enabling them to measure the impact of their work.

For Kim Richard, co-founder of Make Me Glow Hospitality, the main challenge is ensuring skills are retained over time.

According to her, traditional training programs—whether in-person or digital—are no longer enough to create lasting behavioral change.

Her solution leverages conversational AI to allow employees to regularly practice real-life hospitality scenarios.

The goal is not simply to learn procedures or processes, but to develop a deeper awareness of how every interaction influences the customer experience.

One particularly innovative approach involves placing employees in the customer's shoes, allowing them to evaluate service quality themselves and understand the positive—or negative—impact of their actions.

This immersive learning model encourages stronger engagement, greater autonomy, and better knowledge retention.

For Gwenaëlle Pageix, Talent Director at Sodexo France, digital adoption only succeeds when it delivers tangible value to employees.

At Sodexo, nearly 70% of team members do not work behind a screen every day. Chefs, maintenance technicians, and frontline staff have priorities that are far removed from digital tools.

The challenge is therefore not to impose technology, but to demonstrate how it can simplify daily work.

One example presented during the session involved an AI-powered menu creation solution. By automating complex menu-planning tasks, chefs and dietitians save significant amounts of time.

That time can then be reinvested in what truly matters: cooking, sharing expertise, and educating guests about nutrition.

In this context, technology becomes a tool that serves people—not the other way around.

This search for meaning is also at the heart of Moon Hospitality’s strategy.

Its founder, Aziz Temimi, advocates a highly human-centered management approach despite making extensive use of digital tools.

According to him, technology does not create employee experience—it simply helps structure and sustain it.

At Moon Hospitality, everything begins with recruitment. The company prioritizes personality, attitude, and potential over qualifications and experience.

New hires are then immersed in the guest experience from day one, including an overnight stay at the hotel and a meal at the restaurant before officially starting their role.

The objective is straightforward: ensure every employee understands the story the brand wants to tell its guests.

However, culture alone is not enough. Performance is continuously measured through a range of indicators, many of which go beyond financial metrics: room readiness, data quality in the PMS, guest satisfaction, and operational performance.

This transparency fosters accountability and strengthens employees’ sense of belonging.

One point generated unanimous agreement among the speakers: no digital tool can compensate for weak management.

Technology remains a facilitator.

Communication, coaching, training, recognition, and feedback remain fundamentally human responsibilities.

Managers must be able to transform data into meaningful actions and support for their teams.

Without that human layer, even the most sophisticated platforms will fail to deliver their full value.

One of the most compelling concepts discussed during the session was the “symmetry of attention.”

The principle is simple: the quality of the customer experience directly reflects the quality of the employee experience.

Gwenaëlle Pageix illustrated this through Sodexo’s food waste reduction program.

By using digital tools to accurately measure food waste, teams can track progress, share results with clients, and better understand the impact of their efforts.

The benefits are twofold.

The company improves operational and environmental performance, while employees feel they are contributing to a meaningful mission aligned with their personal values.

The panel concluded with a message that resonated across all sectors represented.

The first step should never be choosing the latest technology.

Instead, organizations should begin by observing their teams, identifying operational pain points, understanding employee needs, and defining the experience they want to create.

Only then does technology become relevant.

As Aziz Temimi summarized, “Technology is there to fill the gaps in the system.”

In other words, digital tools are not the objective—they are the enabler.

And in hospitality, where emotion, human connection, and service excellence remain at the core of value creation, that reality has never been more evident.