Navigating the Complex World of Conversational hotel AI – Part 4

WHY HOTELIERS CAN’T AFFORD TO IGNORE AI: THE IMPACT OF ANNETTE, THE VIRTUAL HOTEL Agent™

By John Smallwood, President of Travel Outlook
August 2024

Over the past couple of months, we’ve explored the evolving role of conversational AI in hospitality, particularly focusing on Annette, The Virtual Hotel Agent™ by Travel Outlook. This series has highlighted Annette’s advanced capabilities, which include handling complex guest requests, personalizing interactions, and providing multilingual support. These features have positioned Annette as a critical asset for hoteliers looking to enhance guest experiences and streamline internal operations. As we dive into the final installment, we’ll review Annette’s many hospitality-specific capabilities and explore the affordability of AI solutions.

Annette’s Key Capabilities

Understanding Guest Requests with Conversational AI: Annette excels at comprehending complex, multi-turn interactions, making it possible for her to understand guests even when they speak in long-winded or rambling sentences.

Unlike traditional automated systems that often require guests to repeat themselves, Annette uses PolyAI’s natural language understanding software, which has been trained on billions of human conversations, to grasp the nuances and inflections in speech. This allows her to provide a seamless and intuitive guest experience, ensuring that guests feel heard and understood no matter how they communicate their needs.

Personalizing and Adapting Interactions

Annette’s ability to learn and adapt to hotel-specific terminology sets her apart. She can accurately answer queries about a property’s services, amenities, and local dining options. Her support for multiple languages, including different dialects and accents, also makes her a versatile tool in a global market. Annette also offers hotels the option to use their voice talent, which enhances personalization and makes guests feel at home when they hear regional accents.

Streamlining Operations and Reducing Workload: Annette not only answers hundreds of frequently asked questions (FAQs) specific to each hotel but also efficiently routes calls to the appropriate departments. Additionally, Annette can send follow-up texts to guests to provide additional information or confirm details discussed during the call.

Annette’s Tangible Impact: A Year in Review

In the past year, Annette has made a significant impact on the hospitality industry, including:

  • Handling Over 550,000 Calls: Annette managed more than 543,385 calls, showcasing her capability to handle a high volume of guest interactions. This efficiency level has undoubtedly relieved much of the pressure on front desk staff, allowing them to focus on more complex tasks requiring human intervention.
  • Containing Over 120,000 Calls Without Human Interaction: Out of the total calls handled, 118,567 were contained entirely by Annette without the need for any human interaction. This not only demonstrates Annette’s proficiency in managing guest requests autonomously but also highlights the potential for significant cost savings for hoteliers.
  • Sending Over 17,000 Text Messages: Annette also sent more than 17,000 follow-up texts, ensuring guests had easy access to critical information after their call.
  • Annette’s Role During Crisis (The Hawaii Fires): During the Hawaii fires last year, Annette played a crucial role in assisting OUTRIGGER Resorts & Hotels by handling 11,489 calls. She provided updates to callers, sent links to the most up-to-date information, and helped manage the situation. Annette handled 42.53% of the calls into Outrigger, proving her effectiveness in managing communications during a crisis.
  • Optimizing Guest Communication (The Hawks Cay Example): Annette’s adaptability extends to improving specific guest communications. For instance, at Hawks Cay in the Florida Keys, many calls related to the check-out process were being received. After analyzing the call data, the Travel Outlook team updated Annette’s system to provide more detailed information on check-out procedures, significantly reducing the number of guests needing to speak with the front desk.

Hotel AI | Travel Outlook

Why Hoteliers Can’t Afford to Ignore AI

As the hospitality industry continues to evolve, the question is no longer whether AI should be integrated but rather how quickly hoteliers can adopt these new technologies. Annette’s performance over the past year highlights the critical role that conversational AI can play in enhancing guest experiences, improving operational efficiency, and reducing costs.

With the ability to handle a high volume of interactions, provide personalized and multilingual support, and adapt to specific hotel needs, Annette represents a strategic asset that hoteliers cannot afford to overlook. As we look to the future, integrating advanced AI solutions like Annette will be essential for staying competitive in the ever-evolving hospitality landscape. The question isn’t whether hoteliers can afford to invest in AI but whether they can afford not to.

For more information on how Annette can transform your hotel’s operations and become an invaluable asset to your team, visit Travel Outlook’s Annette.

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

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

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John Smallwood, President
John Smallwood, President

About John Smallwood, President of Travel Outlook | A veteran in the hospitality industry, John has owned, developed, and managed hotels for many years. After earning a BBA from New Mexico State University, he started his career with AT&T, gaining invaluable insight and experience in the early years of the data revolution. His experience in technology and hospitality merged in his development of Travel Outlook, the world-class hospitality contact center. More recently, he has branched out with the creation of ExpressRez, the premier contact center for the Bed and Breakfast industry, and with the creation of Annette (formerly “Bella” by Travel Outlook), the first AI-powered voice bot for the hotel industry.

Hotel AI | Travel Outlook

About Travel Outlook, the premier hotel call center™ | Travel Outlook is an innovative, custom off-site central reservations office (CRO) service that serves as either a primary or overflow reservations department for hotels. Travel Outlook utilizes industry-leading talent combined with hospitality-specific AI-powered technology (Annette, The Virtual Hotel Agent) to enhance customers’ voice channels and increase conversion rates. Given its progressive approach to the voice channel – in terms of performance, training, transparency, testing and the tools used to measure performance – Travel Outlook, the premier hotel call center™ is the leading voice reservations team in hospitality. Travel Outlook’s valued client list includes Viceroy Hotel Group, Curator Hotels and Resorts, Outrigger, KSL Resorts, Proper Hospitality Group, Atlantis, The Irvine Company, Sage Hospitality, Noble House Hotels, HEI Hotels, Pyramid Global, and many others. Travel Outlook’s team and approach increases sales conversion and helps to create more effective voice communication between hotels and their guests, resulting in improved social scores in addition to increased voice channel revenue. https://traveloutlook.com/

About Annette, The Virtual Hotel Agent™ | Annette is a guest-led conversational AI assistant designed specifically for the hospitality industry. Annette has been programmed using a breakthrough approach to conversational AI, using natural language understanding software built from human conversations. Using social media, chat forums, and movie dialogue, Annette learns from billions of casual human conversations to understand human inflections and multi-turn queries. This revolutionary approach means Annette understands callers no matter what they say, when they say it, or how they speak. Annette can answer FAQs specific to your property, understand multiple languages, route calls, send follow up texts, and more. For more information, visit https://traveloutlook.com/annette/