The Future Of Hotels And AI
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The day is done. We're just getting started. The last show with David Cooper.
As hotels cut costs, they are replacing human workers with AI. And we're left whispering sweet nothings to a glowing screen for extra towels. Convenient? Maybe. But a romantic dinner recommendation from a concierge hotel robot employee? That's where things start to get a little weird. Do we prefer human touch in hospitality? Well, that's what we're going to discuss with associate professor and founding director at the Nemecolin Hospitality Lab at West Virginia University, A.J. Alluri. A.J., welcome to the show. Hi, David. Thanks for having me.
What are the current trends in AI adoption in hotels?
So in what ways can we expect in the next five or 10 years hotels, especially mid-range hotels, to shift towards using AI and robots and check-in screens and kind of losing that human touch? No, absolutely, David. We are in the crossroads of high-touch and high-tech, and there's no question about that. And more and more hotels are trying to really solve the staffing problem. The efficiency problem, right? So these are the major challenges. And then part of it is going into automation and AI. And there's a huge adoption of AI happening right now. And that is what, you know, you will see in the next five, 10 years. So the goal is to, again, hospitality and tourism is more on the high touch foundation. And if you're built on high touch foundation, you can do a great high tech on top of it.
High touch meaning what exactly? Customer service, face-to-face interactions, where there is a human essence of hospitality, wherever you go, in every touch point, you talk to a human. Whereas now with mobile check-ins and check-outs, you take away that touch point, so you're going high tech. So instead of high touch, you're going into high tech. Got it. So walk me through some of your research. I imagine hotels and hotel managers feel one way about using AI in their in their establishments. And I imagine the guests might feel something slightly different. Exactly. So this is what we found in our research. When we looked at the guest perspective, we looked at the overall journey, you know, before the stay, during the stay and after stay and during the stay.
Obviously, a lot of the guests want that high touch experience, right? The human human experience. where they want to go into the front desk, talk to humans and all of that. But when you go into overall before stay and after stay, they're easy to use conversational AI, whether it's a tool, whether it's a robot, service robot, or any of the chatbots or AI chatbots. The thing about employees is because of, you know, crazy hours, because of, you know, stress and, you know, hospitality industry is 24 hours on 365 days. So they actually prefer technology that can solve a lot of these, you know, routine rule-based problems so they can take care of the human as customer service. Now I know concierge at hotels, not all of them, but some of them, for example, if I asked for a romantic restaurant recommendation, they might be a shill for the restaurant.
They might send me to a restaurant that has kind of a handshake with a hotel. But if that were to happen, I would still trust it a lot more than like going to a screen saying, hey, can I have some restaurant recommendations?
How is AI replacing human roles in the hospitality industry?
Is that what you're finding? Like the people want that personal touch and that when they ask for help, even if a machine can provide it, it's just a weird experience? So this is where, when it comes to AI concierge, a lot will change in the future. And then right now, you think a lot of the employees are well-trained. They know exactly how to really guide you to that dinner experience, right? But guess what? The recent research with conversational AI, I'm working with a service robot that has so much of data. It has a lot of information about you, about the region, and all of it. Sometimes you cannot train a human to know most everything and everywhere. including multilingual. This particular service bot can talk 50 plus languages at an advanced level.
So just think about that.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:04–0:47
2
What are the current trends in AI adoption in hotels?
0:47–3:15
3
How is AI replacing human roles in the hospitality industry?
3:15–4:19
4
What challenges do hotels face with AI implementation?
4:19–6:18
5
What does high-touch hospitality mean in the age of AI?
6:18–7:38
6
How do guests perceive the balance between AI and human touch?
7:38–8:57
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from The Last Show with David Cooper
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