Imagine a world in which hospitality experiences are streamlined. When someone books a hotel, restaurant reservation, or event package, their preferences are known. The process is lightning fast. Their history – showing which experiences satisfied them, which disappointed them, and why – helps a human or AI agent automatically offer them extras, successfully upselling. And the customer experience (CX) is so enjoyable that they develop loyalty to the brand.
This can happen. It requires embracing a new set of tools.
Technology is enabling hyper-personalization, which enhances the guest experience in more meaningful ways. Advances in AI and machine learning help companies anticipate customer needs with remarkable accuracy so they can tailor everything from what to have for dinner to room amenities. Philippe Masset, associate professor at EHL Hospitality Business School in Lausanne, Switzerland
Just about all brands recognize the need to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by AI. So the real differentiator is not whether they do so; it’s how shrewd they are in adopting solutions that achieve results.
The power of unification
To deliver personalization that works, businesses need to know everything they can about each customer. This is where many organizations run into difficulty. Currently, information is collected and stored across disparate systems.
A customer may have complained about an experience upon arrival at a hotel. But even if staff made a record of that experience at the time, it may still be sitting unused in a computer system at the building itself. Another customer, meanwhile, may have called an 800 number to book a spacious room with a balcony; when the customer has a second trip and wants a similar room, they use the website, which has no idea what their preferences were in the past.
This is the result of siloed data. To pull through for customers, brands need to automatically collect, process, and organize all of the information from every touchpoint – apps, social media, texting, and more.
The key is to bring all that data into a single customer record, using an AI-powered system that highlights key points, draws insights, and updates continuously in real time. This way, when agentic AI or a human agent interacts with a customer, the most important information about them is instantly accessible.
That’s just the beginning. This technology can also see what customers with similar profiles and experiences have requested, and which upgrades they’ve accepted. So the tool can suggest offers to be made at any time – ones the customer is most likely to accept.
All this is done through a unified customer experience management (UCXM) platform. It pores through huge amounts of data it’s allowed to access, including reports from individual stays, transcripts of phone calls, and much more. It also automates privacy controls and ensures compliance, saving time and resources without creating new risks.
Nextiva’s survey, The Leader’s Guide to CX Trends in 2025, found that 86% of companies with multiple CX tools report having siloed data. Transforming operations to create a single system of record is essential. That’s how you give all teams complete context on each customer’s journey.
‘Particularly influential’ in hotels and restaurants
The customer experience is the biggest key to success in any industry. But positive experiences are particularly influential in healthcare (78%), banking (75%), restaurants (74%) and hotels (74%), PwC says. In a survey, it found a 10 percentage point “experience gap” for hotels – the difference between customers’ expectations and how satisfied they are.
A recent study showed that “AI-enhanced omnichannel experiences” can help solve this. Predictive AI can anticipate guest preferences, allowing hotels to offer personalized services even before the guest arrives, researcher Anuj Arora wrote. This proactive approach improves customer loyalty and enhances the overall guest experience.
These same opportunities apply across all parts of the hospitality sector. Modern travelers are looking for holistic experiences, from the moment they search for options online to the post-trip phase, a study from the Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki noted. They appreciate when every touchpoint—be it a website, a mobile app, or the in-person experience—is seamless and positive.
Given that customer journeys have become more complex, taking place through a plethora of touchpoints, businesses now face the challenges posed by rapid media and channel fragmentation, establishing omnichannel management as the prevailing standard, researcher Amritha Pal wrote.
As part of a unified strategy, businesses that work with each other should share customer data to whatever extent those customers allow. This will open up a world of hyper-personalization. When a traveler books a stay in a new city, the AI-powered platform knows which types of excursions that traveler has enjoyed in the past, and provides recommendations. When a concierge recommends a restaurant and books a reservation for a traveler, the restaurant could know what the person likes, and which foods they’re allergic to. This could help reduce the 12-point “experience gap” the PwC found for restaurants.
All of this – and more – can happen. The era we’re living in offers unprecedented possibilities. The organizations that take the biggest leaps will become the new leaders, winning over customers in the new generation of hospitality.
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