On Thursday 16th October, GSL Live once again brought people together from across the student accommodation sector in London to share ideas, meet peers, and learn from each other. The day saw plenty of surprising insights and inspiring conversations, so we wanted to share an overview and some of our key themes and takeaways.
Artificial Intelligence and Gen Alpha – what’s coming and how we can prepare for it.
The day began with a keynote speech from Antony Slumber, globally recognised speaker, advisor and writer, contemplating the future of AI in the PBSA industry. Antony’s message was clear; this level of technology has never before been so accessible, and the more it becomes commonplace, the more “human becomes the new luxury”.
We no longer need to learn computing languages to get machines to do our bidding; we simply need to speak English (or any other language) to ask computers and robots what we want them to do. With the increasing usage of artificial intelligence and robots, you might find yourself asking ‘what is left for humans?’.
According to Antony: questions. He reiterates the importance of critical and analytical thinking skills, saying that the most important skill we can have will be the ability to ask good questions.
Later in the day Mark Lockton, CEO of embracent, picked up the topic, showing that there are opportunities for innovation everywhere. Mark and Antony agree that AI should be a tool that frees up teams for more genuine human connection. The final goal shouldn’t be to ‘implement AI’. As with any new process, it will work best when you start by focusing on current concerns — for both students and operators — and then explore how AI can be used to ease those concerns or deal with them more efficiently.
Antony mentions some ‘low regret’ and high ROI applications where the PBSA sector can implement AI to help with everyday tasks (eg. chatbots and virtual tours), but both he and Mark look beyond the next couple of years to the more sophisticated ways AI may be able to help teams support student welfare, manage energy usage, perform building inspections, and more.
AI was touched on in many of the sessions in some capacity, including by Ruth Bolle, Managing Partner of Research by Design, in her It’s Giving Gen Alpha presentation. Generation Alpha includes anyone born between 2010-2025 and will be the largest generation in history (over 2 billion as of 2025). Ruth remarks that while Gen Alpha are “digital natives”, having never known life without smartphones, tablets and AI, they are not “digital addicts”, and still value real-world experiences.
A surprising statistic in this presentation revealed that 67% of Gen Alpha will work in jobs that do not exist today (which caused an audible gasp from most of the audience members, myself included!).
Ruth goes on to highlight some of values that impact on Gen Alpha’s purchasing decisions, and many of these fit with Antony’s suggestions for longer term AI solutions for student accommodation. Gen Alpha prioritise sustainability, authentic inclusivity and personalisation. With Antony highlighting the potential in PBSA for AI to provide a hyper-personalised service and make decisions around energy usage, there is a natural alignment between the capability of the technology and the expectations of the next generation. The integration of tech into everyday life will be viewed and expected as standard, for example though the readily available use of voice assistants or digital services.
While AI promises efficiency gains, our speakers made it clear that technology alone won’t define success – people will.
Empowered teams drive better resident experiences.
Reassuringly for most, people came up just as much as, and often hand in hand with, technology. Suraiya Comunello from Nido Living provided an update on the Women in PBSA (WinPBSA) initiative, which launched at last year’s GSL Live. In its first year WinPBSA has launched a mentorship programme, matching 44 mentor-mentee pairs, hosted multiple webinars tackling common issues faced in the sector, and worked on policy guidelines on parental leave and menopause.
This was followed up with a session discussing the benefits and best practices of mentorship, with three of WinPBSA’s own mentors – Jan Capper, Clare Ody and Joanne Pollard. They shared their experiences, breakthrough moments, and learnings from their own mentees, highlighting the value in being a mentor as well as being mentored. What struck me was that the session well attended by both men and women and there was a real mix of roles and ‘time-served’ in the sector, and yet everyone came away with something they might not have thought about before.
A particularly gratifying moment came when questions from the audience included someone who had only worked in PBSA for 3 weeks looking for initial advice, and another who had worked in PBSA for 9 years asking whether it is ever too late to be mentored themselves.
One piece of advice that stuck with me was Clare’s advice that if you work in any role that isn’t student facing, to take every opportunity you can to visit and spend time in the buildings, alongside residents.
This is something the Axo Student Living team have put into practice, as Priya Crook, Sales and Marketing Director, shared in another panel. While discussing how operators can demonstrate value for money on a budget, the topic of the importance of face-to-face staff was highlighted in helping students feel valued. Their head office team have found that working from their accommodation buildings both helps them feel more in touch with their residents and helps the residents feel closer to the brand and a more robust connection with where they live.
Continuing the theme of collaboration, Romy Levin, Head of Marketing for Nido Living, shared how they bridged the gap between different teams in a creative way. When the marketing team put on a Dragon’s Den / Shark Tank challenge at one of their regular meetings, the outputs were so inspiring that they wanted to expand the scope. The next time all the Nido teams came together, they replicated the challenge across the whole business.
Teams were formed, each with a representative from different areas of the business, including general managers and colleagues working in IT, marketing or finance teams. Teams had one hour to think like entrepreneurs, and debate and develop their ideas for innovation in student accommodation, identifying a challenge, a solution, and the impact. These were then pitched to the team (‘dragons’). Romy reflects that this was a great way to unlock creativity, give each team a chance to voice their opinion and gain a better understanding of each other’s challenges across the business. This resulted in dual benefits: many new ideas rooted in what actually matters to the staff, and a highly improved staff morale where each individual feels heard, motivated and inspired. The initiative hasn’t stopped at a single-day event, and they now have a permanent taskforce with funding and freedom to experiment.
Community still matters, but recent challenges are evolving.
Sarah Ead, Head of Insight for GSL, shared findings from our latest research report Building Connections, created in collaboration with CUBO. Using data from the GSL Index, Sarah reveals that while sense of community has improved over time, there are still students struggling with their social experience.
- 1/3 of students struggle meeting new people.
- 28% struggle with having the confidence to do the things they want to do at university.
- More than 1 in 5 struggle with loneliness or relationships
Students who have a disability, are neurodivergent, or identify as LGBTQIA+ are more likely to struggle socially, and more likely to report that they would like to get more involved in their extracurricular activity but that there are things stopping them.
We heard from Danielle Barnes, Student Life Manager at Edge Hill University, where over 70% of their enrolment are widening participation students. Danielle tells us about the success they have had with their ‘Get Connected’ program, where they hold regular small events to help students who are struggling to find friends or need help building their confidence to bigger events. Hannah Cruse, Accommodation Communications Officer at UWE Bristol, shares that they also host regular tea party events, specifically marketed as ‘shy & friendly’.
In a later presentation looking at value for money perceptions, we dove into the top factors that impact a students’ value for money perceptions in the GSL Index: condition and quality, bedroom, management, care & support, environmental impact, and laundry.
Interestingly, social events were the part of management performance most likely to impact value for money. Peter Brook, Operations Director for LIV Student shares how changing their approach to more authentic events has helped massively improve students’ perception of value. He shares that the events with the most notable impact are the ones that help students feel like they belong to the wider community, such as their ongoing relationship with a local care home and other projects and events which involve students giving back to the local community.
Putting on the right events is a crucial part of encouraging students to meet new people and foster a community. However, students still want to be comfortable with those they are living with, and it can be a huge change to suddenly share a space with people they haven’t met before.
The importance of developing skills in conflict resolution and difficult conversations.
Sarah’s presentation highlights the importance of students’ relationships with others in relation to their overall sense of belonging – which is widely linked to academic success, retention and wellbeing. She shares comments from the GSL Index highlighting students’ increasing desire for help from site teams in intervening in conflict and difficult conversations with roommates.
In response Becca Hayhurst, Head of Resident Experience for Unite Students, tells the audience about their ‘courageous conversations’ initiative. They recognised that it’s not only students feeling reluctant to have difficult conversations, but many of their younger staff members also feel the same, potentially feeling uncomfortable about having to discipline students or intervene in a conflict. Therefore, they have reframed these difficult conversations as ‘courageous’ and provided their staff with training and support, in turn helping their residents feel at ease.
To help others deal with similar issues in their own residences, we invited Dr Mike Talbot, Founder & CEO of UK Mediation, to share his own expertise on handling conflict between students. Before sharing his wisdom though, Mike opens with an interactive exercise asking everyone in the room to imagine that they want an orange. And then, to imagine that the person next to them wants the same orange. And you both want the orange right now. How would you handle this situation?
The conversations quickly became energetic, and the different solutions – competition, mediation, a fight – clearly showed the differences in approaches to conflict. Mike then shared practical tips for preventing and resolving conflict, from provider-enforced rules to using non-violent communication.
What’s Next?
Technology will continue advancing, and we should make the most of the efficiency this brings, but we can only plan so far ahead. As we heard throughout GSL Live, the true differentiator for PBSA will be people, empathy, and community.
GSL News continues to share these themes through the years, sharing industry developments, the latest insights from the GSL Index, and case studies from across the industry, so subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay informed. We also hope you can join the conversation in person again at next year’s GSL Live conference, on October 14th, 2026.
We want to say a huge thank you to everybody who contributed to GSL Live and helped make it a success, particularly our speakers and sponsors.
We are always open to feedback, and this includes ideas for future content, so if you have any recommendations for research, speakers, or topics for next year’s conference, please feel free to get in touch at [email protected].
