HITEC 2025 is underway at the Indiana Convention Center, and it’s already clear that artificial intelligence is one of the most popular topics of conversation. On the opening day, multiple sessions highlighted AI, starting with its origins and evolution before progressing to wide-ranging discussions about its benefits and dangers. One such panel, “AI Done Right: How to Enhance Guest Experience, Increase Profit, and Avoid Common Pitfalls,” convened industry experts who discussed how AI can help improve the guest experience and increase profit.
The panelists shared their thoughts about how AI can be impactful for the hospitality industry. While many hospitality businesses are eager to incorporate AI during its rapid growth, the technology often sparks concern, as many wonder if it could eventually replace the human touch. The panelists—Hospitality Technology Consulting President John D. Burns, Bolt Farm Treehouse Founder Seth Bolt, InnSpire CEO and Co-Founder Martin Chevalley, and Mews President Mike Coscetta—each helped assuage these fears by naming ways that AI is enhancing the human touch rather than replacing it.
Burns noted that AI can help hotels cater to guests as individuals by tracking their preferences, whereas this practice had often been overlooked in previous years. “I think AI can help us in delivering whatever the surprise is, once we’ve sorted out who the customer is,” Burns explained. “But I find myself thinking back over the years of people I’ve worked with who didn’t think a great deal about, ‘Who is my guest? Who’s coming here?’ We didn’t spend a great deal of time thinking about them as individuals, and then thinking, ‘Okay, as an individual, how can I appeal to them? What are their interests? What are their priorities and their sensitivities? Along came the idea of offering early check-in or extended checkout. These are things that we had overlooked. We’ve got to start at the beginning and say, ‘What do our guests want?’ Let’s think about that, then think about how we can entice them and delight them, and AI will help us do that.”
Chevalley pointed to the impact AI is having on the check-in process and the ability to help guests faster than ever before, noting that the positive feedback is proof that investing in AI is worthwhile. “I think some of the examples that we’re seeing that are live today is where we’re building ways to use things like checking in, asking for things, getting help at the hotel, and getting the help the guests need very quickly, while that saves time but also drives revenue at the same time,” he said. “Those are some examples [that are] working, and the guests are really liking it, we’re getting very good reviews from the guests that are rating us, and they’re why these investments are really proving themselves.”
Coscetta brought up a specific example of individualized AI. He named a property in Europe that used kiosks and questions during the check-in process to determine what guests wanted to gain an understanding of their preferences. In this instance, “Many of these people actually wanted to co-work, they wanted co-working spaces, they wanted meeting spaces,” Coscetta explained.
He continued, “They wanted extra enhancements on their trip, and what this did, the tablets and the kiosks, they started to serve options and ideas up to the guests, and it’s part of their profile now. ‘Hey, guests like you… Are you interested in A, B, or C?’ What it is, it’s really a recognition engine and it’s upselling, so by the end of this, you see the transaction numbers and the revenue per room going up about 40, 50 percent. At the end of the day, the satisfaction rates of those guests, although they paid, in some cases, 50 percent more at that hotel, their review points right there show that number grew 25 percent higher than the rest. It was about using preferences and Q and A and very seamless interaction to upsell, but it did not feel like upsell. It was just offering more experiences and more aspects of the stay that many people wanted anyway, but now the hotel is the provider, and the guests felt like the hotel was basically their concierge to having a more productive, more useful stay outside of the room.”
Bolt agreed with the way that AI can improve upselling, and he used McDonald’s as a comparison to show that automating the process can make it feel more comfortable. “It’s easier on a screen; we’ve been conditioned to respond to upsells on a screen. Have you all been to McDonald’s lately? You pick what you want, but then they’re serving you up nine different upsell options before you go to the checkout,” Bolt said. “If you imagine that, if a human had to say, ‘Would you like this upsell? What about this one? What about this one?’ And go through nine things, that would feel off-putting and way different, like, ‘Man, can you guys leave me alone?’ The tech makes it easier for those upsell moments to happen.”
While it may seem counterintuitive, AI can have a positive impact on the way that hotels work with their staff, as automation may lighten the workload. In doing so, it can help staffers deliver a better guest experience, which Burns saw as a promising intersection of the hospitality industry and AI. “We talk about delivering remarkable guest experiences, but we struggle to have staff who are motivated, who are present, who are enthusiastic,” Burns said. “Part of that is because we don’t treat them as well as we might. Part of it is that everybody’s so busy, we’re asking people to cover multiple tasks, to be incredibly flexible, to work extra hours. I think AI, as it settles in, is going to see us do better in scheduling, do better in recognition and relationships with our staff, and do better in automating a lot of manual drudgery that will allow us to use the people who want to work with us in a better way, to deliver a better experience. I really believe we’re in the people business as hosts, but we can be a lot better with our people behind the scenes because of AI.”
