I spent the bulk of last week in Indianapolis attending the dual-headed conferences that are HSMAI Commercial Strategy Conference and HITEC, and I'll get to the point and say there are two things I'm thankful for.
First and foremost, I'm glad I missed the tornado warning that forced everyone at the Indiana Convention Center into the basement. That seemed like a not fun way to spend your day.
Secondly, I'm extremely delighted by the fact that there seems to be significantly more meat on the bone when it comes to talking about artificial intelligence than in years past.
AI has been the main discussion topic around those events for a couple of years now, and it's easy to understand why when you look at just how much AI is driving the broader business outlook across the globe. But in recent years, there was precious little that elevated the conversation beyond vendors taking those two letters onto their promotional materials on the expo floor.
But this year, I came away from the show with more solid takeaways on hoteliers should be adapting to AI than before.
Much of that is thanks to an interesting presentation from Milestone Inc. Founder and President Benu Aggarwal on how to adapt online content to better mesh with AI — SEO for AI if you will.
The main takeaway seems to be to refine and scale back your content but make it as focused and consistent as possible so that AI agents are getting your key messaging across as clearly and concisely as you'd hope. As more search traffic shifts to AI platforms such as ChatGPT over traditional search engines like Google, this will become increasingly vital advice for hoteliers heed.
The other thing hoteliers need to be mindful of is companies need to get serious about setting policies on how employees are allowed to use AI tools. You have to assume that the people on your team are already playing around with the consumer-facing AI tools available to them like ChatGPT, but "playing around" can't morph into plugging your proprietary information into them to see what it spits out. This is especially relevant for data-driven departments such as revenue management.
Even if that type of behavior is already banned by other company policies, it can't hurt to be explicit that you won't allow it while looking for more reasonable paths to experiment with AI as a company. And when you do, try to harness your employees' curiosity and interest.
Let me know what you think on LinkedIn or via email.
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