The power of integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) into your property’s call center

One of the most intriguing trends in the hotel industry is artificial intelligence (AI). Integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) into your hotel or resort operations can streamline operational efficiencies and reduce costs, which comes at a crucial time for the hospitality industry. AI ranges from online chatbots that can answer basic hotel questions to AI that can take over reservations at your call center. Even if leisure and group travel are already returning to pre-2020 levels, there are still severe staffing shortages throughout the whole sector. Due to these circumstances, hotels are being forced to work more with fewer resources. Technology can help close such gaps without compromising the level of service or the guest experience.

The advantages of call centers integrating AI

The obvious step of this technology is to include conversational AI in your hotel or resort call center. With added perks for loyalty members, it gives hotel properties the chance to cut down on call wait times and streamline the new booking process.
The primary objectives of this new functionality are:

Avoid the pandemic-related workforce shortages

Although AI is not intended to completely replace your call center or front desk staff, it can greatly reduce the number of reps required, allowing those staff members to devote all of their attention to more complicated reservations or other operational requirements while the chatbot responds to inquiries about the opening times of the restaurant, the pool, and other amenities.

Reduce the hold times that lead to aggravating customer experiences.

Contrary to people, the bots can manage multiple callers dialing into the system at once, doing away with the long hold times and waits that sometimes lead potential visitors to hang up and try again later or move on to another potential location.

Automate the management of all new reservations

With forthcoming CRS to PMS connectors that will enable the AI to handle reservation updates and cancellations, the application is built to handle every part of concluding a new reservation.

Additional advantages for regular customers

The AI is programmed to ask for loyalty member information if the caller does not automatically provide it. It can also detect any special offers or comps that the member is eligible for in addition to accessing the member’s information to complete the booking. This is a significant advance for the industry because many existing resort configurations prevent loyalty members from independently booking these special deals or comps.

Conclusion

The future is promising for AI in the hospitality industry. The technology that is now in development has the ability to address some of the most serious staffing and training concerns facing the sector. Hotels and resorts can streamline operations while enabling on-site staff to focus on enhancing the on-property guest experience and generating memorable moments that encourage repeat business with conversational AI solutions for call center reservations, cleaning requests, and more.