Hospitality has an Always On, Always Available Employee at Their Fingertips, the Digital Assistant

While it’s no secret the Hospitality Industry was one of the most negatively impacted by the Covid Pandemic; it has experienced a full recovery over the past year. As of Summer 2022, hotel bookings are back to pre-pandemic levels, while average nightly rates are about 11% higher due to pent-up consumer demand for Travel.

As travel fully rebounds, leading Hospitality brands are tasked with providing a great customer experience while dealing with many challenges, including a Labor shortage that has impacted them as much as any other Industry.

In this article, we’ll discuss some ways Hospitality brands can leverage Conversational AI to enhance customer experience while reducing service costs.

Digital Concierge

A Conversational AI solution allows Hospitality brands to offer their customers an always-available Digital Concierge that can be accessed via multiple channels anytime. A Digital Concierge could be made available to customers via web, mobile, telephony, kiosk, or even in-room smart speakers for Brands that have incorporated as part of their in-room tech stack.

Rather than have to visit the front desk where there’s likely to be a line or call a general phone number where they’re likely to be put on hold, guests can fulfill common service requests with a digital concierge that is available 24×7.

In addition to providing Guests an always-available assistant, the Digital Concierge also offers an opportunity for Hospitality brands to augment Labor. According to the American Hotel and Lodging Association, 97% of hotels are experiencing a staffing shortage, with 50% of those saying the shortage is severe. With a digital assistant fulfilling many common service requests, Hospitality employees will have more time to focus on high-touch guest interactions – leading to higher customer satisfaction while allowing the Brand to greatly reduce its service costs.

The Digital Assistant could also help with more advanced requests, such as recommendations on activities and dining, and begin to facilitate the booking and scheduling of such activities. When needed, the Assistant could always facilitate a smooth hand-off to a human Concierge who can be briefed on contextual notes from the conversation thus far.

Voice UI to enhance the booking experience

While digital self-service has been fully adopted for booking – adding a Voice UI on top of a Brands website or mobile app to enable voice search could be a way for brands to differentiate their experience and increase their likelihood of earning a Guests’ business as they are typically evaluating multiple options. A Voice UI can also enable a potential customer to ask questions about the property and provide a consultative experience in addition to just booking.

We live in the experience economy, and by offering a differentiated booking experience, Hospitality Brands increase their likelihood of earning a customer’s business.

Answering calls

As mentioned earlier, most Hospitality brands are experiencing severe staffing shortages, making it unlikely that a front-desk staff will be able to answer a call and take care of the Guest at the front-desk at the same time. This results in the caller being put on hold for a long period of time while the staff experiences constant stress and distraction from their tasks at the Front Desk. Call centers and customer service lines have also experienced an excessive number of calls since the Pandemic due to traveler questions and requests.

A Conversational AI assistant could connect with a Hospitality Brands modern Telephony system to deploy a virtual assistant that could field thousands of calls at once and answer most of the common questions that arise from a caller. The assistant could, of course, hand off to a live agent, when necessary, with context on the conversation to that point.

As Hospitality Brands continue to identify new ways technology can enhance guest experience and operations, Conversational AI should be at the top of their list.

About Voicify 

Voicify, LLC is the world’s only end-to-end solution for creating, managing, and optimizing enterprise-owned voice assistants. Our platform enables brands to create highly engaging and personalized voice experiences that can be automatically deployed to web and mobile products and services and a broad array of voice platforms, including Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, IVR telephony systems, and more. 

Learn more at www.voicify.com.

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