When did you first hear about artificial intelligence (aka AI) in the context of your own job or industry? Chances are, like many of us, it wasn’t until around the launch of ChatGTP. The AI chatbot tool, launched late 2022, is often credited with supercharging what Wikipedia calls the “AI boom” which has put AI front and centre across industries.
Hospitality is no exception and in this guide we’ll share the essentials you need to know about AI use in the hospitality industry, including examples and tools that may benefit your business.
Side note: While we love AI for its ability to speed up workflows and increase operational efficiency this article was researched and written by a 100% human ;-)
Has AI arrived in the hospitality industry?
For all of the noise around AI, much of society still remains completely unaffected by its impact. If you work in hospitality, perhaps running the day-to-day operations of a bar, restaurant or hotel, it may be hard to know how, or even if, AI is going to benefit or be employed within your venue.
However AI is already being used in some hospitality businesses in ways that are often quite subtle. Rather than jumping straight to the idea of a robot appearing to replace all human interaction, AI can often be the driving force behind different technologies or systems we use already, without us even realising.
In a recent study we conducted on the state of play in the hospitality industry it’s clear that hospitality pros are looking for ways to beat challenging market conditions such as “rising product costs” and “difficulty attracting and retaining staff”. Some of the ways operations managers and general managers are doing this is by exploring new revenue streams, focusing on better cost control and adding closer scrutiny to systems in order to analyse spend and revenue.
All of which are areas where AI can potentially help. Removing the manual workloads that come with these tasks and in some cases, even automating them.
AI in hospitality: industry examples
Let’s look at some of the applications of AI in the hospitality industry which are already in motion:
Chatbot tools for customer service
Perhaps one of the most relatable applications of AI in hospitality is utilising the humble “chatbot”. Chatbots, by their very nature, are designed to imitate natural human conversation. Tools such as ChatGTP or Gemini (the Google alternative) are able to “write back” in answer to a question posed by a human by summarising the huge amount of information that has been plugged into their learning model.
In terms of hospitality, chatbot tools can be used for customer service, allowing customers to ask questions, either via the business app or website, such as “what time is breakfast served?” or “are you open on New Year’s Day?”. Having a chatbot who can readily answer these queries prevents the business from having to assign a real human to be in charge of such easy interactions, with the answer being pulled from an existing website or database.
AI analysis of customer behaviour and market changes
Another application of AI in hospitality is the use of tools which analyse either customer behaviour or market changes in order to provide recommendations. This is a key use case for hotels in particular. By sharing historical data with AI tools these venues can receive detailed guidance on how and when to change pricing structures across their business in line with market events.
Systems that increase operational efficiency
At growyze we’re all about increasing operational efficiency, which means removing the manual load and making life easier for busy operations folks and hospitality business owners. One of the ways we’re currently doing this is through our RecipeMagic AI tool. As many Chefs will know, kitchens often have by-products leftover or items wasted either from dishes which haven’t proved popular, or when higher quantities are ordered than what’s needed.
Using the power of AI growyze can now create recipe suggestions based on products in your kitchens which you want to use.
By simply selecting one of your items you can easily magic up a new recipe and proactively create a new menu item (which can be made “ready to sell” in just a few clicks using growyze) based on stock that hasn’t been used. The ability to flexibly create menu items means less wastage and, as a result, saved costs and increased sustainability.
Get in touch to show you how our AI magic recipe generator works.
Personalised assistance
Many of us already have a smart speaker at home that allows us to do everything from check the weather “Okay Google tell me the weather in London today”, to play a specific song “Alexa, play Smooth Criminal.” It’s therefore a natural progression to bring these types of AI assistants into the hospitality industry. Allowing customers to do everything from ordering meals, to changing lighting, playing music or requesting services such as alarm wake-ups, from the comfort of a personal AI assistant posed in a hotel room, or even at a restaurant table.
Automation of manual tasks
While many of today’s hospitality AI applications relate to front-of-house activities, AI is also a superpower for back-of-house. For example, some staff management tools now have a layer of AI that can create staff rostering systems detailing how many staff may be needed based on predictive analytics around demand. This not only saves the manual, repetitive work of staff scheduling week-in, week-out, but may also allow businesses to become more efficient by only scheduling the number of staff needed at any one time.
Something we’ll be looking to integrate with growyze in the near future is AI that can analyse and predict stock requirements, based on inventory and past sales records. Not only will this allow for better profit forecasting, but it’ll also make personalised recommendations for what stock needs to be ordered (and even order it for you!). Again, removing manual tasks like creating product orders which can take up some of your time (though very quick, simple and easy already with growyze).
The future of AI in hospitality
AI will become a bigger part of hospitality’s future, but for now there are many micro ways you can use AI to become more efficient and save yourself hours of manual labour. With growyze we’re excited about the future of technology and how we can better serve the hospitality industry with the right tools to solve complex, yet annoyingly common, problems in day-to-day operations.
To see how growyze can streamline your inventory management book a demo with our friendly team today.
