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Photo: You own a hotel. It’s 2 o’clock in the morning, and you’re wrapped up in the comfortable warmth of your bed, but a potential customer is looking to book a room online in another part of the world. For them, it’s lunchtime, and they’re looking for a place to stay for their next trip. They have a question, though, and no staff is available to answer it. So, by the time you Is Online, they are no longer there – and they have no bookings.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Before you know it is the key to meeting the needs of your clients in the hospitality industry. Anytime, anywhere. Integrate AI into your hospitality offer and see your conversion rate and revenue increase.
AI and hospitality
Hospitality is a 24/7/365 art. Potential customers are looking for round-the-clock accommodation, flights, taxis and rental cars. Even if you have one employee in each time zone of the world, they can still handle one customer at a time.
The global online travel market was valued at $ 431.14 billion in 2020, and by integrating AI into your digital presence in the form of chat boxes, data collection, and always-on-the-stuffing, you can secure your share of that pie.
Related: Academics, here’s how to find your ideal student with the help of AI
Even AI needs help
While AI provides a great advancement in terms of constant accessibility and data collection, it still needs to be managed properly to provide real benefits.
The data that AI collects helps you understand what is missing from your digital communication with your customers. It highlights the holes, but you need to know what to do with them. In the hospitality industry, AI’s data collection is just as important as directly assisting customers in real time. By collecting and using this data properly, you can answer questions from potential customers directly on your website.
AI will collect a lot of data for you about your customers, their interactions with your product offers, where they are finding you and much more. Although there will never be a single solution to using this data. It will always depend on your business and the questions you are trying to answer. That’s where human touch comes from.
Related: Technology is taking the hospitality industry to a new height
Grow with data
In order to use this AI-collected data for real growth, however, it is vital to ensure that we are not focusing on just one part of the customer journey. Often, we only zoom in on the part of our product path that leads to sales. In the hospitality industry, it needs to include a wider range of opportunities.
Also using data on trends like room type selection, occupancy trends, channel profitability and guest population, we can work to ensure our future guests are getting what they want before they ask. When all of this post-purchase data is combined with pre-purchase data based on holistic attributes, we have a single powerful source of information that can really help the marketing department increase its efforts.
If you do not see this data as a whole, you can blame the wrong channel for the sales and return business. Take the Hilton Hotel Chain as an example. It would be easy for a company to assume that it is their brand that drives the sales. Customers know and trust the brand, so they must choose a Hilton hotel in their destination for that reason. Through holistic data attribution, the hotel chain will realize that although its brand plays a role, there are other interactions near the top of the funnel that make all the difference.
Related: 3 trends that are shaping the hospitality industry
Imagine what your customers want before they know it. Now, imagine how seamless the customer journey could have been if you had already paved the way with AI-harnessed data. The hospitality industry has the potential to use AI to increase revenue and enhance the customer experience, and now is the time.