My AI Research Results: 87% of Hospitality Pros Already Use AI (Here's How) - Josiah Mackenzie

Josiah: Hey friends, it's Josiah here. I wanted to record a solo episode today talking about AI and its application in the world of hospitality. Honestly, I've struggled to think about the best way to cover this topic on this show because I don't want to become overly technology focused, but at the same time, I realize AI is going to make a huge impact in the way that we live and work, and it's going to have huge implications on the world of hospitality. As you know on this show, I am trying to bring you insight each day on what's possible in the world of hospitality. And if I think about it from that perspective, it's really important to talk about AI. I think where I have struggled to think about how much to cover it is because I live in San Francisco. I'm based in the epicenter of so much AI development, literally walking down the street, driving down the freeway. There are AI billboards everywhere. And so I feel so immersed in this environment. And I realize I might be in a bit of a bubble. At the same time, AI is driving the way that we live and work around the globe. And of course, it's become top of mind in so many different contexts, especially over the past couple of years with the rise of generative AI. And it's been interesting to watch all of this unfold because, of course, there was a lot of noise a couple of years ago with ChatGPT being available to more people and being quite good. It's only gotten better since then. Other models have emerged that have been quite good as well. But I feel like there's a little bit of a hype cycle where there's a lot of initial noise. And then being a couple of years into this, it's still talked about a lot in a lot of contexts. But I feel like we're still not fully grasping the full potential of this or how we should think about this in our work. And I'll link in the show notes, I actually read something a few days ago. It's this project called AI 2027, and it's modeling out scenarios of how AI might unfold. I found it quite interesting, the methodology, the presentation of it are really interesting. And I'll link in the show notes, because I think it's worth checking out to get a sense of, you know, of course, with any future prediction, who knows if it plays out this way, but the way they approached it, the use of AI unfolding in our work, in our lives, in our world, and all the implications of it fascinating. And it sort of reinforced the sense I have where it's actually probably more important than we think. And maybe not in the ways that we initially thought, but it's going to have implications in our work in significant ways. What I'm specifically going to talk about in this episode is some findings of a research project I did at the beginning of this year and before I joined Actable in my role there. But I wanted to understand, you know, how is AI being used? How are people thinking about it? What is the impact? This was a survey I did of hospitality leaders around the globe, people working in different contexts in management companies, ownership groups, brands, people on the property level, above property. A lot of different individuals were involved in the study. I sent out the results of this to the participants, as I always do with my research projects. So if you get an invitation from me to participate in a research project, I highly encourage you to spend a few moments, take part of that survey, because I always send the full data set only to the people that participate in the survey. But what I'm going to share with you here in this episode is some of the highlights and things that I found in it. And so with that being said, I'm going to run through some data points here. And I think it might be interesting to you to kind of see what we found as a result of this study here. The first observation that I had and stood out was that the struggle with workloads was nearly universal. And I'm sure this doesn't come as a shock to you, but what we found is that 87% of people said that they struggle at least sometimes with the amount of work they have to do or the speed at which they have to work. And of course, that's not going to come as a shock to you, but it lays the groundwork for this environment that we're operating in that I think makes AI interesting, right? This is one of the potential benefits of technology in general and AI specifically. A lot of people across the ecosystem in hospitality are struggling with the workload that they have. What's also interesting is that a significant majority of my study respondents are already using tools like ChatGPT for work. I've had a number of guests on this show that have talked in specifics on how they've done that, but the use is pervasive. It was 87% specifically say that they are using generative AI like ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini, or Microsoft Copilot for work. So this is already in use now. I asked about the frequency of use, and this was interesting to me. The majority are using these tools daily. This isn't a one-off, I'm going to just kick the tires, see how it works. People are using generative AI in hospitality frequently, and the majority are using it daily. I asked about, okay, you're using AI, well, you know, where do you get these tools? What's interesting to me is that a majority are bringing their own AI tools to work, right? So they're subscribing to these services on their own and bringing them to work. For me, this underscores there's a gap right now in terms of how hospitality companies are supporting their teams, right? People working in hospitality have identified that they need support. They believe that's the case, they're using these tools, and they're paying for and bringing these tools to work to use this on their own. So there's this grassroots innovation that is already happening, driven by frontline and middle-level employees. So if you're leading an organization, you think, hey, we don't need to think about this, your teams are already thinking about it, they're already using this. I think where this raises a potential issue is that, I would say at best, there could be inconsistent use of AI technology, and at worst, potential security issues if there's not more formal AI adoption strategies used. So something to think about here. I also asked about how AI is used specifically. And probably unsurprisingly for you, the most common use of AI was in text chatbots, right? So many AI tools, that's the default mode. The least common use of AI tools was through voice. Martin Soler and others on this show have talked about this being an overlooked opportunity. The data reflects that. Of course, if you're a hotel manager, you're probably spending a lot of time out there in your hotel, on your property, you're not sitting at your desk all the time. So this is an opportunity and maybe an opportunity for you listening to this to use the voice mode for AI tools a little more frequently, right? You can just hit the button, you can talk to it, you can have a back and forth conversation. I've actually found this quite good, whether it's walking around or if I'm driving or something like that. You can have a conversation with AI and it's very efficient. And so if you haven't done this already, try it. It seems that not a lot of people are using this. I think it's a big opportunity. In the study, I also asked about where people are using AI tools, right? What type of tasks? The most common was in writing tasks. And so that makes a lot of sense. You know, kind of second most common was generating ideas and brainstorming. Of course, AI is a great brainstorming partner. I think you don't want to totally delegate all of your brainstorming to this, but as a thought partner, identifying ideas maybe you didn't think about, vetting an idea, interesting on that level. I think what's interesting to me is one of the least common uses was in quality control and data analysis. And so this is where AI can be extraordinarily powerful. Again, going back to my note on security earlier, you need to have the right security controls in place. But with that being said, if you're not using confidential data, if you're just trying to analyze data sets, look for relationships between different things, identify opportunities, big opportunity for using AI in this case. So I think something potentially to explore as well as you're thinking about this. I was also asking about what sort of infrastructure is in place at a company level. I mentioned this a little earlier, but less than 10% of my study respondents said that there's a clear organization-wide AI policy. Again, I think this is a big mess. If you don't have this in place, you can't benefit from it. check out a conversation I had with Brand USA's head of AI, who really went into a lot of detail around how you can use this. Janette Roush, link in the show notes, check out that conversation. She had a very pragmatic approach to thinking about using AI that I would encourage you to consider in your own work as well. In terms of where AI is being used, I think what was fascinating to me is those sales and marketing tools and guest communication tools were the most common places AI had been embedded in the tools of the people I included in this study. their current technology had introduced AI features most commonly in those areas. The least common area where the technology they were using had introduced AI was in the property management system. And I found that fascinating because, of course, the property management system has been, and in most businesses, is the heart of most hotel operations. It just seemed like a big opportunity for me. If you think across your tech stack, where is AI being used? This was something that stood out to me. I think for PMS providers, this is a big area of opportunity. I also asked study respondents around how prepared they felt their staff were in using AI effectively. And so most of the study respondents said their staff was unprepared. And so to my earlier point, I think this is an area where you really need to focus on making sure that there are processes in place where your team can know how to use these safely, use them effectively. So this might be an area of opportunity I talked a little bit about top areas of impact and benefit. The number one area of benefit that steady respondents were seeing now is in operational efficiency. The lowest areas of impact for AI today were actually on the commercial side of the business, which I found interesting. In revenue management and revenue strategy specifically, just 16% of respondents were saying that they were seeing an impact or an increase in effectiveness with their technology having AI capabilities. I think some of that might come from the fact that revenue strategy and the whole commercial side of the business has honestly been using machine learning and different variations of AI for years. And so it could be that this adoption has already happened. But again, I think what's clear and what's standing out here, that operational efficiency across a hotel operation, across a hotel business, is a big opportunity here. I also asked the question in a slightly different way, asking about where do study participants see the biggest impact areas to come? In this, sales and marketing and guest communication were tied as the top areas seen as the future beneficiaries of AI, so some opportunity potentially there as well. I think in closing, I wanted to understand concerns. We talk a lot about the benefits and the upside of AI. What are the concerns? The top two concerns were actually tied, one being privacy and security, and the other ones being integrations. These can be addressed through having a policy approach and infrastructure in place that allows your team to benefit from AI. On the integrations front, it depends where you are in the ecosystem, but there are tools out there that integrate well. I had Steven Marais on the podcast last week and talked a little bit about what that's looked like for him working with Actabl and a really advanced PBX solution. You want to have technology partners that work well with each other, and you can benefit from cutting-edge innovation Integrations are key today and they will become even more so. So really important to look at. That's some of the things that I found in this research conducted at the beginning of this year. I really want to hear your experience with AI. How are you thinking about all this? What are you seeing? What do you want to see? You can message me on LinkedIn, you can email me. I'd love to have more guests on the show talk about this, not just at a high level, but on a very specific level of what they're seeing, what they've implemented, where change is happening for them. I feel this is, again, an area where there's a lot of talk about But I still feel like we're missing some of the potential, some of the opportunity here. And we might be discounting the real impact of AI that will unfold in the months and years ahead. It's really extraordinary to see some of the stuff being built now, but I feel like there's not widespread awareness. of everything happening. So I want to include some of that in this show. In this show, we're going to remain focused on how we not only provide great hospitality to our guests, but we become really effective, efficient hospitality professionals. And so I'll be exploring AI from that perspective. If you have thoughts, questions, stories of implementing AI, I want to hear from you. Email me. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I look forward to talking with you again soon.