the word that came to mind reading it was ecosystem.
not the way we use it in business ... the way it works in nature.
a forest never has to tell itself anything.
when it stops raining, the ground is dry.
the tree does not get sent a message about the ground ... it is standing in it.
humans cannot work like that.
consciousness may be a gift or a curse, but either way we are aware of ourselves, and so we never just see a room ... we see what we make of it.
two people walk into the same room. one sees it ready. the other sees a mark on the mirror.
both are right about what they saw. so it has to be turned into words and passed on, and every handover loses a little.
AI models may act more like a forest after all.
no view, nothing to protect, nothing to pass on.
it stands in all of it at once ... housekeeping's version, engineering's version, the arrival list, the standard nobody has opened in a year.
so it finds things none of us could.
I put in pieces from different corners of the building with nothing to do with each other, and it keeps finding the link, and nobody had to agree first.
but the model only knows what somebody wrote down ... for now, anyway.
a housekeeper checks things no list mentions. he does it without deciding to, because he feels what gets noticed.
the model can tell you a hundred true things about that room. it cannot tell you which one matters.
so the finding is the easy bit now. the hard bit is teaching it the nuance. what we were looking for, and why today is not yesterday.
These are machines after all and shouldn't be a replacement of our thinking. they can assist our thinking and speed up the data collection and retrieval, pattern recognitions, model testing etc, so we can figure out what is important versus what is not.
AI and Ontology is great and all, but most hotels seem incapable of the most basic operational competence.
They seem unable to turnaroud rooms in less than 5 hours ( or communicate this)
Let's focus on the basis first, how about having cleaning staff be able to WhatsApp the front desk to say rooms are ready.
I stay in 100 hotels a year at all price points, and none seem to be aware of the USB C socket.
Wifi speeds are slower the more expensive the hotel is.
90% of mini bars don't have prices.
50% of calls to room service aren't answered
Almost no hotels outside Asia let you text them.
I'm fed up of arriving at hotels at 10am, and despite the hotel not being full the night before, being unable to give them money to check in , because "there are no free rooms"
It's the only industry that makes car rental companies seem on top of their IT game.
I'm probably naive in my view that if we can move more of the ridiculous processes to AI (and believe me ridiculous processes in hotels are a thing) we would be able to hire people who aren't process first but guest first. I keep repeating to hoteliers that the minute they make a guest come to the front desk to fill out paperwork and so forth they're telling the guest that their process is more important than the guest themselves. It's probably a bit utopic on my part. But I believe technology in hotels over the last 30 years has made the hotel experience worse. And if AI can step in and reduce that to make less tech so we can hire people who like to take care of guests rather than computers and processes everyone wins.
However, as you point out there are simple things to fix first.
I'm just aware that I'm a huge fan of technology, but we need to walk before we run.
We shouldn't fall in love with things just because they're brand new and sophisticated. We should do things because they make the greatest difference.
Like you say, the entire industry needs to realign itself around customers, not operations. But that means some basic fixes first. . Don't make your guests do your admin when they first arrive. Don't ask for credit card details three times. .
You raise a very interesting point, which is: can AI be the instrument that allows this to happen more readily?
Maybe rather than rebuilding companies, the AI can act as a work around.
We can use bad plumbing, but somehow make it work.
I tend to think that's probably a bad way to do things.
As seductive as it is, we probably need fixes that are rooted in culture and mobile phones more than LLMs.
I do love the comment. Especially from a non-hotel-tech person. Hotels are so enamored by their processes and "don't change anything" so I'm hoping we can use AI and agents to "maintain the old" and while doing that, realize that most of the old is not useful and from there move back to the basic reason why hotels are hotels. So many of those processes and software features exist because of a single failure that happened 10 years ago (or more) but now we're making every guest suffer through extra admin. 3x payments is the easiest fix. I've been complaining about it for at least a decade - yet most hotels still insist on that process. Which serves nobody but the process.
ontology is a fascinating place to start.
the word that came to mind reading it was ecosystem.
not the way we use it in business ... the way it works in nature.
a forest never has to tell itself anything.
when it stops raining, the ground is dry.
the tree does not get sent a message about the ground ... it is standing in it.
humans cannot work like that.
consciousness may be a gift or a curse, but either way we are aware of ourselves, and so we never just see a room ... we see what we make of it.
two people walk into the same room. one sees it ready. the other sees a mark on the mirror.
both are right about what they saw. so it has to be turned into words and passed on, and every handover loses a little.
AI models may act more like a forest after all.
no view, nothing to protect, nothing to pass on.
it stands in all of it at once ... housekeeping's version, engineering's version, the arrival list, the standard nobody has opened in a year.
so it finds things none of us could.
I put in pieces from different corners of the building with nothing to do with each other, and it keeps finding the link, and nobody had to agree first.
but the model only knows what somebody wrote down ... for now, anyway.
a housekeeper checks things no list mentions. he does it without deciding to, because he feels what gets noticed.
the model can tell you a hundred true things about that room. it cannot tell you which one matters.
so the finding is the easy bit now. the hard bit is teaching it the nuance. what we were looking for, and why today is not yesterday.
These are machines after all and shouldn't be a replacement of our thinking. they can assist our thinking and speed up the data collection and retrieval, pattern recognitions, model testing etc, so we can figure out what is important versus what is not.
AI and Ontology is great and all, but most hotels seem incapable of the most basic operational competence.
They seem unable to turnaroud rooms in less than 5 hours ( or communicate this)
Let's focus on the basis first, how about having cleaning staff be able to WhatsApp the front desk to say rooms are ready.
I stay in 100 hotels a year at all price points, and none seem to be aware of the USB C socket.
Wifi speeds are slower the more expensive the hotel is.
90% of mini bars don't have prices.
50% of calls to room service aren't answered
Almost no hotels outside Asia let you text them.
I'm fed up of arriving at hotels at 10am, and despite the hotel not being full the night before, being unable to give them money to check in , because "there are no free rooms"
It's the only industry that makes car rental companies seem on top of their IT game.
Ouch. Brutal take. I don't disagree.
I'm probably naive in my view that if we can move more of the ridiculous processes to AI (and believe me ridiculous processes in hotels are a thing) we would be able to hire people who aren't process first but guest first. I keep repeating to hoteliers that the minute they make a guest come to the front desk to fill out paperwork and so forth they're telling the guest that their process is more important than the guest themselves. It's probably a bit utopic on my part. But I believe technology in hotels over the last 30 years has made the hotel experience worse. And if AI can step in and reduce that to make less tech so we can hire people who like to take care of guests rather than computers and processes everyone wins.
However, as you point out there are simple things to fix first.
I think it's just honest, not brutal.
I'm just aware that I'm a huge fan of technology, but we need to walk before we run.
We shouldn't fall in love with things just because they're brand new and sophisticated. We should do things because they make the greatest difference.
Like you say, the entire industry needs to realign itself around customers, not operations. But that means some basic fixes first. . Don't make your guests do your admin when they first arrive. Don't ask for credit card details three times. .
You raise a very interesting point, which is: can AI be the instrument that allows this to happen more readily?
Maybe rather than rebuilding companies, the AI can act as a work around.
We can use bad plumbing, but somehow make it work.
I tend to think that's probably a bad way to do things.
As seductive as it is, we probably need fixes that are rooted in culture and mobile phones more than LLMs.
I do love the comment. Especially from a non-hotel-tech person. Hotels are so enamored by their processes and "don't change anything" so I'm hoping we can use AI and agents to "maintain the old" and while doing that, realize that most of the old is not useful and from there move back to the basic reason why hotels are hotels. So many of those processes and software features exist because of a single failure that happened 10 years ago (or more) but now we're making every guest suffer through extra admin. 3x payments is the easiest fix. I've been complaining about it for at least a decade - yet most hotels still insist on that process. Which serves nobody but the process.