Best AI Tools for Hospitality: Enhance Guest Experience and Efficiency

AI tools in hospitality are revolutionizing the way hotels operate and serve guests. From AI-powered robots acting as concierges to intelligent systems automating backend operations, hotels of all sizes are embracing these technologies to deliver more consistent and personalized guest experiences. Beyond hotels, AI solutions are transforming the broader hospitality business, including restaurants, travel companies, and other service providers.

This article examines how leading hotels utilize AI technology and other innovative solutions to enhance customer satisfaction and optimize operations.

How is AI transforming the hospitality industry?

Since 2014, several hotels have introduced robot concierges to enhance guest service. Leading the trend is Connie, Hilton’s AI-powered concierge built on IBM’s Watson supercomputer. Other notable examples include Aloft Hotels’ ALO, Yotel Hotels’ Yobot, and Hotel EMC2’s Cleo and Leo.

While the operational impact of these robots is still being evaluated, they’ve certainly generated significant marketing buzz. More importantly, AI is transforming the hospitality industry far beyond concierges; AI is revolutionizing hospitality operations by streamlining daily management processes, optimizing staff workflows, and improving data management. Hotels, as well as other hospitality firms and hospitality industries, are now using AI tools for reputation management, revenue optimization, guest sentiment analysis, personalized marketing, and automated customer support. These intelligent systems are helping properties of all sizes streamline operations, reduce costs, and deliver more personalized, data-driven guest experiences.

Across the travel and hospitality industries, AI tools are being adopted to drive operational efficiency and improve service quality. Ultimately, AI adoption enables organizations to enhance guest experiences as a key benefit.

How many hotels are using AI?

The International Data Collection has predicted that 60% of hotels and 70% of travel agencies will be using AI technology by 2026, completely changing the landscape of the hospitality sector. For others, this might be far-fetched, but a Gartner survey supported this prediction, suggesting that the world's use of AI had grown by a whopping 270%.

How is AI used in hotels?

The truth is, most guests can’t see the spread of AI technology in the hospitality industry, as most of its applications lie in the backend hotel operations, automating routine tasks and repetitive tasks to improve efficiency. AI tools not only streamline automation and data science but also support hotel staff by freeing them from repetitive tasks, allowing them to focus on higher-value guest interactions.

Data analytics is increasingly used to uncover business insights, forecast demand, analyze historical data, and track market trends, enabling better decision-making and operational strategies.

Here are some AI in hospitality use cases:

1. Online reputation management

It may be surprising that even the most prominent hotel names still require assistance in maintaining an excellent online reputation. For this reason, more hotels are relying on AI for online reputation management. In our recent article about online review statistics, recent surveys suggest that 81% of travelers read reviews before booking a hotel, making review management operations the most vital area of online reputation management.

Click here to learn more about how AI tools are used in reputation management.

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2. Online customer service

This includes using chatbots, automated social media messaging, and push notifications with minimal dependence on virtual assistance. The mentioned digital technologies enable hotel owners to respond to customer inquiries 24 hours a day, seven days a week, which is nearly impossible with human-to-human interaction.

To learn how Generative AI tools are changing the hotel industry, read our article: Get the Most Out of ChatGPT: How Hotels Can Leverage the Technology

3. Guest personalization

According to a recent survey by Hotel News Now, the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning for guest personalization contributed to 21.8% of guest satisfaction. This includes creating customized travel guides, in-house guest experiences, and food curations, all according to their respective customers' data.

4. Revenue management

According to the same survey mentioned above, hotels’ revenue management is considered the most effective area for utilizing AI and ML, achieving 60% guest satisfaction. Setting smart prices, automated booking operations, market analysis and segmentation, KPI tracking, competitor analysis, and more, all fully automated through machine learning technologies. AI-powered tools also support targeted marketing strategies and leverage real-time data, such as social media trends and user behavior, to optimize pricing and occupancy. This enables hotel owners to deliver great value to their customers and remain competitive in the market.

5. Data analysis

Aside from the areas mentioned above, hotels also use AI for general data analysis. This includes inventory management, customer behavior analysis, demand forecasting, market prediction, and other operational tasks to ensure an excellent guest experience. Additionally, AI-driven predictive maintenance and the optimization of housekeeping schedules, using occupancy data and IoT technology, can further improve efficiency and resource allocation in hotels.

10 AI tools for hospitality every hotelier should know

Here are the top AI tools for hospitality used by hotels in providing an exceptional guest experience:

1. MARA - AI review reply generator enables hotels and businesses to respond to any reviews within seconds.
2. DialogShift - Chatbot and messaging automation for guest inquiries and direct bookings.
3. Mobotix - AI parking technology for hotels and other businesses.
4. Allora - Provides data for guest personalization and other customer retention programs.
5. Voiceplug - Quick, personalized food ordering experience.
6. JoshAI - Voice and touch technology for homes and hotels.
7. Hotelier AI - All-in-one guest management, CRM, guest survey, and marketing platform.
8. Viqal - Staff-to-guest engagement through predictive AI and autonomous guest data.
9. Winnow Vision - Food waste technology for hotels and other business establishments.
10. Meteum - Weather forecasting technology based on data from the ground and space.

1. MARA AI Review Reply Generator

Responding to online reviews can be a daunting task, but it doesn't have to be with an AI Review Assistant like MARA. This intuitive tool is designed to ease your online reputation management process, making it more efficient, personalized, and time-saving. It offers the best and most personalized AI for responding to and analyzing your guest reviews.

a. Streamlined Review Inbox

One of the key features of MARA is the Review Inbox. Your review inbox makes responding to reviews as simple as hitting "Generate reply" and clicking "Send". The Review Inbox connects to multiple review sources, including Google, Booking.com, and TripAdvisor, providing a comprehensive view of all your reviews. You can even configure review response automation: Why not allow MARA to automatically respond to simple reviews, like 5-star Google reviews with no text, ensuring you never miss a review? Daily notifications about new reviews keep you updated and in control.

b. Data-driven Review Analytics

To help you understand and analyze the multitude of reviews, the Review Assistant also incorporates Review Analytics. This provides actionable, easy-to-understand insights that are tailored exclusively to your business. With MARA, you can quickly get the gist of all your reviews without needing to read each one. The analysis is so detailed that you can find out about specific issues like "water in the pool is too cold" or "lack of vegan breakfast option”. These insights help optimize guest experience without requiring you to be a data expert.

c. AI-powered Review Automation

After gaining trust in your personal AI Review Assistant, you can even go on autopilot and create automation rules. This way, you can specify which reviews should be replied to directly by the AI, with no additional approval required. With the configuration below, all Google reviews with no text and a star rating of 4 or above are automatically answered.

The most personal response AI

MARA's AI isn't just about operational efficiency; it's also about personalization. The Brand Voice feature allows the AI to adapt to your tone, making sure your responses sound authentically you. Plus, with Smart Snippets, you can "teach" the AI how to respond to recurring praises or complaints. Your AI then incorporates this information into its responses, always using different words to provide more personalized and relevant replies.

This review response assistant has quickly become a game-changer for over 2000 customers. Its promising capacity to elevate your overall rating, amplify response rates, glean insights from customer feedback, and economize both time and money is the reason behind its growing popularity.

Managing online reviews need not be an overwhelming task. With the right AI tools, you cannot only streamline the process but also personalize your responses and gain valuable insights from the reviews. Why hesitate to give our AI Review Assistant, MARA, a try? It's completely free for testing, doesn't require a credit card, and can be fully operational in less than five minutes.

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2. DialogShift

DialogShift offers a trained AI bot for various communication modes, including website chatbot, Google My Business Messages, WhatsApp for hotels, and more. With over 109 languages, their auto-translation feature ensures that businesses can quickly attend to potential guests from across the globe.

In an interview with Lukas Frankfurth, manager at Parkhotel Emstaler Hohe, DialogShift's chatbot enabled them to answer guests in the fastest and most innovative way possible, reaching a response rate of 97%. Furthermore, inquiries that tend to be more complex are automatically redirected to employees.

3. Hotelier AI

Hotelier AI is an all-in-one guest management, CRM, data, and marketing platform. Going beyond traditional CRM capabilities, Hotelier AI analyzes guests' historical spending, stay behaviors, and social attributes, providing you with invaluable insights into the characteristics and needs of your core customers.

Prince Hotels and Resorts, a leader in Japanese hospitality, utilizes Hotelier AI. The tech solution manages both international distribution and digital marketing of the said hotel chain. In a recent report, the business reported a 25% increase in conversions due to Hotelier AI, specifically their booking solution. The booking engine is hosted on Prince Hotels & Resorts' localized sites and integrated into their guest loyalty platform and CRS.

4. Allora

Allora’s flagship offering is an AI-powered booking solution. The company takes pride in its direct-guest acquisition, leveraging 150 algorithms to personalize booking services based on cancellation risk, predictive engagement, and digital optimization.

In a case study released by Avvio, Roomzzz Hotel reduced its dependence on travel agencies from 60% to 10% due to Allora’s AI booking technology. The largest portion of their revenue now comes from direct bookings on their website, allowing them to reinvest their resources in enhancing the guest experience. Additionally, the personalized and responsive service provided by Allora's AI helps drive repeat bookings, further boosting customer retention and loyalty.

5. VoicePlug

VOICEplug AI enables restaurants to provide an innovative and conversational ordering experience while also reducing labor and operational costs. The AI voice solution can be integrated with the hotel's restaurant phone system, call center, and other online ordering systems.

In a blog released by VoicePlug, the food and restaurant industry reports an 80% employee burnout, the highest across industries. Due to the industry's direct connection to hospitality, this trend also affects hotels' productivity and revenue generation. For this reason, an AI ordering system is crucial in streamlining tasks and reducing the hours spent on mundane jobs, enabling employees to increase their operational efficiency and productivity.

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6. Josh AI

Josh AI programming language is built to support smart homes or smart hotels. Through the AI language, guests can control any smart device around their unit: their thermostat, lights, television sets, and other smart items with simple and conversational commands.

IHG Resorts and Hotels is one of the major brands to deploy the Josh AI. Brian McGuinness, SVP for Global Guest Experience Shared Services at IHG, stated that their partnership with Josh.AI aims to push the limits of hospitality by incorporating digital innovation and, ultimately, providing guests with exceptional guest experiences. However, even as technology enhances guest interactions, maintaining the human touch remains essential in hospitality.

7. Mobotix

The AI parking technology developed by Mobotix assesses whether a parking spot is free or occupied using advanced algorithms that detect and classify vehicles based on deep learning networks. Aside from maximizing hotel parking space, it also aids businesses in achieving seamless parking management to ensure comfort and convenience for their guests.

Torridon Hotel UK was able to decrease the number of cameras used to monitor their parking space through Mobotix, allowing them to cut their operational costs without sacrificing the parking convenience of their guests. By utilizing innovative Mobotix hemispheric technologies, it can use fewer cameras to discreetly cover larger areas, including thermal imaging cameras in the car park, and achieve key entry points with just 20 Mobotix cameras.

8. Viqal AI

Viqal AI enables hotel managers to create advanced alert workflows triggered by certain customer data tracked through their existing POS and customer movement tracked by smart sensors. These workflows are then linked to staff smartwatches through the Viqal AI staff alert app, enabling them to assist guests in upselling experiences based on their behavior. For example, you can set your front desk’s team alerts to “Connect with customer 123, set 1 hour after guest inactivity is triggered”.

Viqal reports 70% fewer guest complaints and a 20% increase in upselling among their customers. With seamless integration between your management's POS and the staff's smartwatches, guests can expect an exceptional experience.

9. Winnow Vision

Winnow Vision allows kitchens to track and analyze food waste automatically. It utilizes AI to help chefs quickly identify waste, reduce costs, and enhance performance. Kitchens using Winnow typically see a 50% reduction in food waste, resulting in savings of 3%-8% on reduced food purchasing costs.

Hilton Dubai Jumeirah Resort saved $65,000 by reducing food waste through Winnow Vision. The 70% reduction in waste helps the company save on operational costs and aids their chefs, as they are no longer wasting time overproducing large quantities of food that won't be consumed.

10. Meteum

Meteum provides accurate, hyperlocal weather forecasts, alerts, and interactive weather radar information in real-time by mobilizing thousands of automated weather stations worldwide, alongside data from radars and satellites.

While there are numerous AI and big data solutions for weather analysis, their widespread adoption in the hospitality industry has yet to occur. Fortunately, Red Roof Inn has successfully shown how to do it. During 2014, an estimated 2 to 3% of flights were canceled daily—that's 500 canceled flights and a total of about 90,000 stranded passengers daily. Red Roof Inn began by taking inventory of the available open data and then selecting information that would enable the hotel chain to make relevant offers to stranded airport passengers during a record-setting winter.

What are the advantages of AI in the hotel industry?

With the increasing attractiveness of AI to the hospitality industry, researchers predict that the global AI market in hospitality will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.26% until 2030. Here are some of the benefits key players are enjoying today due to AI, including enhancing guest experiences and enhancing guest satisfaction:

1. Strong online reputation

These days, online reputation is the soul of marketing, including in the hospitality industry. Our article on online reputation management concludes that 52% of people would never consider booking a hotel without reviews, despite its offers, while 94% of consumers will never conduct any transactions with a business that has a negative online reputation.

In this regard, reputation management AI tools such as AI review reply generators have become a highly beneficial AI technology for hotel businesses, as they attract potential customers. While other hotels are still adamant about using AIs in some areas of their business, more and more hotels are realizing the importance of AI assistance in online reputation management.

2. Revenue growth

Research conducted by Colliers International indicates that hotels utilizing AI experience a 10% revenue increase and reduce costs by more than 15%, enabling brands to achieve significant revenue growth.

There are various ways in which AI boosts revenue, but one of the most significant is its ability to help hotels maximize their occupancy rates, especially during peak seasons.

3. Enhanced customer service

AI and ML enable hotels to exceed expectations in terms of customer service. Chatbots and automated messaging make it a lot easier to engage and interact with customers even before their check-in period. Personalization through data collection enables hoteliers to serve customers based on their individual needs.

Furthermore, review management AI tools allow hotels to reach out to customers through online review platforms even when they are already checked out. Thus, providing holistic customer service.

4. Increased productivity

Contrary to what others perceive, AI doesn't replace people but helps them. In the hospitality industry, AI enables hotels to implement more efficient operational processes, anticipate guest needs, mitigate risks through accurate problem-solving, and predict consumer behavior patterns.

What are the disadvantages of AI in the hotel industry?

AI technologies are only as efficient and as effective as their users. This means that if hotel managers or property owners cannot use these technologies properly, they can be counterproductive, expensive, and may even lead to dissatisfaction among guests.

To avoid this, ensure you select an AI technology that fills a specific gap in your management process. You can do this by checking the use cases of your AI software providers. For example, a significant gap in your marketing strategy is the inability to answer and capitalize on guest reviews effectively. In that case, it’s best to prioritize acquiring an AI tool to assist your team in writing engaging and well-optimized review responses.

How to implement AI tools for hospitality?

Successfully implementing AI in hotels starts with a clear strategy and a focus on areas where AI can make the biggest impact. Hotel managers should begin by identifying key opportunities to enhance guest service, streamline hotel operations, and improve revenue management. Selecting the right AI-powered tools—such as chatbots for guest inquiries, virtual assistants for room service, or predictive analytics platforms for dynamic pricing—ensures that technology aligns with business goals and guest expectations.

Comprehensive staff training is essential to maximize the benefits of AI tools and ensure smooth adoption. By equipping employees with the knowledge and skills to use AI-powered solutions effectively, hotels can maintain high standards of guest satisfaction and operational efficiency. It’s also important to set clear metrics for success, such as improvements in guest experiences, increased operational efficiency, and measurable revenue growth. With a structured approach to AI implementation, hotel managers can unlock the full potential of AI-powered tools and deliver exceptional guest experiences that set their property apart.

How to fully leverage AI tools for hotels?

To truly understand the impact of AI in hospitality, hotels must take a comprehensive approach to measuring success. Key performance indicators such as guest satisfaction, operational efficiency, revenue growth, and customer loyalty provide valuable insights into how AI tools are transforming hotel operations and guest experiences. Tracking AI-specific metrics—like chatbot engagement rates, virtual assistant usage, and the accuracy of predictive analytics—helps hotels assess the effectiveness of their AI-powered solutions.

Regularly gathering feedback from both guests and staff through surveys and direct communication can uncover areas for improvement and highlight opportunities to further personalize guest experiences. By analyzing these data points, hotels can refine their AI strategies, optimize operations, and consistently deliver personalized guest experiences that drive loyalty and revenue growth. In the fast-evolving world of AI in hospitality, ongoing measurement and adaptation are key to staying ahead.

What are the best practices for AI adoption in hospitality?

For hospitality companies looking to maximize the benefits of AI, following best practices is essential. Start by being transparent with guests about how AI-powered tools are used, clearly communicating the advantages and limitations to build trust. Investing in staff training ensures that employees are confident and capable in using AI tools, which is crucial for maintaining operational efficiency and delivering exceptional service.

Establishing robust governance and ethical guidelines around AI usage is also vital, particularly when it comes to protecting guest data and ensuring fair, unbiased decision-making. Continuous monitoring and evaluation of AI performance allow hotels to make data-driven adjustments, optimizing both operations and guest experiences. By prioritizing guest experience, operational efficiency, and staff empowerment, hospitality companies can harness the full potential of AI-powered tools to deliver exceptional service and foster lasting guest loyalty.

What is the future of AI in hospitality?

The future of AI in the hospitality industry is bright, with emerging technologies like generative AI, natural language processing, and predictive analytics set to redefine how hotels operate and engage with guests. As AI-powered tools become more advanced, hotels will be able to anticipate guest needs, personalize every aspect of the guest journey, and optimize operations for maximum efficiency and guest satisfaction.

Innovations such as voice-activated assistants, virtual reality, and augmented reality will create immersive, interactive guest experiences that blend the digital and physical worlds. The integration of AI with technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain will further enhance security, streamline processes, and enable seamless, personalized service offerings. As the hospitality industry continues to embrace AI, we can expect a wave of new applications and use cases that will transform hotel management and deliver exceptional guest experiences, setting new standards for guest satisfaction and operational excellence.

AI won't beat you. A person using AI will.

No one can deny that the AI solutions and innovations within the hotel industry are nothing less than astounding, mainly because we're still scratching its surface, and we're still bound to discover better technologies sooner rather than later.

Regardless of how the AI industry progresses, there is no reason to fear it. While it provides data to ensure an excellent customer experience, the customer service provided by hoteliers remains unmatched. Instead of seeing AIs as threats, it's time to look at them as an opportunity to become a better and more productive hotelier.

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This article is part of our hero content, “The Future of AI in Hospitality: Trends, Tools, and Use Cases".