Discussion about AI is rife in our industry. Is the technology good enough to implement yet? What’s the risk versus the reward? Does it really make that much of an impact? What jobs is it taking? What about ethics?
But one thing that isn’t up for debate anymore is its potential. There’s no discussion whether AI is going to be a big thing: it’s already a big thing, said Andre Doria, Head of Digital Empowerment at PortoBay Hotels & Resorts in the Hoteliers’ Voice Travel Market Life podcast.
I’ve spent the last year listening to the industry and speaking with accommodation providers and hospitality leaders about the actual practical deployment of AI. Travel Market Life Podcast has been my entry point for real discussion, and in my roundtable and social interactive networking events – I’ve taken this opportunity to deeper dive into the roadblocks to success.
Rich vast sea of AI
AI is so vast – so it is about deciding what kind of AI to implement – and answering the when, why and how questions – this has proven to be difficult for many. When navigating a sea of AI solutions, hoteliers are having to get focused on solving issues. In hospitality, many say that it’s the short term rental sector that has led the way with technology adoption. The nature of the business – with dispersed properties and property owners – means businesses working in this niche need a unified way of reaching guests. So when it comes to AI, looking towards this sector can be useful for hotels.
A key part of how we now solve problems is considering whether there is an opportunity to use AI to do a lot of the things that we would normally be relying on one person to do. Ben Duncan, Commercial Director for Host and Stay in our conversation
Doria agrees: AI needs to be a useful tool, not a buzzword. It needs to make the process work better.
So how exactly are hotels using AI at the moment to have a tangible impact?
1. Guest interaction
As the guest is everything in hospitality, it makes sense to start here with AI adoption. How can AI improve communication with guests, to improve the guest experience overall?
In the Hotel Partner Travel Market Life podcast, according to Vered Raviv-Schwarz, the President and CEO at Guesty – an all-in-one platform for short term rental businesses used by Host and Stay – automated responses is one way their customers are seeing a big impact. If you use our ReplyAI tool to generate automated responses to your guests, we see our customers saving between 20% and 50% of responses by using the tool, she said. The tool learns from all previous communications, so it continuously improves, providing faster and more accurate responses. It’s a huge time saver for customers.
WestCord Hotels is one hotel group that has implemented an AI tool to improve guest communication.
For us, it was about having an automated way to have 24/7 multilingual, good quality answers, and not just another invasive way of getting to our guests. Maurits Bots, the IT manager at WestCord Hotels on the podcast
The hotel group implemented Runnr.ai, a virtual concierge that both answers questions and proactively reaches out to hotel guests via WhatsApp. We see more than half of all the guests actively engaging with the WhatsApp messages we send out throughout the guest journey, said Michiel De Vor, the co-founder and CEO of Runnr.AI on the Travel Market Life podcast. By engaging with guests throughout the guest journey, we create a communication layer between the guests and the hotel.
2. Understanding reviews
We as property managers have to live by reviews, said Raviv-Schwarz. It’s the most important thing for many of our customers. With future bookings hanging in the balance based on reviews – and with AI search tools increasingly prioritising user-generated content including reviews – keeping on top of all the reviews out there is rising in importance for hoteliers.
Tools such as Guesty have integrated AI to automatically categorise, analyse, and reply to reviews – helping property owners and managers to act quickly. Host and Stay uses this, plus an API, to pull out specific points mentioned in reviews. For example, if a review mentions a stained carpet, it automatically sends this information to a task management system to create a task. This prompts a team member to go and clean the carpet.
When you’re operating at scale, streamlined processes are absolutely crucial, said Duncan. It enables us to get on top of issues and resolve them with no delay. Otherwise, you can quite easily rack up three negative reviews due to the same issue.
3. Generating revenue
Should hoteliers dare to hope that AI can help them increase revenue? According to both hoteliers and AI tech providers, the answer is ‘yes’.
Guesty’s price optimiser tool uses AI to help customers automatically improve their pricing strategies, based on real-life data, historical trends and market predictions. We’ve seen customers get a 25% increase in revenue as a result of using the tool, and a 10% increase in occupancy, which is huge, said Raviv-Schwarz.
Host and Stay has taken its AI-use a step further to help with its strategy to sell orphan nights, where there is a single day in between different bookings for a short term rental property. An AI script in the calendars identifies these orphan nights, which feeds into a workflow that messages guests booked either side of the booking, with the opportunity to book for a 30% discount. It’s an aggressive offer that is appealing to guests, Duncan said, but it works for us because the night would be unsold otherwise. We’ve had a 16% conversion rate over the last six months, which is more than 600 orphan nights sold. It’s massive.
When WestCord Hotels implemented Runnr.ai, the purpose was rooted in having quality interactions, and not upselling. However, the team has found that extra revenue is the “snowball effect” of having good quality conversations with guests, using the platforms they like communicating on. Bots said: You have the guest’s preferred method of communication, with an AI tool, with multilingual support, with integration to our PMS so it can automatically book breakfast, parking or bottles of champagne.
4. Improving staff experience
Making the staff experience better with the help of AI is about improving efficiency and automating repetitive tasks. This simplifies operations, making the hotel run more smoothly, with less opportunity for human error.
As Doria explains in the podcast, it goes beyond this too: One thing I am passionate about is to close the gap that exists between our home tools and our work tools. Doria says that if hotel staff are already using tools such as ChatGPT and WhatsApp outside of work, they’ll use these tools at work too if they’re not given sufficient technology at work too. Humans tend to find the easiest, best solution for the problem, he said.
But when it comes to staff using ChatGPT or other large language models (LLMs), Doria says that brings a risk. We don’t want data from customers and from hotels going outside. So we need to bridge that gap. It’s well-known that tools such as ChatGPT will use the data entered into it to train and improve. There need to be comparable tools inside corporations.
Making the staff experience better with the help of AI brings hotels full circle to improving the guest experience. We think that the relationship with the guest should be handled by people, but we want them to be available to have that interaction, Doria continued. What we want to do with technology is make everything else easier. Technology is only useful if it’s freeing people to do what they’re best at, which is interacting with other people.
Far from the narrative of replacing human labour, it’s clear that forward-thinking hoteliers and their suppliers are looking towards AI to solve real problems. Automating repetitive tasks, triggering useful actions within workflows, making interactions slick for guests and staff, and even generating extra revenue. These are all things hotels have grappled with for years, and AI can take away some of the barriers to making progress. The message from hoteliers is clear: focus on specific problems that need solving, and find an AI solution with a clear goal in mind. That’s the place where real transformation is realised.
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