Within the hospitality industry, everyone from ownership to on-property staff seems to be talking about artificial intelligence and the impact it will have on hotels.
But it's important not to get caught up in the "AI hype echo chamber" that's currently at an all-time high, said Max Spangler, vice president of technology of third-party hotel management company Charlestowne Hotels. Spangler was a guest on this week's episode of the "CoStar News Hotels Podcast."
Rather than get swept away by the big, exciting uses of the technology, hoteliers should be focusing on some of the less flashy applications of AI.
"Most of what people hear about AI right now is either too broad or too vague," he said. "The useful version is actually much more specific, and it helps with the first version of work — drafting, summarizing, comparing, rewriting, organizing, analyzing and getting unstuck — and that's what we constantly are telling our team members."
Charlestowne Hotels has team members using AI across the board — from the corporate office to on-property employees, Spangler said. But the company has emphasized where AI can help and what tasks need the human touch.
"The way we're framing it to our teams is that AI is really great at the first 80%, and our teams own the last 20%," he said, "and that last 20% is where our hospitality teams live. That's the judgment, it's the tone, it's the context, it's the guest sensitivity, it's the owner expectations, it's things like compliance, and then, of course, our hotel's reputation."
Rather than enforcing some corporate-led policy, Spangler said his focus is to provide the tools for employees to use at their comfort level — which ranges widely, from people proficient in AI use to those who still struggle logging on to check their email. According to Spangler, 350 of Charlestowne employees report using AI on a daily basis.
Another element of AI adoption is increased cybersecurity threats. Hackers are able to use AI tools to enhance their processes, and it's upended how Charlestowne trains its employees to catch potential attacks.
"If you just take phishing emails as an example, the old warning signs are completely disappearing," he said. "We're modifying our training as a result [from just advising] people to look for bad grammar, strange wording, typos, obvious red flags in phishing emails because that advice isn't enough anymore."
Just as Charlestowne employees can use AI to enhance the writing of emails, so can these bad threat actors, Spangler said.
"It is an arms race for every tool we put in. The threat actors are looking at that and trying to race past it," he said.
The key is to keep ahead and up to date on this rapidly developing technology space. Spangler said his team does that by staying curious and taking AI implementation step by step.
For more about the types of AI applications Charlestowne is implementing, listen to the podcast episode embedded above.