Some data centre projects now wait five to ten years for a grid connection, the same queue hotels, airports and convention centres are joining behind $758 billion of 2026 AI infrastructure capital expenditure, McKinsey & Company partners told a global audience on 8 October.

Consultancy Pertlink has published a viewpoint applying McKinsey's Global Energy Perspective 2026 to the businesses that move, feed and house travellers. The strategic question, Pertlink argues, is no longer how much electricity AI will consume, but where AI — and, by extension, the guest — can physically be powered. McKinsey has retired the phrase "energy transition" in favour of "energy expansion": global energy demand grew 2.7 per cent in 2025, with oil, gas, coal and renewables all expanding at once, and primary energy demand rises another 20 per cent by 2040 in the firm's baseline. "We've been humbled," Helsinki partner Anna Granskog said.

What does the EU–US electricity gap mean for European resorts?

McKinsey scores the world against an "energy quadrilemma" — affordability, competitiveness, sustainability and security — and the picture is worse on all four corners than a year ago, partner Namit Sharma said. The competitiveness gap is now structural: EU electricity costs 120 per cent more than US electricity, and EU gas costs about 6.5 times the US price. That is a built-in handicap for every energy-intensive European hospitality product — spas, ski resorts, heated pools and convention hotels.

In France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea and the UK, McKinsey projects electricity system costs outgrowing GDP. In China, India, Indonesia and Mexico, GDP outruns system costs. Hotels, as large commercial customers, are rarely first in line for tariff relief, and Pertlink expects the political fight over who pays to intensify.

How should operators price AI?

Pertlink has spent much of 2026 arguing that hotels should price AI per guest, much as they price breakfast, under a measure it calls Token Cost Per Guest (TCPG). McKinsey's report adds the variable most TCPG models have left out: tokens are electricity wrapped in software. Public API prices today run $0.20 to $5.00 per million input tokens and $1.20 to $30.00 per million output tokens — cheap-feeling, but sitting on a build-out where energy, not chips, is becoming the binding constraint.

US hotels spent an estimated 3.3 per cent of total revenue on utilities in 2023, or $9.42 per occupied room, with electricity making up 58.9 per cent of that bill, according to CBRE Hotels Research. That share looks small against revenue. It is large against profit, and it is the line most exposed to everything McKinsey documents.

Pertlink's proposal: run two meters, side by side.

• Track TCPG and kilowatt-hours per occupied room night together.
• Report both to the board monthly, by property.
• Ask each AI vendor where inference runs, on what power and in which jurisdiction.
• Stress-test TCPG budgets against an energy uplift, not a straight line.

Where does the sun-belt advantage sit?

Solar firmed with battery storage to 90 per cent reliability now beats gas at low latitudes, McKinsey's cost curves show: about $94 per megawatt-hour at 10° latitude and $102 at 20°, against a gas benchmark near $125. By 60° latitude, the same configuration costs $576 per MWh. For island and coastal resorts across Southeast Asia, the Pacific and the Caribbean, that turns energy from a cost centre into an asset. Nordic and northern European properties cannot match that math.

Granskog told the webinar that battery storage has become an asset class in its own right, increasingly built by infrastructure investors. A hotel does not have to buy the battery. It can host one. Pakistan's rooftop solar base grew from 0.6 GW in 2022 to 6.3 GW by the end of fiscal 2025 without climate policy behind the move, because grid tariffs nearly tripled while panel prices fell about 70 per cent.

What changes for pre-opening planning?

Power capacity is now a feasibility question, not a late-stage MEP line item. Diego Hernandez Diaz, who leads McKinsey's Perspective, drew the line for development committees: "If the grid is not built, the supply and demand will not get built." Required annual grid investment more than doubles, from $443 billion in 2025 to $970 billion by 2050, with transmission spending growing nearly four times as fast as distribution. Transformers and cables already take two to four years to procure.

Pertlink's recommendations for Monday-morning development committees:

• Secure grid-connection studies at land acquisition, before the architect is briefed.
• Order long-lead electrical equipment two to four years ahead.
• Build in storage, load-shifting and demand response to shrink the connection required.
• Treat data centres as neighbours, not just suppliers, where hyperscalers are bidding for the same land, water and substation capacity.

What does the air bridge add to the bill?

IATA's 2026 average jet-fuel forecast of $152 per barrel, up almost 70 per cent on 2025, lifts the airline fuel bill from $252 billion in 2025 to $350 billion this year. Fuel now accounts for 31.4 per cent of airline costs. "High oil prices will inevitably mean higher ticket prices," IATA director general Willie Walsh said. Long-haul demand feels the pass-through first, and destinations reliant on intercontinental arrivals should model fuel shocks as seriously as currency shocks. The Strait of Hormuz disruption has already removed more than 10 per cent of global oil and gas supply at peak, net of rerouting, for 30 weeks and counting — repricing jet fuel, imported food, linen, amenities and construction materials in one move.

Forward view: operators that read AI vendor pricing in kilowatt-hours, secure grid capacity at acquisition and price TCPG against energy volatility will widen the gap on competitors still treating power and intelligence as separate budgets. McKinsey's advice to clients — take a view with conviction, place the big bets, stay agile — fits a general manager as well as an oil major, and Pertlink expects the properties that win to know what their intelligence costs, where their power comes from and how quickly they can get more of it.