Artificial Intelligence, also referred to as AI, is built into many of the applications that we use in our everyday lives. For instance, voice assistants like Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant, and Amazon’s Alexa interpret users’ queries and commands and deliver appropriate responses along with expanding their knowledge base. AI enables Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify to make recommendations based on previous user activity. And it also powers autonomous cars by Tesla.

AI in the travel and hospitality industry isn’t a distant dream of the future. It’s a reality for a few leading brands like Marriott, Hilton, and Edwardian Hotels. The travel and hospitality industries are rapidly adopting modern technologies along with a high degree of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

AI provides travel companies and hotel brands a perfect opportunity to enhance their market, customer experience, customer service and also increase retention. Using Ai is not just a matter of gaining a competitive advantage for hotels, it’s essential to stay in business.

The concept of AI is much larger and omnipresent in the hospitality industry. With the ability to automate processes and provide valuable insights, AI is driving a new wave of responsive and guest-centric hospitality. The introduction of AI technology has created a new level of disruption – in a good way, for hotels across the world. AI in hotels includes everything from robotic servers to intelligent computer software programs.

Why is Artificial Intelligence Becoming Important in the Hospitality Industry?

Artificial Intelligence is playing a very crucial role in the hospitality management industry, primarily because of its ability to perform traditionally human functions at any time of the day. Hotel brands that adopt Artificial Intelligence can significantly save time and money along with eliminating human errors and delivering superior service.

Also Read: How Artificial Intelligence Software will Change Ways of Doing Business in the Upcoming Years

Customer service, in particular, is an important aspect of the travel and hospitality industry. With AI, the possibility of improving customer service is almost endless – from personalized to tailored recommendations for customers. One of the key challenges for hotels is responding to customer queries quickly and efficiently and AI now tackles this problem. Moreover, AI can assist with tasks like data analysis and can effectively learn and adapt to customer interactions.

Here’s How Artificial Intelligence in the Hospitality Industry is Growing
Hotel owners across the world are realizing the importance of AI in the hospitality industry. While the hotel staff is continuously under stress to maintain the service levels and be attentive to every single customer, AI is gradually paving its way in the hospitality sector.

1. Improving Hotel Operations
It is not humanly possible to attend to all hotel guests who walk in at the front desk, answer calls and also reply to online quest queries. Irrespective of how well trained the hotel staff is, they might buckle under the performance pressure. Here is where the use of AI in the hospitality sector comes in handy. Chatbots, a form of AI, is a boon in assisting hotel staff while dealing with multiple guests. Hoteliers can effectively answer guests at the front desk, while the chatbot service takes care of online queries and reservations from potential customers. This means that multiple tasks are being handled simultaneously without the hassle of adding extra pressure on your staff.

The popularity of self-check-in kiosks significantly increased in the hospitality industry. These kiosks add points of interest to the service rating and also allow the guest to do hassle-free self-check-in.

2. Effective Revenue Management
The hospitality industry is nothing but a human-driven industry because service is what matters the most. Shifting from traditional human-based services to a more automated and service-centric platform will only serve to improve the hotel’s efficiency and productivity. A primary example of a Property Management System is to handle all hotel bookings. Moreover, a custom-built property management system will also provide numerous other benefits.

Artificial intelligence in the hospitality industry has made it possible to compute complex data to optimize hotel room rates. AI can also help to automatically update prices across all channels which lets Hotel owners reap the benefits of maximized revenue without any human errors.

3. Personalization Gets A Whole New Meaning
We all know that human emotions and expressions are one of the best forms of personalization, but AI has made its way for service efficiency. Small hotels might perfectly use social media to communicate with their potential customers using personalized advertisements and drive additional sales. On the other hand, an established hotel with hundreds of rooms needs more than social media and chatbots.

4. Data Analysis
Another way in which AI is being used in the hospitality industry apart from customer service is data analysis. AI can quickly sort through large amounts of data and provide insightful conclusions about existing customers and potential customers. The AI can efficiently categorize guest data according to their room preferences, amenities required, budget, and more. These data-driven results can then be used to attract guests for their next stay and perhaps even reach out to potential guests.

5. Online Booking Can Be Powered By AI
Online hotel bookings are one of the friction points for the hospitality industry. Many people use aggregator sites to search for hotels and confirm booking, even if they want to make a direct booking from the hotel website, which can be a time-consuming and complex task. AI-driven algorithms web application helps hotel’s website to reduce this friction and provide a booking experience that is tailored to customers’ preferences and maximize the sales potential.

Final Thoughts
With digital technology continuously evolving, it is not a surprise that the applications within the travel and hospitality industry are evolving too. Artificial intelligence energizes the digital transformation of the hotel industry and changes the guest experience across their travel lifecycle. AI and Machine Learning are making everything more efficient and bringing the next level of responsiveness and personalization. With this technology curve, hotels of all sizes can benefit from AI-powered applications.

AI-powered applications need to be made a part of the overall business strategy. Hotel employees need to be included in the strategy and understand how they can work together with the technology and gain the advantage of the organization.