Artificial intelligence seems to be the buzz term of the decade. It is practically impossible to read or watch any type of media without seeing it covered. In this issue’s column, I focus specifically on the pros and cons to using AI within the modern hotel or resort environment.
Security, Property Maintenance and More
One of the greatest benefits of AI is enhanced security. Over the last few years, Ring cameras have proliferated in the home security market. There are many types on the market today, but they all work in relatively the same way. The app takes still images from your outside cameras of something such as your hotel’s maintenance doors in both its open and closed states. These images are used to teach the camera the difference between open and closed. Using computer vision technology, the feature will then recognize the two states and send a custom alert to the maintenance crew when the state changes. Intelligent security like this can be beneficial for monitoring all areas of the hotel property.
There are many environmental AI property maintenance tools. These monitor water and energy use, indicating low levels, overuse or extraordinary use, alerting staff when special attention is needed. This type of on-guard feature can help prevent disastrous incidents at worst and at least help the hotel incorporate water and energy efficiencies.
Predictive analysis is another good use of AI. Over time your hotel or resort computer system can use historical data to predict how many guests might use a particular property amenity on a particularly hot sunny day with the humidity at 30 percent (i.e., swimming pool, golf course). Using a system like this can help with staffing by preparing appropriately and save labor costs.
Other quick and valuable uses of AI for hotel guest services are numerous. AI is already in prolific use for responding to guest queries before and during their stay. Using customer data collected through multiple sources specific to a property such as the CRM and online reviews, AI systems learn the habits and interests of guests. In turn the AI concierge builds a cache of information to respond with useful advice on specific hotel amenities, local eating and entertainment options, and on and on. The same AI guest services system can pamper a frequent guest with not only the amenities they have requested in the past, but based on their history, it might make new suggestions complementary to their preferences.
Drawbacks of AI
With all the positive uses of AI, there are some significant drawbacks—one that might surprise you or get your hotel into a bit of a sticky position. It’s ChatGPT, and when it became available to the public domain, many people rushed to use it and unknowingly helped build it.
ChatGPT defines itself as a language model developed by OpenAI that uses advanced artificial intelligence technology to generate human-like text responses based on the input it receives. It is designed to have conversations with users, answer questions, provide information, and assist with various tasks.
The key (and danger) to ChatGPT is that its responses are based on INPUT that it receives. If you put something into ChatGPT, it can easily become part of the OpenAI ChatGPT universe. I “conversed” with ChatGPT to ask how this works, and this is the exact response I received.
“Any language model provided by OpenAI does not transfer or result in the loss of intellectual property rights. However, it's important to note that any content or data you input into the model or generate using the model may be subject to the terms and conditions set by OpenAI.
If you input sensitive or proprietary information into ChatGPT, there is a risk that such information could be retained or stored by OpenAI as part of their data collection and improvement processes. It's advisable to avoid sharing confidential or proprietary information when using AI language models to protect your intellectual property rights.”
Being a large organization with many stakeholders handling sensitive information, it is very easy for information to leak out. However, if one of the individuals uses ChatGPT or one of its other AI brothers and sisters, it could easily become part of the AI universe. For this reason, it is advisable to be mindful of its integration into your operations. At HFTP, we recently purchased licenses of CoPilot, an enterprise version of Office 365, that allows us to put sensitive data into a language model but keeps all the information proprietary to those who have licenses.
It's important to get to know AI’s pros and cons to understand how to best incorporate it within your environment.
This article was originally published in the June edition of Hotel Management magazine. Subscribe here.