For the past few years, we have been hearing that artificial intelligence is going to change the world, and few skeptics would dare challenge that prediction. But there has not been significant substance in application yet, at least not in hospitality.
Frustratingly, we are not yet seeing a wide variety of use cases that are helping hotels achieve improved revenues, more efficient cost models and operations, or better guest experiences. There have been many forums and presentations about AI in hospitality, but they always seem to fall flat. There never seem to be real, practical, useful ideas that can be implemented at scale. And this is not surprising—the hospitality industry has a long history of lagging in technological innovation.
The peanut gallery could simply criticize the lack of ideation, or it could light a candle instead of cursing the darkness.
We chose the latter.
Several months ago, we announced a competition to crowdsource ideas that could be shared broadly with the hospitality community. The competition would award a $5,000 cash prize to the very best idea, followed by this article, which would share all the good concepts that were generated. We assembled a panel of people that we thought represented a solid cross-section of stakeholders, including our group, Murphy Asset Management, a hospitality-focused asset management and consulting group with deep experience in hotel operations, sales & marketing, development, and investment activity, and Chris Daly of DG Public Relations a PR group focused on hospitality,, as well as Daniel Guerithault and Patrick Kernen, the principals of Altimeter Strategies, an AI consulting firm with a special interest in hospitality.
Our vision was that members of the hospitality community, from guest service associates to general managers to sales professionals to room attendants to owners and everyone in between, would rally around a call to action. The submissions received covered the spectrum of hotel functions. Here were the standouts:
1. Revenue Management
We had multiple submissions that centered on AI’s ability to sharpen pricing decisions by analyzing booking patterns, competitor pricing and demand signals. Tony Shahbazian and Matthew Leonard both presented ideas in that space and with ideas that reflected a more accessible application of AI tools than found currently.
2. Sales Prospecting
Matthew Centrella suggested using large-language models to generate leads for the sales departments, which is highly beneficial to lean sales teams. This would effectively free up significant time for actual relationship-building by allowing AI to do the research legwork of identifying and qualifying potential groups and corporate leads.
3. Guest Feedback Analysis
A second idea submitted by Matthew Centrella also leaned into the use of LLMs to surface actionable trends in a short analysis period. AI would distill the noise into priorities instead of a manager manually reading through a plethora of reviews and data.
4. Menu Development
In a creative application, the team at the Hyatt House/Hyatt Place Chicago Medical/University District proposed using AI to build menus, particularly specialty menus around major local events. The result is a blend of operational efficiency with a more personalized guest experience.
These proposals were all fantastic and very usable, but the winning idea was chosen because of its novelty. Two different submissions had a very similar notion, so we voted to have joint winners. It’s a tie between Brandon Stoller of Gateway Investment Partners and the team at the Hyatt House/Hyatt Place Chicago Medical/University District (a 2nd submission from them), led by General Manager Tyler Pea and Accounting Manager Dorian Alvarado.
The suggestion was to upload pictures or videos of spaces in the hotel to AI with an appropriate query to have AI suggest how to repair, improve and/or market the space. We tested this functionality and found it to be very helpful.
Congratulations to Brandon Stoller and Tyler Pea and his team! They will be splitting the $5,000 cash prize!
Outlook
If we don’t take time to shape and craft AI for our industry, it’s going to be shaped and crafted by outside forces and potentially in way that we may not like. If we allow a vacuum, it will be filled. And if we’re not actively involved and on the cutting edge of this exercise, the spirit of hospitality, which focuses on service and dignity and people, might get swept aside and lost to the broader interests of finance and real estate. Let’s keep generating ideas ourselves.
Steve Steinberg is the president of Chicago-based Murphy Asset Management, LLC.
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