The hospitality industry is unique in many ways—services and properties are diverse, guests come from a wide range of backgrounds and interests, and smooth operations are crucial for a pleasant experience (for both guests and employees). Across the board, artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly gaining popularity and making huge impacts on businesses everywhere. AI is becoming a highly sought after tool, if not a necessity, among the hospitality industry as well.
AI has many important roles to play within hospitality, including enhancing customer service, streamlining operations, improving data analysis, and much more. Let’s break down what you need to understand about AI in hospitality and competitive strategies to make it work for you.
More Than A Buzzword: The Role of AI in the Hospitality Industry
The list of ways in which AI is transforming the hospitality industry continues to grow, but among them are its impacts on customer service, operations, and decision-making.
1. Enhancing customer service: The experience guests have at your resort, hotel, or restaurant is paramount to the success and growth of your business. The thing is, however, that guest demands are high, and employee availability can’t always meet these needs at the drop of a hat. AI enables you to use chatbots and virtual assistants online and via mobile apps to streamline answering guest queries, providing property information, etc. With AI, you can also personalize guest experiences by utilizing advanced guest segmentation, data enrichment, and automation.2. Streamlining operations: Smooth operational and administrative processes are paramount in the hospitality industry, and with ongoing labor shortages, productivity can suffer, resources can be lacking, and quality and profitability can drop. Using AI allows you to automate processes that would otherwise be manual and time-consuming. For example, automated check-in and check-out capabilities can free up staff resources and create a smooth experience for guests. Plus, you can offer your guests 24/7 service so AI can be there when you can’t.
3. Data analysis and decision making: The data that lives within hospitality properties is large and complex, and there is often data coming in from dozens of sources. AI has the ability to aggregate and analyze this data with ease, which not only provides you with predictive analysis for guest preferences, but it also helps you better manage revenue, pricing strategies, and other resources that lead to more strategically informed decision making.
Benefits of AI Implementation
You’ve seen now the way AI can play a role in hospitality, but what are the big picture benefits of putting it to work? Efficiency is key in the hospitality industry in order to make all things happen at once (and smoothly, at that). But when 94% of hotels are understaffed, efficiency can be a major challenge. Plus, efficiency achieved manually by staff members takes up a lot of valuable time, resources, and costs. With the help of AI, you can eliminate these roadblocks and skyrocket your efficiency.
On top of that, you will have the ability to enhance guest satisfaction and loyalty at your fingertips (literally). AI-enabled platforms, such as the Ascent360 Guest Data & Marketing Automation Platform, allow you to analyze your guests’ preferences, behaviors, and feedback to create hyper-targeted segments (e.g., frequent restaurant goers, repeat guests, golfers, skiers, and families). Once you have those segments, you can easily put together campaigns that reach these guests where they are, and you can automate the campaigns to run in the background, so they also reach them at the right time. The better the guest experience, the more likely they will be to keep coming back!
And, of course, the hospitality market is substantially crowded, and it can be difficult to compete at times. AI-enabled platforms give you a competitive advantage and help you stand out among the masses. Having sophisticated data analysis and automation, knowing what your guests want and need, and being able to communicate with them in a personalized way with the help of AI is what will make your property shine.
Challenges and Considerations
It goes without saying that anytime you implement something new in your business, it can come with challenges, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done. Here are two things to consider when it comes to implementing AI:
1. Prioritizing Data Privacy & Security: There can be data privacy and security concerns surrounding the implementation of new tech tools and AI. However, it is possible to combat this by choosing an AI-enabled platform that has been purpose-built to make protecting data and keeping important information secure a top priority.
2. Staying Human in the Age of AI: AI may seem a bit foreign and unfamiliar still, as there are often concerns that circulate regarding the “non-human” aspect. However, with the right AI tools, they can actually help you stay more human by allowing you to understand your data and customize your efforts to meet the needs of your guests, your staff, and more. Using technology supplementarily is what will drive your business forward.
Strategies to Stay Ahead of the Competition
The use of AI in the hospitality industry will only continue to expand, so it’s important to stay diligent about how you can stay ahead of your competition. You can do so by thinking critically about these strategies:
- Embrace innovation and continuous learning: As technology continues to advance, so too should your business. Work to stay on top of the latest market trends in AI and identify how they coincide with your business goals.
- Collaborate with tech partners and startups: A strong community of leaders in the AI space will help keep you ahead of the game.
- Focus on unique, personalized guest experiences: You will continue to stand out by putting your guests first and using technology to tailor your approaches to their needs.
- Invest in staff training and development: Implementing new strategies doesn’t happen overnight, so it’s important to ensure your entire staff has the resources they need to embrace advancing technology.
How to Get Started
It’s clear that AI has begun and will continue to have a transformative impact on the hospitality industry in the way of enhanced customer service, streamlined operations, and more sophisticated data analysis. With that in mind, it’s important to adopt AI strategically and work with expert partners that can help you achieve your unique goals as a hotel, resort, etc.
Ascent360 is a leader in enhancing guest data, turning it into advanced insights and audience segments, and showing you how to personalize every guests’ experience with the power of automation. The future opportunities of AI in hospitality are exciting, and we want to help you hit the ground running. To learn more, reach out to our team for a demo of our Guest Data & Marketing Automation Platform today!
