Voice is here to stay, and one of the industries most primed to take advantage of this awesome new technology is hospitality! Talking is natural, and voice is natural. Automation in hospitality used to be something of an impossibility. Navigating through menus and robotic interfaces like the ones you’d find in an airport check-in booth or phone robot are inherently inhospitable. More often than not, you feel like throwing your phone at the wall, punching the check-in booth, or both!
Here are 7 awesome ways voice can help hospitality:
There’s no getting around the fact that people generally aren’t motivated to leave feedback and reviews. A really significantly good or bad experience will generally cause people to leave a review, but in most cases, anything but an extreme experience won’t generate any feedback or tips. Writing a review is hard, it takes quite a bit of time, and you really need to be motivated to create one.
Having the ability to leave chunks of feedback during a stay is immensely valuable. Making it possible for guests to talk to their room encourages them to comment about anything they’d like without having to confront their hosts or front-desk people. We’ve been seeing many instances where guests leave a one or two sentence comment in which they specifically highlight something which needs to be improved or something which they really like, and hosts are using this information to make quick adjustments and tweaks to improve their offering.
Being able to hand off the majority of question-answering, front desk, and concierge duties to an AI has huge implications. Most vacation rental hosts aren’t doing it as a full time job, and most hospitality managers are already up to their necks in work. Being able to hand off a large part of the support work that goes along with what they do frees them up to provide better and better value to their visitors by improving the property and experience, and addressing things which meaningfully impact their guests.
Analysis of how guests interact with voice technologies can allow for some really useful insights. From the layout of rooms to the location of various amenities, platforms like Yada can make suggestions to hosts and managers by analyzing the sum of guest behavior and figuring out what works well and what doesn’t. After all, the best guests are repeat guests!
Quick comments like “Hey, the water pressure isn’t too great in the second floor bathroom” or “There seems to be some leaking underneath the sink” can really help host and managers identify issues before they blow up and end up being far more expensive to repair. Making it incredibly easy for guests to bring up these problems drastically increase the frequency in which they’ll do it!
Travelers and visitors are expecting more. With over 50 million smart speakers in the US alone, people are getting used to the convenience of having such a device wherever they go, and using it to get the best possible experience from their surroundings. Having these devices and connecting them to what you offer within your hotel or vacation rental provides a lever of familiarity and functionality which they may be accustomed to.
Automatic translation is getting really really good. Traveling internationally can be a hassle for a lot of people, especially when trying to communicate with accommodation staff which may not have a working knowledge of their guests native languages. Voice technologies coupled with automatic translation allow hosts to set things up and answer questions in their own language, while guests can ask and receive information in whatever language is best for them.
Not all hosts and managers have the luxury of being able to offer 24/7 support at the level which guests tend to expect. AI doesn’t get tired, doesn’t complain about working long hours, and can take over almost all of the guest support tasks which may come during late and under-staffed hours. These voice platforms can completely eliminate the need for night support in smaller rentals and hotels, and can provide guests with the same level of information twenty four hours a day. Losing sleep or hiring staff in order to resolve small problems doesn’t need to happen!