Artificial Intelligence: when to rely on it when making strategic decisions for your hotel

Artificial intelligence (AI) is slowly transforming many aspects of how we live our lives. We’re already seeing driverless cars, virtual doctors, and marketing chatbots. And now, thanks to recent advancements, we are also beginning to see AI penetrate the hotel industry, especially in terms of data management and decision-making.

Let’s explore some of these developments to find out how artificial intelligence is changing the way we run our hotels. 

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What is artificial intelligence in the hotel industry?

Artificial intelligence, also known as AI, is a computer programme that performs tasks that historically have relied on human intelligence. Essentially, these dynamic systems mimic human intelligence in order to carry out both basic and complex tasks. Specific applications include AI-powered assistants, manufacturing robots, speech recognition, marketing chatbots, and checkout-free grocery shopping.

In terms of the hotel industry, artificial intelligence is already being used in a number of areas. For instance, AI is used by many hotels in order to offer guests smart check-ins, AI concierge services, and smart devices such as digital room assistants. All this helps to automate specific services and improve the overall guest experience.

However, perhaps the biggest area where artificial intelligence is being used in hotels relates to data management. Businesses that invest in software with AI algorithms are able to automate data collection processes, understand and predict market demand, offer better prices, and improve their internal operations. Thanks to this level of automation, hotels are instead able to refocus their efforts on more strategic tasks that promote growth. 

How can artificial intelligence improve your revenue strategies?

Let’s take a look now at two ways that artificial intelligence can help you enhance your revenue streams and create a more efficient and profitable business.  

Automate your data management processes

Hotels generate a huge amount of data every day. This includes guest information, reservation details, and RevPAR values, to name a few categories. AI algorithms are able to automate many of these data collection and analysis processes so that hoteliers can gather all the business intelligence they need in a much more time-efficient manner. 

Artificial intelligence is particularly useful for automating repetitive processes. This includes analysing demand trends, customer behaviour patterns, and market segments. It also includes pricing automation, forecasting, reputation management, and automated processes for streamlining the booking process. By using the right software, you can easily collect, analyse and handle large amounts of data from a variety of sources that helps you understand every aspect of your target market.  

For example, at BEONx, we have developed a unique revenue management system that you can use to collect and analyse data relating to your hotel’s reputation and market positioning in real time. The platform also collects valuable insights that enable you to anticipate the needs and preferences of your customers. Once the system has collected all this information, our unique algorithms analyse the data to help you identify customer behaviour patterns and predict demand trends. It also accounts for the reputation and positioning of your competitors so that you can calculate optimum prices for each of your market segments at the click of a button. This improves your ability to develop fair pricing strategies, forecast predicted trends, and offer an improved guest experience. And you can do all this without spending hours manually compiling data from numerous sources and analysing endless spreadsheets.  

And, best of all, artificial technology such as this is easy to implement and integrate with your existing systems so you can create an optimum data-focused tech stack for your business without incurring inflated costs. 

Improve your strategic decision-making processes

The other big benefit of using artificial intelligence is that thanks to your improved data collection and analysis capabilities, you have access to enhanced insights that you can use to develop effective revenue management strategies. Digitalising your hotel in this way can help you make better, data-driven decisions based on meaningful and actionable observations. Plus, you can create software alerts so that you are immediately notified whenever your AI tools detect any unusual patterns that you need to act on. All this helps to put you in the driving seat so that you can anticipate your market and improve your strategic decision-making processes.

Ultimately, by automating many of your repetitive data collection and analysis processes, you can leverage your most important asset: the human capabilities that you and your staff possess. You can use your knowledge, skills and experience to interpret all this data and create effective long-term strategies that promote growth. You can also refocus your efforts on more creative and innovative strategies that help you secure more bookings at optimal prices. In fact, according to a study by Deloitte, when you harness the power of analytics, automation, and artificial intelligence, you can create the right strategies to balance speed, cost, and quality, and deliver measurable business value.

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