With the advent of interactive artificial intelligence (Conversational AI), the hotel industry has a transformative tool to provide fast, personalized, and inexpensive customer service around the clock and on all days of the week.
Interactive artificial intelligence technology is revolutionizing this sector at the moment; we will explain below its role, its exceptional benefits, and its use cases:
First: What is interactive artificial intelligence, and how do hotels use it
Interactive AI-powered tools, also known as Digital Service agents and robots, are designed to help travelers and guests. For example: a digital booking agent can help individuals find and book a flight or guest room, a voice assistant can guide them at the airport or hotel with clear and helpful directions, as for the virtual concierge, it can be used to check into the hotel immediately without having to wait at the reception, as well as adjust room conditions, order room service, get recommendations for local attractions.
Interactive artificial intelligence uses natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) to interact with users in human language, performing a range of different tasks.
The adoption of interactive artificial intelligence in hotel services provides immediate and personalized assistance, which improves the guest experience, and a study conducted by Oracle revealed that 67% of travelers expressed interest in staying in hotels that offer services powered by artificial intelligence, and 36% preferred staying in hotels that provide fully contactless digital services with on-demand staff only.
Second: the benefits of using interactive artificial intelligence in the hotel sector:
Klarna-a payment network that provides online travel booking services - revealed after the first month of launching its AI-powered assistant that one assistant can make as many as 2.3 million phone calls a month, complete the work of 700 full-time travel agents, speak more than 35 languages, work around the clock in 23 different markets, provide more accurate answers compared to human agents, process customer inquiries 5 times faster than humans, provide more than 40 million dollars for the company per year.
This means that artificial intelligence provides countless benefits in the hotel and hospitality sector, the most prominent of which are:
1-speed up and facilitate searches and reservations:
Due to the abundance of options, it can be difficult for travelers to find the right hotel; so most people tend to call the reception or use live chat to make a reservation and get instant answers to their questions, and any problem with this service such as: slow response or failure of prompt response will make customers go to another hotel.
This is where the role of AI assistants comes in to provide information immediately across all digital channels and provide guidance throughout the booking process, which leads to an increase in bookings.
2-increase guest satisfaction:
The use of interactive AI technology in hotels contributes to making the guest experience outstanding and unforgettable, especially for those who aspire to high-quality service and maximum comfort.
By integrating an interactive interface across all systems, it becomes possible to meet the needs of the majority who prefer self-service without significant investment in customer service or additional labor costs, and using interactive artificial intelligence, effective communication services and smooth bookings can be provided to permanent service during the stay and customer support after the stay.
3-improve hotel operations:
A lot of repetitive routine tasks prevent hotel managers from devoting themselves to more difficult tasks, so automating up to 80% of routine work, such as answering common questions, receiving reservations, and training employees, means more time to focus on complex and high-value goals to provide fast and personalized customer service while improving the guest experience.
4-help with pricing and increase sales:
Hotel chatbots can help increase sales for customized services for guests based on their past interactions and preferences. Since hotel occupancy is highly dependent on the seasons and competition in the market, artificial intelligence systems are able to evaluate these variables in real-time and optimize pricing strategies based on them, ensuring that hotel prices are adjusted quickly and in line with prevailing market conditions and demand patterns.
5-enhance customer engagement through personal interactions:
The use of interactive artificial intelligence can be used to quickly compile visitor reviews, then conduct an in-depth analysis of them and their behavior patterns, then artificial intelligence can provide intelligent recommendations for sites to visit, Leisure Activities, Car rental options, places to eat, all this contributes to enhancing customer loyalty and encouraging them to visit the hotel again.
6-improve the efficiency of employees and overcome the problem of labor shortage:
The shortage of manpower is a major and ongoing challenge for hotels, and may entail long reception queues, limited service hours, and a lack of personal service, leading to loss of customers and negative feedback.
This is where AI-powered assistants come in to provide high-quality customer service without overworking employees. Most frequent guest inquiries can be resolved immediately by smart chatbots without human interaction. intelligent and automated routing of hotels helps reduce the number of calls and ease staff workloads, allowing hotel staff to focus on difficult tasks.
Third: innovative applications of interactive artificial intelligence in the field of hotels:
Many hospitality and hotel companies are seeking to use artificial intelligence in innovative ways in order to gain a competitive advantage in the market. Here are some examples of this:
AI-powered booking assistants:
Smart booking systems facilitate hotel reservations, as well as provide real-time recommendations based on a person's interests, ensuring that guests feel appreciated and cared for, and the Hyatt hotel chain has developed its own AI-based booking assistant.
Gatekeepers powered by artificial intelligence:
One of the innovative ways to use artificial intelligence in hotels is virtual and robotic doormen, as these doormen deal with various types of guest inquiries and inquiries. Hilton Hotels has developed an automated concierge named Connie, which provides quick and accurate assistance to guests, and it also learns from visitors ' interactions with machine learning and develops its responses to provide customized suggestions and quick service.
AI-powered check-in and check-out kiosks:
Some hotels, such as CitizenM hotels, use mobile kiosks powered by artificial intelligence through which visitors can self-check in and out, which reduces waiting times and reduces the burden on reception staff.
Room controls that can be activated acoustically:
Through voice-controlled systems, guests can manage various aspects of their stay and control the advantages of their rooms, such as opening the curtains, adjusting the temperature acoustically without the need for hands-free, giving them more comfort.
All rooms at Wynn Las Vegas are equipped with Amazon Echo devices, allowing guests to use voice commands to control the benefits of their rooms.
Multilingual chatbots powered by artificial intelligence:
AI-powered chatbots can interact with visitors instantly in several languages, as well as manage a variety of their requests, such as ordering housekeeping service or getting recommendations for places to eat, allowing hotels to maintain high standards of Service and meet the needs of international travelers.
Mandarin Oriental hotel chain has launched a multilingual chatbot powered by artificial intelligence to communicate with guests, breaking the language barriers of international travelers, ensuring that all visitors receive quality service.
Fourth: How can interactive artificial intelligence be integrated into the hotel sector
The integration of interactive artificial intelligence into the hotel sector requires following a series of steps, including:
1-choosing the right technology:
The first step to take advantage of interactive artificial intelligence is to choose a tool that provides both natural language processing (NLP) technology, machine learning (ML), speech recognition, sentiment analysis, and strong integration capabilities.The available tools should be evaluated based on their ability to understand and respond accurately to guest inquiries, and their compatibility with current hotel systems.
The chosen technology should be able to expand as the hotel business grows and cope with the increasing number of user interactions over time, and should support multiple languages and communication channels.
2-setting goals and designing the flow of conversation:
Clear goals should be set for the use of interactive artificial intelligence in the hotel, such as improving customer service, or reducing waiting times, then the interaction flow chart should be defined, which may include greetings, inquiries, responses and follow-ups in a clear and concise language, preferably an alternative plan for scenarios in which artificial intelligence is unable to understand and respond to queries.
3. training, customization, and testing:
After choosing the right technology and setting goals, it's the turn to train the AI model with relevant high-quality data, customize its functionality to suit the specific needs of the hotel, and then examine it to identify and fix any problems before full deployment.
In this context, the following tips can be used:
Use the previous data to train the Model, use feedback so that the AI constantly learns from the interactions, and improves over time.
Start with a limited trial version to collect feedback and make the necessary adjustments.
4-deployment and integration with existing systems:
After the development of the interactive AI system, it can be deployed and start checking that it integrates seamlessly with the previously existing systems in the hotel.
But the rollout should be gradual to reduce interruptions and allow adjustments, continuous communication with IT teams to ensure compatibility and integration for smooth operation, continuous verification of AI integration should also be done to identify problems, establish a support structure to address any problems after deployment, and ensure continuous maintenance.
5-monitoring and improvement:
The performance of the AI system should be constantly monitored, and adjustments made to ensure that the hotel's needs and guests' expectations are met. This can be achieved by analyzing performance metrics, guest interactions, and system logs to identify areas for improvement.
6. compliance with laws:
It must be verified that the artificial intelligence system used by the hotel complies with relevant laws to protect guest data and maintain customer trust. This includes compliance with data privacy laws and regulations, consumer privacy laws to avoid artificial intelligence risks, legal issues, damage to reputation, and costly mistakes.