Hotel AI is working, but not always in the way operators planned. That was the message from a Tuesday panel at the Hospitality Show in Miami Beach.
Executives from Concord Hospitality, Aimbridge Hospitality, Towne and Omni Hotels & Resorts shared what they have learned. Hotel Management reported on the session.
Savings That Show Up Elsewhere
Concord Hospitality put voice AI to work at a Florida resort. It answered thousands of calls and resolved a share of them without staff.
Dan Fernandez, the company’s vice president of digital marketing and strategy, said the labor savings were modest. “It hasn’t necessarily driven crazy labor savings,” he said.
The gain came from somewhere else. Calls stopped interrupting the front desk and the hostess stand, so employees could focus on the guests in front of them.
Aimbridge took a different route. Its CIO, Keryn McNamara, described LIFT, an in-house tool that compares scheduled labor with expected demand.
The tool flags the few labor issues managers should handle first each day. MAIN covered the approach in Hotel AI: Why Labor Is the Biggest Opportunity.
Aimbridge built LIFT inside the systems staff already use, with no extra sign-in. McNamara credited that for strong adoption.
Towne’s COO, Jacqueline DeChamps, described a similar tool that tells managers when they need a different staffing mix. During America’s 250th celebrations, Towne also used AI to flag road closures near its hotels.
Managers could bring staff in earlier and warn guests before streets closed. That helped service as much as operations.
Revenue in Plain Sight
Omni’s AI concierge does more than answer questions. Gustaaf Schrils, the company’s CIO, said it opens the tickets needed to fulfill each request.
A guest can text for a pillow, a burger and a fix for a burned-out desk lamp. The system creates three tickets for housekeeping, food and beverage, and engineering.
Schrils drew a line at the front desk. “I don’t see us checking people in using a robot,” he said.
Revenue was the other theme. DeChamps called parking the highest-margin business a hotel has.
Towne uses AI to price parking dynamically, so event days earn more. “Because when Taylor Swift is in town, you absolutely should get more revenue for that parking,” she said.
The company also lists empty spaces on parking marketplaces. That captures business hotels never saw before.
Schrils pointed to unsold tee times and spa appointments. Like rooms, they are perishable. “Once they’re gone, they’re gone,” he said.
Fernandez added a caution. Voice AI handles routine questions well, but it converts less well on complex group inquiries from wedding and event planners.
His fix is to use AI earlier, to sort and answer requests for proposals, then hand qualified leads to a person. “We know that response time correlates to conversion rate,” he said.
A Fantastic Failure
Not every project worked. Aimbridge built an internal assistant to answer basic questions about its hotels, including how many it operates in Miami.
It could not answer reliably. McNamara said the company thought its data was ready, and it was not. “It was a fantastic failure,” she said.
Aimbridge restructured the data and fixed the problem. Schrils said clean data matters because guest trust is easily broken.
Adoption was the other hurdle. “Deploying technology is not the problem,” Schrils said. “The problem is getting it embraced and adopted.”
His advice is to involve employees early. DeChamps suggested asking them to solve a problem with the tools.
McNamara urged operators to pilot first and to talk to companies already using a vendor’s product. “You will either have success and great adoption, or you will fail and you will learn a ton,” she said.
Miami’s hotel sector is moving the same way. MAIN profiled five Miami hospitality AI firms powering the guest experience.
The panel’s lesson is practical. Hotel AI pays off when the data is clean and the staff are on board.
Sources: 1. Hotel Management: HM on Location: Hotel AI delivers unexpected results 2. MAIN: Hotel AI: Why Labor Is the Biggest Opportunity 3. MAIN: 5 Miami Hospitality AI Firms Powering the Guest Experience
