Hospitality and tech industry leaders came together recently for an insightful webinar on one of the hottest topics at the moment - AI. The discussion centered on AI’s impact and use cases within hotels and casinos now and in the near future.
The panelists were:
- Larry Fretz, Senior Managing Partner of Gaming & Hospitality, Infotech
- Rohith Kori, SVP Product Strategy, Agilysys
- Tim Kennedy, Senior Director of Sales, Duetto
Watch the full webinar here - https://view-su2.highspot.com/viewer/651798962f1f5c43ab1a773e
Fretz began by talking about how hotels can utilize AI to ‘rev up their revenue’.
“When property and revenue management meet data and AI, your property isn’t just smart, it’s a financial genius,” he said.
“Gaming and hospitality leaders are viewing AI as promising,” he said. “Although AI is not new by any means, gaming and hospitality organizations are realizing its potential progressively. AI-mature organizations in the industry have experienced eye-opening results, such as 50% greater revenue growth, 35% more likelihood to have 30% AI-influenced revenue, and 80% more likelihood to outperform on customer experience,” he added.
Generative AI (GenAI) use cases within the industry that Fretz sees as having the most disruption over the next few years include conversational digital booking, dynamic pricing and attribute-based selling.
How Source Data Impacts AI For Hotels
“It’s very important that you know what data your AI model is going to be trained on,” said Kori. “General purpose ChatGPT is trained on open data but if we think about 12 or 24 months ahead, providing that same experience on your website for the guest to conversationally book your amenity, it’s important that it’s trained on your source data, not your operator’s source data. So, having systems that provide a comprehensive view of data and then training your AI model on that data is the foundational underpinning on which your AI strategy should be based,” he added.
Kennedy said: “From a revenue management perspective, data accuracy is paramount if AI is to fulfill its promise for hospitality. Modern RMSs are going to need to ingest more data faster, quickly assess the data’s predictive impact, and when and where appropriate, use that data to make better pricing recommendations and improve forecast accuracy.”
Additional Steps Hoteliers Can Take To Make AI Useful And Actionable
“It’s about having a comprehensive view of the solutions that you’re trying and choosing the partners who look at it in a holistic way,” said Kori. “Then it’s about choosing the right AI models. There are a lot out there right now, and choosing the right model that is relevant for the hospitality industry is very important,” he added.
Kennedy shared: “It’s important that hoteliers capture, own and analyze their guest data at every stage of the guest journey, from pre-planning through to departure, and make sure that it’s not outsourced to third parties, but instead held in-house and synthesized and then used to make better decisions about those particular guests. One of the barriers to adoption of loyalty pricing has been that there was no formal way to capture total guest value or total guest spend. So one of the building blocks would be to think about how you are going to collect and standardize as much information as you can about your guest.”
Working Together
Talking about how RMS and PMS solutions can work together to really contribute to data and AI usefulness and market value in hotels, Kennedy said: “As good as a team of people with a spreadsheet might be, they’re never going to be able to keep up with the power of a system and a platform backed by sophisticated algorithms and data analysis, where all the heavy lifting is done before it’s even surfaced to a director of revenue to make or approve pricing decisions.”
Kori added: “As labor gets constrained, you need labor to focus on activities that drive value. Tools like Duetto and Agilysys can help you automate or simplify all the non-value driving tasks so employees can really focus on driving the value of the guest experience. All the other stuff you might do in the back office, while important, doesn’t really impact the guest experience, so if you can automate that using tools, it’s really worth looking at.”
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