Artificial Intelligence is extremely intelligent behaviour by machine and technology and it is in existence since 1960s however in recent years it has become more and more advanced and considered reliable for various business functions.
Nearly 35% companies are now using or exploring the usage of AI (Source: IBM Global Adoption Index). Post-pandemic, companies have accelerated their usage and spends for AI interventions. The three major areas wherein AI is used the most are Customer Relations, Process Automation and Data Security. Basically post-pandemic most of the businesses have come to an agreement that AI can significantly reduce the costs, improve efficiency and boost productivity.
The hospitality industry too has awakened to the AI boost. The main reason being its ability to do the traditionally human function at any time of the day. Basically this rules out human error and delivers better service.
Usage of AI in hospitality is still in its nascent stage: Some of the practical applications were in various functions into hospitality wherein artificial intelligence is used or can be used is listed below:
1. Customer Experience: One of the key customer service challenge has been responding to guest queries quickly and AI helps us this function significantly.
Another usage of AI in this aspect is to deliver in person customer service. We are already seeing development of robots with AI and technology. There are hotels wherein considerable work is done by these robots.
However, if you ask me - these robots cannot completely replace humans. There is also an incident in Japan where a 250 room hotel replaced humans with robots and it failed miserably.
AI in customer experience also helps in chatbots and messaging. People need quick answers to their queries and instant messaging is the best solution for this . AI chatbots allow guests to ask questions and get answers 24 hours and all seven days of the week and 365 days of a year : and this cannot be done by human interaction.
2. Personalisation: This is more related to a better customer experience and it helps building brand loyalty. AI helps offering services such as preferences helps retain guests. It helps personalise every aspect of the guest stay. It is all about creating unique memories for the guests.
3. Marketing: AI also helps for targeted marketing. Using intelligent systems hotels can come to know buying and spending patterns of customers and then feature ads to those targeted customers . This also assists giving tailored recommendations to customers. Hotels can analyse data to meet specific needs and wants of the guests and then customise services for them. This definitely helps brand building and brings in business growth and revenues.
4. Data Analysis: Another major function where in AI is used in hospitality but still can be used further is into Data Analysis : hotels gather large data about guests - about past revenues about future trends but have hardly been able to analyse it perfectly for understanding the revenue – rate patterns on the basis of which decisions can be taken.
There is literally a data overload at hotels and all it is of no use unless someone is able to slice and dice that data to make it useful. In simple ways one must find a way to cleanse the data and remove the unwanted part and organise rest in away that makes sense.
AI can be used to swiftly go through volumes of data and provide intelligent information on guests and potential guests.
Seasons play a crucial role in hotels for understanding occupancy levels and then decide onto a correct ADR for any hotel. Revenue management is the most crucial for any hotel and it is one thing can go wrong very easily.AI helps here too. It helps us to get it right while improving efficiency and effectiveness. Dynamic room pricing while maintaining a healthy RevPar : updating rates across all OTAs in real time etc. can be done using efficiently AI. These mundane tasks can be done without wasting human efforts.
It also helps in analysing occupancy and rate optimisation. Hotels can adjust rates and dive deep into dynamic pricing depending on market situation and demand conditions.
5. Reputation Management: Hotels have always been extremely dependent on reputation and guest feedback on multiple platforms. AI gives deep insight on customers are talking about the hotel.
6. Training: AI’s impact in training is also significant : with many hotels using or at least trying AI to improve the people learn. However this is still in a very initial stage and this one area will definitely see evolve over next few years.
7. Safety & Security: This is one area wherein hotels have still not explored much about AI. However many other industries AI is used extensively for safety and security. Data is fed into systems and analysed to identify grey areas, danger zones and accidental patterns . AI technology to monitor safety conditions is a definite requirement.
8. Guest Engagement: Gimmicks at the while guests are waiting for their food to be served. This is a very good way to engage guests and a very polite way to diffuse potential complaints. These gimmicks can be related to food or anything else about the property for that matter games too.
9. Smarter Operations: In a way to track the lead time - time for processing foods as well as tracking LIFO & FIFO and various other important aspects. Hotels can feed data into intelligent systems that identify problematic behaviours, potential hazards and then take preventive or corrective actions.
10. Competition Intelligence: AI for hotels helps doing analysis for competition data. This helps take decision for future business.
AI is here to stay. From business decisions to safety decisions. From front desk automation to back of the house automation, it is here to stay and that is a very good thing.
Many industries have made AI a part of their growth strategy and hospitality should adopt more and more AI for better efficiency and deeper connection with the guests and ultimately for the success of the hotel.
(The author is general manager, The Resort, Mumbai)