Why Artificial Intelligence is Important for Hospitality Industry?
"We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction."?—?Bill Gates
As computer technology being highly developed, Artificial intelligence (AI) is now becoming more dependable, by strengthening its stand within the business world. Indeed, Accommodation business which is driven by customer demand is increasingly using AI to carry out every changing guest facing tasks. In this post, we understand the ways in which artificial intelligence is dominating the hospitality business and helping hoteliers to make the most from direct bookings.
What is Artificial Intelligence?
Artificial intelligence is a concept that existing since 1950s that refers to performance of seemingly intelligent behavior by the computer machine. In recent times the AI technology has advanced so much that it can be considered reliable to be deployed for essential business tasks.
AI refers to the computer processing tasks that were by traditionally considered to require concepts like automation and big data for performance.
Nowadays, the information of guest data with combined efforts of computer technology is providing huge space for AI, which can be utilized from basic guest service, personalization tasks to more complex problems, Today AI is integrated with hotel software and it can even be used for sales processes, direct bookings, revenue management and direct messaging..
Need of AI in the hospitality industry?
AI is playing a crucial role in the hospitality industry, mainly because of its capability to carry-out primary human functions at any point of time. This in turn is saving significant money, eliminating human error and delivering superior service.
This is because, guest service is a crucial part of the hospitality industry, with accommodation properties often win or fail based on the way they delight their guests. The potential to improve this aspect was almost endless by using artificial intelligence, ranging from better personalization to customized recommendations.
One of the key guests service challenge for hospitality business was responding to the customer query quickly and artificial intelligence provides answer for tackling this problem. In fact, it has the capability to assist with tasks like data analysis and by collecting data they can effectively learn and adapt to interact with customers.
How to use Artificial Intelligence in Hospitality Industry?
Even though the use of AI in the hospitality industry is still in early stages, the AI already has several practical applications, few are highlighted below.
- In-Person Customer Service
A perfect example of AI in the hospitality sector is the use of AI to deliver in-person guest service. We already see the potential in development of robots using artificial intelligence. We see few robots already deal with basic customer-facing situations.
To prove the above statement, there is an AI robot being employed by Hilton named "Connie". This robot provides tourist information to their guests who interact with it. It is also able to learn from the human interaction and is able to adapt to the individual, which means it will get better as more & more guests interact with it. Impressive, isn’t it.
- Messaging & Chabot’s
The most obvious way of deploying artificial intelligence within the hospitality industry is for facing guest service. Particularly the technology is extremely promising when it comes to responding to simple questions and requests by direct messaging and online chat service.
For instance, AI chatbots are frequently utilized on Social media platforms, for each question asked on social media can almost get an instantaneous response at any time or day. This is very important to hotels, because hotels need to provide this type of response all time, which is almost impossible to maintain with human -human interaction.
- Data Analysis
Thanks to AI Technology which has been a boon to the hospitality sector by processing huge amount of customer data which can be available from Hotel PMS. This technology has made the Hotelier to better understand its customers better and plan their strategies accordingly.
Best example for data analysis is set by Dorchester collection "Hotel chain", which made use of Metis AI Platform to collect data using surveys, online reviews and then using AI technology they analyzed the overall performance.
Adopting hotel AI platform means investing in customer satisfaction and your brand’s development. While the customers get to enjoy the convenience of 24/7 fast and easy interactions, hotels can gain the much-needed competitive edge.
In fact, AI improves the efficiency, reputation, and quality of service, which is why it will soon change the industry standard and a must-have tool for growing hospitality businesses.
Source: https://hospitalityindustrytrendz.wordpress.com/2018/02/21/why-artificial-intelligence-is-important-for-hospitality-industry/