AI set to elevate every hotel stay to a luxury experience

(SeaPRwire) –   AI is frequently mocked for making work environments feel overly automated, leading to a surge in open roles for “storytellers” as CEOs seek out human insight to offset its impacts. While businesses aim to preserve their unique brand identity as they roll out new AI applications, one sector stands out as arguably needing more human interaction than any other: hospitality. Right now, this industry is working to integrate AI without sacrificing that warm, personal service it is known for.

For a sector rooted in warm guest service, concerns that artificial intelligence will make interactions with visitors feel impersonal and purely transactional make total sense. However, leaders who are already rolling out AI tools paint a very different picture.

“AI is not changing what we do in hospitality,” shared Julie Linn Teigland, EY’s global vice chair of alliances and ecosystems, during a panel discussion called “AI and the Tech Shifts Shaping the Next Era” held at the Mews Unfold event in Amsterdam. “It’s changing what we can imagine.”

As it turns out, the hotel sector’s vision for AI has little to do with robotic front desk agents, and far more to do with team members who finally have enough free time to connect with guests face to face. Teigland contends that this will give every employee the capacity to properly attend to each individual visitor, turning even standard hotel stays into the kind of high-end experience previously reserved for luxury bookings.

Common fears around AI are completely misplaced

Using AI in the hospitality space does not automatically equal fewer meaningful human interactions. Teigland frames AI as “augmented intelligence” — a tool that lifts up employees rather than pushing them to the sidelines — and notes that it will actually enhance how people perform their roles in the industry. “Technology should be elevating us, making us better, bringing in the human touch.”

She went on to say that the current reality in hotels is that a shortage of AI tools, not their use, is what makes guest exchanges feel transactional. Team members are swamped with administrative tasks, from reconciling invoices to answering messages sent over more than a dozen different platforms, which leaves them acting almost robotic themselves. Opportunities for authentic, personal connection with guests end up getting pushed out as a result.

Matt Archard, co-founder of Mews, echoed this sentiment while addressing the same crowd. “We don’t often get to be fully present and open with our customers,” he stated, “and that is a major pain point that stops us from crafting those special, memorable experiences for guests.”

Delivering tailored, luxury-level experiences for all

Teigland says the core value of AI lies in its ability to scale personalized service. “Imagine if every single guest felt like they were your only priority? Not just your VIP visitors, your loyalty program members, or your high-spending customers — every single person who walks through the door?”

Up until now, that level of one-on-one tailored care has only been available to luxury travelers. Cost structures made it impossible for lower-priced properties to offer the same level of attention to each visitor, since budget hotels simply can’t allocate that much time per guest. But AI shifts that dynamic entirely: hospitality businesses that use the tool to deliver hyper-personalized service see a more than 23% jump in extra revenue, per available data. AI-powered forecasting tools have also boosted the accuracy of cancellation rate predictions by 40%, giving frontline teams access to better data exactly when they are interacting with guests and need it most.

None of these benefits come automatically, though. Teigland emphasized that technology on its own cannot drive meaningful change. “The success or failure of any transformation always comes down to people,” she noted. “Change is never something that happens to people. It unfolds in collaboration with your employees, your teams, and your partners.”

Hotels that roll out AI purely as a cost-cutting tactic — for example, laying off large numbers of staff and branding the move as innovation — will likely confirm the doubts of AI critics. But Teigland says this is a failure of leadership, not an inherent flaw in the technology itself. The properties that are outperforming competitors right now are not doing so by cutting their workforce, but by equipping their existing on-site teams with more effective tools to do their jobs well.