THE EXPENSIVE PROBLEM Hotel AI SOLVES FOR HOTELIERS

How Hotel AI Technology Can Solve the Hospitality Industry’s Greatest Challenges

In the last two years, the hospitality industry has gone through a series of unprecedented changes that have forever altered the business. After overcoming the seemingly biggest threat to travel in recent memory, we are left with a new lasting challenge—a serious labor shortage.

While travel was not the only industry affected by these turbulent times, the labor shortages have dealt a critical blow to the way hotels operate. Now hotels face everything from short-staffed reservation departments to underperforming front desks staff and beyond. The current labor shortage is, without a doubt, affecting the way most hotels operate. But it doesn’t have to.

We now have technology that can convert leads to reservations, answer FAQs, and communicate across any language without further burdening hotel staff, with hotel AI. No longer do hotels need to rely solely on overworked reservations departments or live receptionists who are often busy handling other tasks.

To understand how hotel AI can be harnessed to solve the greatest modern threat to the hospitality industry—labor shortages—we must first understand how today’s labor shortages affect the day-to-day operations of hotels.

Reservations – the revenue generators of your hotel.

When your reservation department falls victim to labor shortages, calls get dropped, guests are left frustrated, and sale leads fail to convert. When a customer calls your reservation line, they expect to be immediately put in contact with a helpful and knowledgeable hotel representative that can quickly book their stay.

Instead, when a customer calls an understaffed reservation department, they’re forced to jump through hoops and blindly follow cyclical call bot patterns for longer than they care to. The result, as you can imagine, is a significant loss in business.

Whether your reservation department is critically understaffed during these turbulent times, or they are depending on outdated IVR systems to handle the large call volumes associated with the recent travel rebound, chances are they’re falling to effectively convert leads to reservations.

In our most recent article (Does Artificial Intelligence Have a Place in The Travel Industry?), old-fashioned IVR systems create more problems for the customer than they solve. If you’re depending on IVR to handle your large reservation call volume, your callers are more likely to have a frustrating call experience that could result in a missed opportunity to book a reservation with a new customer or even the loss of business from a would-be returning guest.

Hotel Operations – your guest’s first, best, and last impression of your hotel.

Not only can labor shortages affect your reservation department, but they can have a serious impact on the day-to-day operations of your hotel.

Staff shortages across all departments in the hospitality industry can negatively impact your guests’ experience at your hotel. For instance, if your front desk is short-staffed, guests are left waiting in long lines to check in, ask simple questions, or get the concierge’s help. Staff shortages in other departments, like housekeeping, can leave your hotel struggling to keep up with modern standards of cleanliness and leave guests frustrated.

The results that speak for themselves.

According to Kimberly Berry, Director of Digital Business Development at Travel Outlook, “With Annette™, you can expect as much as 60% of the calls now being handled by the front desk to be handled by Annette™. This will result in an 87% reduction in call center service call volume and a 30% agent utilization decrease.”

Looking for ways to addresses hiring and staffing challenges and control front desk labor expenses?

Learn more about Annette™, the first hotel AI-powered virtual agent dedicated to hotel guest service.