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Independent hotels do not have the financial , technological or talent resources to select , train , implement and maintain generative AI bots on their own . They have to rely on proactive and smart hotel tech vendors to introduce genAIpowered applications , which a number of them have already done with remarkable speed , such as genAI-powered and hotel-specific chatbots such as Asksuite and Quicktext , which are suitable for hotel websites of independents , midsize and smaller hotel brands , boutique and luxury brands .
The major hotel chains are already working on highly customized versions of ChatGPT or Google Gemini AI on their brand sites to handle trip planning and
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customer service . For example , last year Accor launched its AI Trip Assistant , which can recommend rooms , serve up special offers and make recommendations for local experiences , such as ticketed activities , wellness experiences and food and beverage options .
HOTELS : Surge pricing has become a hot topic . Hotels have done dynamic pricing for years . How can AI help revenue management ? Starkov : A typical hotel makes roughly five million pricing decisions every year and it is not humanly possible for any revenue manager to get every decision right , every day , without the support of an automated system .
Only an AI-powered Revenue Management System ( RMS ) with real-time market , travel demand and comp-set analytics , CRM data feed , website and digital marketing analytics , and online reputation / consumer sentiment data feeds to optimize performance can achieve a near-perfect real-time pricing in response to market dynamics , and significantly enhance GOPPAR ( Gross Operating Profit Per Available Room ).
Hotel management and ownership are realizing that only a cloud AI-powered RMS can help the property maximize revenue and successfully compete in today ’ s supercomplex and competitive marketplace .
In the future , an AI-powered
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RMS , in combination with the property CRM , will be able to move current revenue management from a “ oneto-many ” pricing approach to “ one-to-one ” pricing . This will allow every single guest to receive highly personalized one-to-one pricing . HOTELS : The one worry over AI is that it will potentially cut jobs . What are those jobs ? Can AI and human intelligence co-exist ? Starkov : By 2025 , more than 85 million existing jobs will be lost due to the seismic shift toward AI , robotization and automation , according to estimates in the “ The Future of Jobs Report ” published by the World Economic Forum . Similar forecasts appear in reports from the likes of McKinsey & Co . and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development ( OECD ).
In 2023 , labor costs consumed around a third of hotel revenue and AI , robotization and automation are becoming increasingly appealing to hotel owners and operators .
The notion that guests are demanding human-provided services is greatly exaggerated , especially today . A great example of why guests do not care about human-provided services as much as some in our industry think comes from the short-term rental sector . The gold standard at short-term rentals is customer experience without any human contact between guests and hosts , and yet guests are not only not
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complaining , but gobbling up this “ human-less ” service and loving it .
There are three main impediments to fast adoption of AI and robotization in our industry :
➊ reluctance to invest in new technologies by real-estateminded owners and operators
➋ lack of understanding and fear of new technology , ie ., “ Who will deal with it ? It makes operations very complex ”
➌ The labor unions in major metropolitan areas with highly-unionized hospitality labor force are dead set against any AI , robotization and automation or any technology advancement that can reduce the number of paying members .
None of the above can stop the rapid advancements in the adoption of AI , robotics and automation in the hospitality industry , in the same manner as the Luddite movement in early 19th-century England could not stop the first Industrial Revolution .
Automation in hospitality , via AI , robotics , IoT and mobile technologies , is inevitable , which will augment and , in many cases , replace repetitive , mundane and dangerous jobs . There are three macrosocio-economic factors forcing the hospitality industry to accelerate the adoption of human-less and do-it-yourself ( DIY ) services and increase their technology investments in automation : the labor shortage , the unsustainable labor expense in hospitality and the emergence of the new techsavvy travel consumer .
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Mar / Apr 2025 hotelsmag . com 41 |