How Hotels Are Using Artificial Intelligence to Provide an Awesome User Experience — Part 2
In the previous article, we looked at how the advent and adoption of artificial intelligence has helped in streamlining operations and internal processes, but most importantly, the customer service through concierge robots, voice and text activated services along with automatic data processing within the Hospitality industry.
In this blog, we will cover how artificial intelligence in hospitality can go further when it comes to deeply personalizing their customers’ experience by going beyond mobile apps along with examples of hotels incorporating AI within their day-to-day operations and what they bring to the table when it comes to enhancing a visitor’s stay.
Intelligent Travel companions
Travellers have evolved lately and desire a great mixture of high-grade personalization and exceptional service standards on the go. On the other hand, hotel operations often get complicated due to heavy amounts of data about visitors and hotel staff, resulting in critical challenges related to flawless customer experience. This is where intelligent travel phones can come to assist.
As soon as a guest enters their room, they can avail AI-enabled phones that offer amazing features such as:
- GPS capabilities
- Gamification and amusement
- AI-powered in-built hotel app
- Access to unlimited data and international calls
- Handy travel guide to city attractions
- Promotional offers
- Return travel booking services
- Quick access to hotel service assistants
Recently, Signature Lux Hotels in Gauteng has claimed to be the first one to furnish incredible guest experience through such digital travel companions that offer intelligent chatbots and voice-activated apps.
Knowing your customer
In order to serve customers better and create superior guests experience, it is vital to first gather most knowledge about customers. The more personally you know your customer, the more you will be able to exceed their expectations. Knowing that having a window into customer’s life is of great importance, hotels over the past years have attempted to make their premise the best — a unique and most hospitable place for visitors and guests.
Before they enter hotel buildings, customers begin to experience their services right when they book rooms through different online channels and check rates, room amenities and comfort, availability, etc. Today, from planning of journey online to check out point and return back home, everything is mulled over carefully by advanced machine learning system. AI does the real work of a dedicated chaperon helping with:
- Fast online assistance
- Personalized options and recommendations
- Saving user preferences and page visits
- Travel bookings and safe routes
- Advanced meal/drink preferences
- Room booking and reservations
Thanks to the Big Data element powering the Artificial Intelligence required to take care of everything customers would need. It is the information classification and management system that helps learn a great deal of customer’s behaviour. AI can then use the wealth of data to address individual needs of customers and offer custom guest service.
Amazon’s Alexa for interactive experience
By now Amazon’s AI-based software service Alexa is visible in the online store. It is a cloud-based service using which software developers can custom-build unique voice-enabled experiences for customers who want an effortless and intuitive way to interact with everyday technology. Alexa has immense potential to change the future of hospitality industry with its powerful voice services.
With Alexa playing the central role in connecting hotels with guests, it becomes easy for users to make requests to hotel staff using only their voice as a major command. Via Amazon Echo, guests invest the minimal human effort to have their request delivered to respective hotel staff. The following example of ordering meal illustrates the use of Alexa:
Alexa’s smart program stages the conversation perfectly and communicates the guest messages to concerned hotel staff member for order fulfilment. Guests save time and efforts by placing their order without spending time typing the request details using touch gestures on their mobile phone. Alexa is there to fetch information, note down and suggest pre-emptively. Hotel staff receives the precise order in the first attempt without even refining it, which ensures smoother, faster customer service.
This is the best example of how artificial intelligence of Alexa helps make everything easy and available at the voice command, creating a seamless, fluid and highly personalized guest experience and thus connecting hotels with guests with little possibility of any barriers.
Hotels leveraging Artificial Intelligence
Increasingly, the hotel industry is flooded with AI robots around the globe. Currently, the wave of robotic butlers with cognitive capabilities seems unimaginably on the rise. Take a look at the following examples of the hotel embracing the idea of AI robots:
Wynn Las Vegas
Las Vegas is a giant hub of opulent, posh world-class hotels that are known to offer exceptional luxury and customer experience. Recently, Wynn Las Vegas has made an announcement saying that it will integrate Amazon Echo to digitalize its 4,748 hotel rooms in order to offer their guests tremendous control over multiple facilities using their mere voice. It will start with controlling room lighting, temperature, TV, draperies, and they are likely to leverage Echo’s personal assistant services as well.
Clarion Hotel in Stockholm
Clarion Hotel Amaranten in Stockholm is also making its name on the list of first hotels to use the AI-enabled chatbot butler which is an in-room assistant based on Amazon Echo. This assistant is equipped with power features and is designed to help guests with many of their requirements such as hailing cabs, ordering room service, online information and other hotel-related operations.
Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas
Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas has also registered its name in incorporating AI-powered concierge named as Rose. It is one of unparalleled voice-activated assistants that stands out from others you have known. The concierge service comes with a calling card that guests get upon checking in. It includes a phone number to which you can text for anything you want. It also gives facility to converse with any guest requests using your voice. Rose manages queries precisely and also conveys unknown queries to hotel staff. Rose ushers you to entertainment options and local sites and specialities of the hotel.
Edwardian Hotels
Edwardian Hotels offer AI chatbots for their guests. They can utilize hotel’s chatbot services to request assistance by typing the text message: “Edward”. It is said that Edward is programmed to deliver sublime guest experience especially for those who opt for digital brand interaction. Unlike other contemporary voice-activated assistants, Edward can guide guests to local restaurants, bars, famous spots and can also handle complaints. Upon failing to help guests with certain requests, hotel staff can chime in as a standby for Edward.
Henna na Hotel, Japan
Henna na Hotel is said to be the first ever hotel in Japan where robots work as staff and serve hotel guests. The most outstanding hotel staffed by robots exclusively, Henna na has a humanoid female to man the front desk and a dinosaur-personified robot to help to arrive guest with onboarding. Here robotic porters carry your luggage to rooms and store it in private lockers. AI assistant robot Churi-chan serves in every room to help with adjusting room lights and providing information on climate conditions.
Conclusion
Even though AI is regarded as the emerging technology trend, the hospitality industry has already experienced incredible benefits and wide impact on their business momentum. From the front desk, where AI-powered robotic concierge service stands to hotel rooms where voice-activated assistants accelerate customer experience, Artificial Intelligence is seen successfully driving hotel industry today. The technology enables personalized concierge services and offers real-time recommendations and easy service requests management. Hence, we can conclude that AI is working far beyond imagination for hotel systems, a breakthrough we all have been anxiously awaiting.
