AI in the hospitality industry
Artificial Intelligence or AI is here, and it’s not going away any time soon! It offers many opportunities to make our lives easier, but it can be hard to know where to start with it. AI in the hospitality industry can help us do many jobs and enhance the experience of guests and visitors to our businesses. Here are some ideas to help you get started.
Chat GPT
We’ve already spoken at length about Chat GPT and how it can help us with our writing. Whilst we would never use AI to generate blogs to publish, it can help produce a plan or structure to guide writing. All blogs written by us for our clients are written by real people behind the keyboard (hello!) and so everything is researched and written by hand. However AI can help us consider ideas we might not have though of, giving us fresh blogs to write ourselves that are original and relevant to our clients niche.
AI in imagery
Everything needs images now, from websites to social media posts to newsletters. Images are what grabs people’s attention, and keeps them reading. However, finding the right image can be hard – if it even exists at all.
There are many AI tools out there to help you generate your own images, and you can usually use them however you want afterwards. Shutterstock is a paid-for tool which can generate images when you input text. Adobe Photoshop similarly lets you edit and generate unique images, and you can even start by using one of your own. There are also plenty of free image generators to use, including Nightcafe.
The only limit is your imagination. We’ve been playing with these tools for a while with mixed results that often need time for tweaking. But if what your website needs is an image of a luxury hotel resort where a family are playing happily in the sand and overhead, a large green dragon breathes fire at a distant volcano…well, AI has got you covered:
Alexa, set a reminder…
For many households, Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Nest speakers have become part of daily routines. From setting reminders to controlling the TV to even ordering goods with your voice, they have changed they way we do things.
Such always-listening speakers still worry many about invasion of privacy in their home, but for many the benefits outweigh the potential risks. Many hotels have included smart speakers in rooms, with the option of turning them off.
Benefits to guests include easily playing music they like, checking the local weather and news and also connecting to the front desk. It’s also possible to check out of a hotel just by using your voice.
Chatbots
When you have been in the hospitality industry for a long time, especially in one location, you begin to see patterns in things people want to know. For example, are there parking spaces nearby? What time is breakfast? What time is checkout?
These are just a few of the many questions a chatbot can help answer, allowing hotel staff more time to deal with complicated questions that need personal attention. By allowing website visitors to click an icon, they can open up a chatbot which offers lifelike responses and is able to answer any number of questions, even those specific to your business. For anything it can’t help with, it is able to transfer the customer to a real person to continue their experience.
Take a look at an example here from Le Canton hotel in Brazil. Do keep in mind that AI is still a burgeoning field, and sometimes things can go a little wrong, like this chap who tried to get himself a brand new Chevy car from a dealership chatbot for $1!
The future of AI
AI is going to become more human, and being able to tell when you are interacting with a human or machine will become more difficult as technology advances. This means that now is a great time to start using AI and keep ahead of the game. If you want to discuss ways to integrate AI into your hospitality industry, then get in touch!
