The adoption of chatbots can help hotels make service more personal, such as alerting a guest about when their preferred bartender is working.Taylor Davidson/The Globe and Mail
In 2022, Tristan Choa checked into a Marriott Hotel in Seoul, Korea where he was on vacation. He did it without having to line up at the front desk. His key was digital, accessed through the app. Choa also used the hotel app to message the front desk with requests instead of picking up the phone. “I was double-checking if late check-out was available, and also to ask for more water,” he says. When his stay in Seoul ended, Choa was able to check out online, too. “I didn’t have to line up and drop the card,” he says.
But Choa, who has Marriott Elite Status (he’s the co-founder of a travel points consulting service called Beyond Redemption), still likes to have face-to-face time at a hotel. “I will do an in-person check-in if I want to understand all my benefits and set the tone of my stay,” Choa says.
The adoption of tech in high-end hotels, like apps, e-concierges and digital keys, has been on the rise. According to Hilton Hotels, 63 per cent of guests want to use a digital room key.
Michael Leidinger, senior vice president and chief information officer at Hilton, says that the hotel group first began offering digital keys in 2015. About 76 per cent of their properties currently offer digital keys and the company hopes to reach 100 per cent of properties in two years. Hilton is also experimenting with the use of an AI chatbot to be deployed on their apps.
Digital keys and AI bots offer convenience and help preserve guest privacy, especially appealing to high-profile guests in luxury accommodations. And for the hotels, they offer another benefit – time to focus on more hands-on service.
“A chatbot can very quickly answer basic questions like: ‘What time is breakfast served?’” says Leidinger. “We don’t have to distract the hotel team members, so they can provide more advanced services to the customers.” That might look like executing a surprise proposal or helping to plan an anniversary. Leidinger says that the front desk staff at an Embassy Suites by Hilton Piscataway Somerset recently surprised a guest celebrating their 40th birthday with a curated snack platter, a handwritten birthday card and a birthday message on the hotel lobby video screens.
Kimberly Thomas-Francois, an associate professor of tourism at Thompson Rivers University, says that technology aids in information transfer between guest preferences and staff, which helps the hotel deliver a more personalized, higher-level experience. This can offer utility, such as with food allergies or preferences. “If I would like room service for dinner and have certain allergies, that information could also be transferred to my [file] on the hotel’s property management system so that it’s accessible to the restaurants as they prepare my meals,” Thomas-Francois says.
An example of heightened personalization is when a guest notes in a feedback survey that they had an exceptional experience with a particular bartender. “The e-concierge could indicate [to a guest] when the bartender is on shift again during their stay,” she says.”Technology can encourage more of a guest’s sense of belonging during their stays.”
An increasing number of guests at Hilton hotels are using digital keys and the chain’s apps to improve their stays.Supplied
This is key for an industry that is still recovering from the effects of pandemic restrictions. During COVID, Thomas-Francois says that many travel and tourism workers left hotel work for other professions, and the industry is still suffering from a labour shortage. “Many of these technologies can help to ease the strain on labour,” she says.
As front digitization and e-concierge technology further advances, these personalization perks, which are typically done manually and are only available to elite guests or in higher-end hotels, could soon become a more common, automated offering for all hotel guests, not just those in luxury properties. “It’s like having a personal assistant during travel while maintaining the human touches,” says Thomas-Francois.