Stop Guessing About AI. See What Hotel Leaders Are Actually Doing. (Nazpari Aydin, Destination AI) [Sponsor Bonus]

Josiah: There's been a ton of industry conferences over the past couple of weeks and months, and I feel like you've been at all of them. I feel like you're always on the road talking to so many people. I'm excited to record with you again because last time we recorded was, I think, about six months ago, and so much has changed.

Josiah: I know we're just a couple months away now from the Destination AI event, which is the hospitality industry's leading AI event, and I'm curious what you've been seeing and hearing over the past months. If I look at the panels, if I look at the agendas for a lot of events, AI seems to be covered quite a bit. Seems like there's a lot of interest. I'm also finding a lot of these panels, I'm not learning a lot. So I'm really excited to be attending the Destination AI Hospitality Summit. But what have you been hearing? What's top of mind for you over the past couple months?

Naz: So I've been trying to talk to as many owners and operators as possible to hear what they're actually doing because there's obviously, as we know, so much talk about AI. I think what I've kind of gathered is where our state is right now is that hotels are still kind of in an experimentation phase, and they're open to learning about new products and different ways that they can use AI.

Naz: But I don't think we're quite at the place yet where we can talk about specific ROI. It's a little early. Maybe there's some use cases where we can see ROI. But I would say we're kind of in an experimentation phase, and in preparation for Destination AI and trying to make the agenda as practical as possible, I've just been interviewing a ton of owners and operators.

Naz: And something I'm excited about for the conference this year is we're doing an AI showcase. So it'll be six mini case studies where either a brand or a management company will present a specific use case and what the early results are, so I'm excited for that. And also to just kind of dive deeper. I think just having a broad AI panel at conferences is so hard because there's so much to talk about.

Naz: And so that's why I even moved Destination AI from one day to almost two days. It's technically a day and a half, but almost two days because there's so many topics, and I think you kind of have to dive deep to have clear takeaways and practical takeaways too.

Josiah: I think so. Yeah, I'm really excited to hear that, and I'm looking forward to this event because I do feel things are talked about at such a high level, it's not super useful.

Josiah: And so to your point, the use cases, I not only want to hear the outcome, but I want to hear the journey. I want to know about the technologies. What did you do? Who was involved? It feels like change management, for example, is a big piece of getting stuff done. It's the capabilities of the tech, but it's also, what did you do internally to get to this outcome? And I want to know that whole story.

Naz: I totally agree, and we're actually doing a panel specifically on change management because, as we all know, hotels are more short-staffed than ever. And so to implement new technology, everyone needs to be on board, and it's super important.

Naz: But yeah, we're going to dive deep into a lot of topics, so I'm super excited, and I'm very excited about our research too.

Josiah: Our research. So we are announcing a new collaboration, a new project we've been talking about for months, and I'm really excited to be announcing this to everyone. It is a research project that is going to give a real look at what's really going on when it comes to AI in the hospitality industry and in the hotel business specifically.

Josiah: So everyone listening and watching this can go to stateofhotelai.com, one word, stateofhotelai.com. I'll link in the show notes. But essentially we've been talking for months about this. You just mentioned you've been having so many conversations with industry participants. We also wanted to have just sort of a quantified view of where do we stand right now. What is sentiment like, what's working, what's not working, what are people investing in?

Josiah: Where are they not investing? How do they get stuff funded? There's a lot of things that we want to learn, and we're putting this together as an industry resource. So it takes about five minutes to complete, completely anonymously. Your data's anonymized. We wanted to protect privacy for participants, but also as we are protecting privacy, one of the reasons we're doing that is we want you to be really honest, not what you hope AI will do, but really honest about how are you feeling about it, what are the business impacts that you're seeing.

Josiah: Because I want your take on this, but the feeling that I had from the conversations we've had as we've planned this, probably some of the outputs of this are going to put AI in a good light and some will be not such a good light, but it's important to have that realistic view because then we can think about how do we go from here forward into a world where we're providing the best of hospitality, we're taking care of people, we're providing great guest experiences, and we're also running profitable hotels.

Josiah: But you can't do that unless you know what does this technology actually provide us. And so that kind of honest look was a key theme as we were putting this together.

Naz: Yeah, I totally agree. I think just wanting to get the anonymous aspect of it will allow us to get the most realistic pulse on what's going on, and a lot of times when I'm talking with owners and management companies, they want to know what other people are doing and what's going well.

Naz: So I think this will be a great opportunity for people to kind of compare to their peers on what's going well for others, what are they struggling with.

Naz: We wanted to hear all different perspectives. We're opening this up to everyone. For technology providers, we're probably going to do something a little bit later, so this one is for people working at hotel brands, management companies, investment groups.

Josiah: If you're working on property at a hotel, that's what we're really focusing this set of research on. And we're asking a lot of stuff. We ask upfront where do you work, and then we ask questions that are relevant from there. One of the questions I'm excited to learn about the industry is we're asking how people feel about AI, and there's a whole range of emotions.

Josiah: This is based on some other research that's been done outside the hotel industry, and we wanted to say, okay, what is this in the hotel industry, right? Are you hopeful? Are you overwhelmed? Are you curious? Are you skeptical? Because regardless of where you're working in the industry, we want to give leaders a realistic view.

Josiah: How are people feeling about this? That's going to guide how you think about applying this technology moving forward. You've got to know what's actually going on.

Naz: Yeah, I definitely agree, and I think it'll be interesting to see the different segments and how everyone feels, whether it's frontline teams versus investors versus management companies, and what the overall sentiment is, and then also where everyone's at in comparison.

Naz: Because we do all need to come together to make these pilots successful.

Josiah: I couldn't agree more. One of the other questions that we ask is, why are you investing in AI, and has AI actually paid off?

Josiah: And I'm curious if you feel this, but a lot of conversations I have, it's paying off in some areas but not others. It's sort of a mixed bag, which is why we're doing the research and trying to provide a bit more clarity on where do you actually make money with AI, or where do you improve your business.

Naz: Yeah, I think it's definitely a mixed bag too, so that'll be an interesting question to see the results.

Naz: And also the other question that you had put in on, are people using AI that's not approved by their company? I think that'll be interesting to see the results because maybe companies need to approve more products or figure out ways to just set it up in a way where people know about all the harms and restrictions and all that.

Josiah: I think you're spot on, because I think there is a lot of that. I notice that of just, I'm bringing my own AI to work. And so I think it'll be interesting to see where that pans out. I think also, I know you've been talking to so many people, but a lot of what I'm hearing is there's such a range of maturity or adoption.

Josiah: So you have some situations where it's just talk, and then some pilots, and then some have fully baked workflows that are insanely good. So I'm noticing this massive range. Do you see this in the conversations you're having?

Naz: Yeah, I definitely see the range too. And the conversation that I mentioned where I was at a round table with different owners, they were happy to see that they're kind of at the same stage and just starting to roll things out, and don't have a fully baked out plan.

Naz: And I think it's very rare too. I mean, maybe there's some hotel owners or operators or brands who have a full plan, but it's evolving so quickly. So I think it'll be nice for people to see what is going well for others, where others are at, and just kind of where they should be investing too.

Josiah: Totally. And for everybody that takes this survey, you'll get the raw data set, anonymized of course. So just know that going in, we're protecting your privacy, so you're not going to see others' identifiable information. But we will do cuts on this data to make it interesting.

Josiah: So it's not just going to be, here's the survey question and here's the responses. We're going to do cuts on it to be like, okay, of those organizations that are getting results, or of the ones that have a more mature setup, what other things are true? Is there a different sentiment? Has it been described differently? Has it been invested differently? We also get into a lot of financials here, of not just ROI, has it paid off, but how do you fund it? And I think those details are important if you want to make change happen. You need to know the mechanics of how does stuff get financed.

Josiah: How do you build internal momentum? And so we're going to be providing some insight with this research project as well on that.

Naz: Yeah, true, and I also think that, to your point about things that'll be interesting to see, is how many hours are people spending using AI per week?

Naz: What are the AI budgets? Who's managing the budget? Tons of very interesting questions that I think people will want to know from their peers.

Josiah: One thing that I appreciated through this, because you and I have spent so many hours teeing this up over the past months now, we've been doing a ton of research, looking at other studies, what are the gaps.

Josiah: But also what I appreciate about this project, and just how you run Destination AI, is you have some of the smartest people in the industry that I know as advisors. You brought a number of them into this, and we won't share their names just to protect their confidentiality, but you can see some of the advisors that are associated on your website and people that are supporting the work that you're doing.

Josiah: But you brought those advisors and these world-class experts on innovation, on technology, into the process. So we incorporated their feedback. This isn't just something you and I have done, but this is some of the best minds, I think, in hospitality that have helped us put this together.

Naz: Yes, definitely. I think they've been so helpful to help us shape the questions, and then also shape the agenda for this year. So I think the way that the survey's set up is also very aligned with the agenda and just getting a real look at what's going on in the industry.

Josiah: One of the things I appreciate about how you structured this event is you wanted to hear stories, as you mentioned at the beginning of the conversation, but you also want to drive it with data. So people attending this event are going to see a data set that is not available anywhere else.

Naz: Yeah, definitely. I think this will be very interesting and also very timely. We're just releasing the research, the survey, three months before the conference, so it'll be extremely up-to-date, and we can talk about how the industry feels right now, since it's changing so rapidly. Just from last year to this year, so much has changed.

Naz: So I'm really excited to see the sentiment and results. And then we also have some other research presentations at Destination AI. Another one that I'm really excited about is research that Curosity and the Cornell Center for Hospitality Research did together on how different customer segments use AI and what different types of hotels should be mindful of based on the customer segments.

Naz: So I think both of these two together will give us a good look at just how people are feeling today.

Josiah: So this research project's going to give the industry participant view, and then that other research that you mentioned is also going to give a view into the consumer engagement.

Josiah: You've got to understand both sides of this. The ways that consumers are engaging with AI is going through a huge shift, and I think there's more and more people using it as part of the travel planning process, which means discovery is really important. Discovery is changing, and you need to adapt or you're invisible.

Naz: Definitely.

Josiah: I love it. Well, Destination AI is going to be the place to go if you want to get this research, if you want to hear these stories. You and I have been to so many industry conferences this year, and after every one, I feel like I'm just not getting the detail I need.

Josiah: That's why I'm looking forward to Destination AI, to learn what are people doing across the industry. So we'll include a link in the show notes where you can get your ticket, make sure you're there. I'm excited to be presenting the research with you there on stage.

Naz: I'm super excited.

Josiah: It's gonna be fun. Is there anything else you want people to know about the event that they can look forward to there?

Naz: Another thing I'm excited about beyond the AI showcase is the startup competition that we're doing, and there's a lot of really interesting new technology. We haven't selected who will be presenting yet, but just a lot of really interesting applicants, and I can't wait to see their pitches and spark new ideas for the industry.

Naz: And then we're also going to highlight some ways beyond just traditional hotel operations where you can implement AI and talk about F&B and events, which are key parts of hospitality too. So I'm excited to take a look there, and we'll be announcing the full agenda in a couple weeks. So definitely check it out.

Josiah: Well, Destination AI is a can't-miss event. If you have not gotten your ticket, I don't know what you're doing. Make sure that you go and get your ticket. We'll include a link in the show notes. But thanks for all of the time you've invested into this project. I just invite all of our viewers and listeners to participate, check this out.