Artificial Intelligence in Hotels is the final part of our knowledge sharing series. A few weeks ago I began our knowledge sharing series with the first four articles on Hotel TV.
This was followed by a post all about 5G in hotels. They all talk about the successful #LinkedInLive broadcast I did with FunnelTV.
While the focus was guest room technology in 2020 we focussed initially almost totally on Hotel TV. The topic became so interesting and the excellent feedback from our viewers meant it stayed pretty much at the top of our agenda.
What's amazing is, we've got much more to say in the future.
This post moves on slightly, as directed by audience questions. In this post we take a look into AI, Artificial Intelligence in hotels, and of course the most popular application, Chatbots.
As I said before, the long agenda went out the window. We spent so much time focusing on Hotel TV, however the last segment focused on Artificial Intelligence in Hotels. Here's what we came up with.
The first point we established is that communication is not just a part of the booking process. It's easy to think that answering a guest's question during the booking process means they will be readily armed with all the information they need come the time that they stay.
Guest communication is not without both challenges and staff overhead. This is where chatbots come in both in-stay and pre-stay.
New guests will have a multitude of questions, and getting those questions answered quickly, and easily is a route to success.
Human contact is an integral part of the hotel experience. Guests crave contact but it's a mistake to think that this is always face to face.
You need to be able to answer those multiple guest questions via the channel that suits them. More often than not this is through their own device.
With the move towards contactless check-in and mobile booking it would seem that this communication is not required. That is totally the inverse of what is happening. The expectation now is the answer at your fingertips, not a phone call and hold music away.
Historically there have been chatbots which provide a poor experience. One important point we established, is that among certain generations, they don't want to feel like they are talking to a chatbot.
This is different to the Millennial and Genzennial generations, who actually feel happy as long as they get the answers they need. In fact, some companies have experienced users repeatedly chatting to their chatbot just for company.
As a member of the Millennial generation myself, I'm quite happy talking to a chatbot as long as I get the information I need.
With 15 years’ experience in technology, and more than half of that time dedicated to the Hospitality sector, James has a wealth of knowledge but also a millennial’s eye view. James has worked with a multitude of consultants over time, many of whom helped shape the knowledge he now brings to the table, others just reinforced the need to share his experience with others.James’ career has encompassed many technical and consultative roles, focusing on network architecture, WiFi, VOIP and IPTV. With a blend of technical skills that also includes RF architecture, this completes a “holy trinity” of requirements for the Hotel Guest Room. Spending the last 8 years travelling the globe, has given James a close insight into requirements of all regions of the world.
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