Conversational AI technology is being actively used to overcome potential customer service issues, manage increasing customer service demands, and manage call center workloads while staffing shortages prevail. By Andrei Papancea, CEO of NLX – 01/25/2022

Last November, hotel occupancy began to rise back to pre-pandemic levels as traveler comfort increased. According to STRU.S. occupancy rates were 57.6% in November last year, still down 6.2% from 2019. Revenue per available room was $74.03 (down 3.9%). New York City saw the highest occupancy at 71.2%.

As hotel occupancy begins to rise back to pre-pandemic levels despite the recent setbacks triggered by the omicron variant, we face another challenge: filling contact center and customer service roles in particular at a time when the sector should gear up for a significant increase in call center contacts and customer service requests.

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were nearly two million job vacancies in July 2021, many of them in hospitality. The total number of vacancies was around 400,000. This count excluded jobs that would have been created were it not for the pandemic. With fewer hospitality staff to support customer service and increasing hotel occupancy, hotels are left with customer service backlogs and frustrated guests.

The answer is AI. Conversational AI technology is being actively used to overcome potential customer service issues, manage increasing customer service demands, and manage call center workloads during staffing shortages. According to Global Market Estimates (GME), AI in hospitality will grow at a CAGR of around 10 percent over the next five years.*

GME’s report also suggests that North American AI’s market share in hospitality dominated global demand for the technology, accounting for over 50% of deployment in 2020.

We’ve seen our technology Deployed across the hospitality industry through a suite of frictionless and automated multi-modal customer service solutions that help hoteliers simplify their guests’ stay experience.

We’re hearing from hotel operators that the staff they laid off early in the pandemic simply won’t return when business picks up. Even if they can recruit and hire new employees, there is a long learning curve to bring those employees up to speed.

Speech AI technology provides a solution for hotel operators who may be challenged to find staff for frontline contact center and customer service roles. This reinforces the need to automate and encourage customer self-service, as low staffing rates result in longer wait times and lower customer support experiences.

Conversational AI eliminates the need to hire 24/7 staff to man phones. The application never sleeps and can handle all calls at the same time. This means giving your guests the power to create their own satisfying solution 24/7 without ever being on hold or speaking to a representative.

Besides that, GME reported that “AI tools are proven to be more effective when it comes to meeting end-user needs,” instilling trust and brand loyalty among guests.

In addition, the technology also enables cross-selling and up-selling of services in a self-service hotel environment when the hotel has a defined path. For example, this may include cross-product sales such as room + spa + restaurant reservations to generate additional revenue for the hotel.

In addition, conversational AI enables real-time analytics and outcome tracking: the technology can lead to rapid response to emerging issues where delivery in hours or days, not weeks, is critical. Use the data to identify new opportunities to impress your guests and anticipate what they’ll be looking for next.

Indirect events can lead to an increase in the need for customer support, even in the best prepared call centers. Conversational AI can challenge hotel call centers and scale support services according to your business needs.

With a predicted AI growth from 2021 to 2026 per GMEHoteliers looking to maintain customer satisfaction amid staff shortages should get a head start and explore what Conversational AI can do for their business.

Andrei is CEO at NLX, a provider of automated and frictionless multimodal self-service tools powered by conversational AI. He built the Natural Language Understanding platform for American Express, processing millions of conversations across AmEx’s key service channels. Previously, he used AWS across all lines of business as Director of Engineering for Argo Group, a US public company. He gives graduate lectures on cloud computing and big data at Columbia University. He has an MS in Computer Science from Columbia University.

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