The future is now: How robots are storming the travel industry By David B Chestler

Free-moving staff could still be on hand to greet new arrivals in the lobby in the check-in-desk free hotel of the future. This dispenses with the rigmarole of long waiting lines and static meeting points but requires that hotels accept, as they are slowly coming to, that self-service doesn’t necessarily mean lack of service. Guests are liable to be wary of any establishment where their presence isn’t immediately acknowledged.

The idea that I have a problem when I travel, and I can just speak in natural language to an assistant that will help me solve that problem, is very powerful. Do you think the AI systems we have today can actually do the things we want them to do? Look, it all comes down to the individual cases, and what we don’t want to do is enable monopolies to continue to entrench their monopoly power. And very, very, very few companies ever become of a type that can become an IPO.

AI-powered predictive analytics tools are becoming essential in helping travelers make informed decisions. These tools use vast amounts of data to predict weather conditions, flight delays, and even crowd levels at popular tourist destinations. By providing travelers with real-time insights, AI helps them avoid disruptions and optimize their travel plans. The chatbot integration led to an impressive increase in direct bookings resulting from conversations with the virtual assistant. HiJiffy has significantly boosted the hotels’ direct online bookings. The Middle East and North Africa region is expected to witness a 36 percent increase in international visitors between June and August, according to travel data firm ForwardKeys.

The Human Touch in a Digital World

But we will set it up when there’s an issue, an element, or something where it’s cross-brand, and we want to make sure that we’re getting good communications going across. Well, I think the way you phrase that may not be the way I would look at it. In the future, there are plans for drones to deliver room service, too.

• Hotels traditionally compete on price, location, and amenities.
• Both AngelList and Crunchbase listed the company of having 11 to 50 employees.
• Look, it all comes down to the individual cases, and what we don’t want to do is enable monopolies to continue to entrench their monopoly power.
• AI-powered workforce management tools are helping hotels optimize their staffing levels based on predicted occupancy and service demands.
• It’s baked into your smartphone, your desktop and laptop, your virtual assistant, your smartwatch, and so much more.

The system’s ability to predict staffing needs with precision allowed for better resource allocation and improved employee satisfaction through more consistent work hours. Addressing the challenges with the related solutions results in great success. The findings are based on the HiJiffy data available in the Guest Communication Hub as well as insights and observations provided by Leonardo Hotels for this case study. Industry-specific and extensively researched technical data (partially from exclusive partnerships).

Forecast annual percentage increase in hotels using chatbots worldwide in 2022, by hotel type

Today, it claims to have 20% of the market in Singapore, with about 16,000 rooms covered. Covid gave Vouch the push it needed for adoption by hotels which had to innovate to sell stuff beyond hotel beds. When the pandemic hit, Vouch also quickly expanded its product offerings to add a food & beverage module, including food delivery. It gave that product free to hotels to “build relationships”. This free report presents HiJiffy’s first-party data on the most common topics of hotel guests’ questions in the summer of 2023, based on over 1.7 million conversations handled by AI in that period.

Adaptation will help hotels of all sizes offer every aspect of a digital guest journey and the benefits of task automation. Independent hoteliers must find ways to foster cooperation among technology partners to help create this unified system, or our industry will be the last to innovate while their competitors grow in sophistication. Today’s most sought-after PMS technology providers are prioritizing such partnerships. This approach is separate from a hotel’s technology integration strategy, but the ethos is similar. As such, operators must find ways to coax partners into working together or find new partners. This technology is poised to bring innovation to hospitality and all other industries and is waiting for no one.

It’s also the go-to point for information about the hotel as well as a place to find tips on external attractions, events, and venues. Hotels looking to do away with the desk must still find a way to keep hotel staff on the ground and, just as importantly, visible to new guests. Many in the industry, however, still see the front-desk as integral to the overall ‘feel’ of a hotel. They argue that without it, guests would be left adrift on arrival, unsure of who to turn to when trying to find their way to check in.

The success of Mobile Requests inspired Marriott to expand the number of guest-facing mobile communications options, including chatbots for its Marriott Rewards members. A recent study shows these requests account for guests’ most commonly asked questions, making them a frequent source of repetition among hotel workers. This approach would transform the workforce into a hotbed of innovation, with housekeepers potentially becoming AI workflow designers, and receptionists evolving into natural language processing experts. As hotels collect and analyze more guest data to power their AI systems, concerns about data privacy and security are coming to the forefront.

This case study illustrates the remarkable impact of HiJiffy’s collaboration with Leonardo Hotels. Al is a game changer for search; that much is already certain. We believe the process of search and selection will evolve from a structured and fixed approach to a more flexible one where users can input free-form text to find precisely what they’re looking for. With our connected travel products, these capabilities became even more crucial.

Booking.com plans to develop text translation in the future. Existing text translation services, such as the one offered by Google or IBM Watson, aren’t perfect, though, so Booking.com is developing its own technology in-house. Booking.com’s messaging service is a part of this trend, and is sure to be one of the most ambitious ChatGPT App attempts in the travel vertical. Booking.com is owned by Priceline Group, the largest travel company in the world. Booking has said it has more than 30 million unique visitors a month. It makes up by far the majority of the Priceline Group’s revenue, and serves 895,000 hotels and accommodations in 224 countries.

Voice-assisted technology

Annotator disagreement also ought to reflect in the confidence intervals of our metrics, but that’s a topic for another article. Surprisingly, it appears to have improved, too, from 50% to 55%. However, the 90% confidence interval makes it clear that this difference is well within the margin of error, and no conclusions can be drawn. A larger set of questions that produces more true and false positives is required.

All chatbots featured can offer users travel suggestions, as well as flight or hotel booking assistance. Moreover, AI chatbots and virtual concierges can offer personalized upgrades and additional services to guests before and ChatGPT during their stay. A luxury resort chain reported a 23% increase in ancillary revenue after implementing an AI-powered upselling system that suggested tailored experiences to guests based on their profiles and past behaviors.

• Users can initiate any kind of conversation they’d like with the accommodation.
• Technology has always been a foundational priority at Agoda, no more so than since the ascent of Omri Morgenshtern as CEO two years ago.
• The new agreement also provides travelers planning to explore the United Arab Emirates with the flexibility of one-stop ticketing for their full journey and convenient baggage check-in.
• All chatbots featured can offer users travel suggestions, as well as flight or hotel booking assistance.
• Ensuring that these questions are answered correctly each time increases customer satisfaction as the customer experiences exactly what they were told.

As we’ve explored, the path forward is not merely about adopting new technologies, but about reimagining the role of every individual within the hospitality ecosystem. As AI takes over more routine tasks, hotels are faced with the challenge of redefining roles for their human staff. The most successful properties will be those that find the right balance between AI efficiency and the irreplaceable human touch in hospitality.

Approximately 77% of travelers have run into some type of problem while traveling, according to a Bankrate survey, including long waits, plan disruptions and poor customer service. One of the wonders of doing an AI agent is that there’ll be no hold time — you’ll go right to the machine. And, by the way, the AI agent is never going to get angry back at the customer.

They aimed to provide a more personalized booking experience and improve operational efficiency. “Rose” is an AI chatbot that acts as a personal concierge at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. Known for her witty and playful tone, Rose handles tasks from restaurant reservations to timely delivery of towels, enhancing the guest experience through rapid and personalized service. From the hotel side, however, BEBOT is a never resting multilingual employee. On top of the local recommendations, BEBOT is uniquely tailored to each of the exclusive hotels to answer frequently asked questions (FAQ) – e.g. check out time – or make simple requests to the front desk. All one needs to do is check in at one of the select hotels, and receive the token to activate the personalized concierge.

Once this step is complete, HelloGBye opens to a chat interface, similar to Apple’s IMessage. When users open the Mezi app, they are directed to a chat interface where they can send Mezi a message explaining where they are going and when. Mezi responds quickly, asking preference questions about hotel ratings, budget, and amenities.

Insights, Trends and Tips for Improving Guest Communications

By deploying Al internally first, we could afford to make mistakes and gather invaluable feedback. With our culture of learning and adaptation, we knew our employees would quickly embrace these changes. This method allowed us to generate tangible benefits from Al while honing our skills until we were ready to implement it for our customers. This is where Al can really shine, as it allows customers to specify what they’re looking for in their own words.

Similarly to Mezi, HelloGBye has announced a partnership with American Express which will allo them to gain insights on the corporations users while the card company begins to explore the voice technology further. On its website, HelloGBye says it aims to solve pain-points of frequent professional travelers who need to book complex business trips or adjust travel plans quickly. The company was acquired by American Express in January 2018. According to a press release, the app will replace the need for the card company’s AskAmex service, a similar AI concierge which was in its piloting stage. Hotelogix’s team of researchers and writers are constantly innovating to share the latest trends from the travel and hospitality space. The problem is that there is so much information available today that it leads to overload.

Certain tasks like check-in and check-out involve human involvement in many cases, but repetitive tasks like answering simple questions or giving out directions can be easily handled by today’s AI technologies. If Bebot can free up 10 percent of everyone’s time at the front desk, they can use the same 10 percent to focus on high value-added services to enhance customer experiences. Whether it’s a hotel, restaurant, or place of entertainment, a person will be there accompanying you every step of the way—that’s what we’ve come to expect in customer service.

Reviews contain a wide variety of information, but because they are written in free form text and expressed in the customer’s own words, it hasn’t been easy to access the knowledge locked inside. A year later, he ran out of cash again and let the team go. There was more to lose this time – a pregnant wife with a third child on the way. Tossing between getting a high-paying corporate job and trying again, he asked his wife and both agreed to give Vouch another go. Leonardo Hotels has successfully integrated HiJiffy’s Guest Communications Hub across its 213 properties, marking a significant milestone in the collaboration. Since the initiation of the partnership, the solution has evolved to become the hotel’s preferred method of guest communication.

After an agency directs a client to its Mezi site, the chatbot can ask the user questions to get hotel, flight and destination preferences. As it pursues its digital innovation strategy, Hilton has remained dedicated to creating exceptional online experiences for guests. To meet their ever-evolving and diverse demands, Hilton has been exploring different channels and platforms that can provide guests with a flawless online experience. Hilton began working with major OTA platforms in China to offer additional online customer services in 2017; launched the Chinese Hilton Honors app in 2018; and opened the Hilton corporate flagship store on Fliggy in 2019.

They can convert the money into Swiss francs and probably do some [foreign exchange market] leveraging and arbitrage — they’re big enough to compete with you on the services that you say you’re providing. But if you want a home, we can provide you with a home, too. So, really, at the end of the day, it’s “what does the customer want?

Booking.com has yet to release anything powered by OpenAI the company behind ChatGPT, or Google’s Bard, a rival. However, sister companies Kayak and OpenTable were among the handful of companies, along with Expedia, that have partnered recently on plugins for ChatGPT. So far, Trip.com’s TripGen does not offer any links at all. And unlike TripGen, the Expedia tool will only answer travel-related questions. Hotel Sky in Sandton, north of Johannesburg, had put the technology in place before the pandemic, but is now embracing it as a way to minimize human contact in a country hit hard by COVID-19. The healthcare industry is evolving into an increasingly digital environment, and as a result cybersecurity continues to be a top priority for protecting sensitive data such as financial records and patient medical records.

One of the key customer service challenges for hotels is responding to questions quickly and artificial intelligence now provides an additional option for tackling this problem. Moreover, it has the capacity to assist with tasks like data analysis and, through data collection, can effectively “learn” and adapt to customer interactions. Two notable benefits are the consistency of responses and being a preferred method for those customers whose preferred method of communication is online chat. While robots also improve the customer experience, chatbots have more emphasis in this area because standard questions are more frequently asked to chatbots on websites.

Revenue management is absolutely critical for hotels, but it’s one of the easiest processes to get wrong. AI can help ensure that you’re able to get it right while also improving efficiency and hotel chatbots accuracy. You don’t need to look very far for evidence of this, either. It’s baked into your smartphone, your desktop and laptop, your virtual assistant, your smartwatch, and so much more.

And of course, they are separate companies, so they all have their own design, their own technology, their own CTOs, their own chief product… No, we are far and above where we were in 2019, before we went into the pandemic. As I mentioned, $151 billion of travel, that is a very large number.

Unlike science-fiction novels, the most effective robots in hospitality will not be walking around, but they will be interacting directly with guests. Predictive analytics has become the ultimate prescription for an industry needing additional support, and the hotel property-management system is the gateway to deliver and manage all AI-generated data for improved guest communications. The financial impact of AI on the hotel industry is nothing short of transformative. From boosting revenue through dynamic pricing and personalized marketing to slashing costs with intelligent automation, AI is reshaping every aspect of hotel operations. As we look to the future, it’s clear that AI will continue to be a critical factor in the financial success of hotels.

The goal is to ease the burden placed on this hospitality industry. According to Business Insider, in November 2021, of the 4.5 million Americans that participated in the great resignation, 1 million of those belonged to the restaurant and hotel industry. The data and analytics shared here illustrate just what’s possible, but achieving these results requires more than just adopting AI—it requires a well-structured strategy and system. For AI and people to work in harmony, the right approach ensures that technology is both cost-effective and a key differentiator for your hotel in a competitive market. The true magic lies in blending AI efficiency with authentic human connections, creating a memorable and profitable guest experience. Imagine having access to real data and analytics that show exactly how AI is transforming hotels today—boosting revenue, enhancing guest experiences, and optimizing operations.

In June, Booking.com launched a chatbot to connect hotels and travelers in two-way communication, which can be used from any device, including iOS and Android. The conversation is more natural, having been freed from templates or automated script. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. However, specific templates are provided to translate frequently asked questions into 42 different languages.

Therefore, we expect our metrics to accurately reflect real-world performance. Hotel Atlantis has thousands of reviews and 326 of them are included in the OpinRank Review Dataset. Elsewhere we showed how semantic search platforms, like Vectara Neural Search, allow organizations to leverage information stored as unstructured text — unlocking the value in these datasets on a large scale.

“At any point where Toby cannot help, the user can request to speak to a human and will be transferred over to Tigerair’s social media team who will be able to provide more detailed assistance,” advises the airline. Toby’s duties for now is to help facilitate bookings and answer basic customer queries. He may not be able to attend to detailed questions or feedback relating to their booking or flight experience.

Musafir.com will promote holiday packages to AlUla and collaborate on various promotional and marketing initiatives to increase tourist arrivals,” said Sachin Gadoya, Musafir.com’s CEO and co-founder. Musafir.com has curated a range of all-inclusive packages for AlUla with flights, hotels, airport transfers, breakfast and visa assistance. Across the hospitality and travel industries, other companies have similarly worked to simplify and personalize travel planning, booking and guest experience by adopting AI. Over the last 10 years, our data warehouse has grown 100,000 times, and simultaneously our customer base has expanded. We aimed to empower our product teams to use data in real time to optimize and personalize the customer experience. This created a trifecta of more data, more users and more requirements.