AI + Hotels = A Digital Marketing Machine

Managing a hotel is a balancing act of daily operations, guest satisfaction, and revenue growth, further complicated by a fast-paced digital marketing landscape. With countless strategies and channels to master, keeping up becomes a daunting challenge for even the savviest digital marketers.

That’s why forward-thinking hotel marketers are embracing artificial intelligence (AI). Serving as a multi-purpose tool, AI helps streamline digital marketing efforts—from enhancing customer personalization to generating better content and providing proactive strategies. It’s helping hoteliers and their teams cut through the digital noise with precision and ease to ultimately help hoteliers increase conversions and revenue.

Following part two of Shift Digital’s three-part blog series, part three goes beyond customer experience and hotel operations and explores how AI is helping hotels optimize and enhance digital marketing with one simple tool—the AI chatbot.

Taking Customer Insights to a New Level

Hoteliers are no strangers to monitoring customer behavior across their digital platforms. With robust analytics, they can track users' journeys across websites, informing marketers not just about where visitors click but also what brought them there.

However, traditional data only scratches the surface and falls short of determining what customers think. For instance, analytics might show users visiting a website's golf section. Yet, what exactly are they seeking? Are they curious about the number of par 3s, the availability of an on-site bar, or the course’s designer? These specific questions contain vital information about customer interests.

That’s precisely where the power of a simple yet robust AI tool—the AI chatbot—comes into play. We mentioned AI chatbots in Part 1 to encourage guests to engage in text-based conversations to provide support and answers to their questions, which encourages more direct bookings.

But chatbots can do so much more when it comes to digital marketing. They are revolutionizing how information is gathered and used to optimize digital marketing and create better user experiences. Here are just a few ways how.

Unmatched Personalization

AI chatbots don't just collect data; they create conversations, encouraging customers to share their thoughts and questions directly. By their very nature, chatbots collect questions from users directly, revealing precise insights into what the customer is thinking. This data can then be used to better understand and enhance personalization for future customers, making their experience even more tailored and enjoyable.

Enhanced Content

Chatbots go beyond capturing customer inquiries; they serve as a dynamic tool to help keep content fresh and provide the information people seek. As chatbots soak up visitors' questions, they also intelligently analyze existing content to provide new content based on data-driven information. This saves marketing teams time and effort and ensures consistent, high-quality content that keeps the digital experience vibrant and compelling.

Innovative Proactive Marketing

Using precise customer data, AI chatbots open doors for proactive marketing strategies tailored to meet the users' diverse interests. By intricately analyzing customer interactions to extract particular interests and preferences, this data enables marketers to create highly tailored offers, package recommendations, and personalized promotions that feel uniquely catered to each potential guest.

Where There are Pros, There Are Cons

Despite AI's fantastic benefits in enhancing digital marketing for hotels, there are some potential drawbacks. If tools such as chatbots are not carefully monitored and managed, unintentional biases can affect any number of processes. That’s why hoteliers must ensure that AI algorithms are regularly audited and reviewed to identify and mitigate biases effectively.  

Additionally, if a guest asks a question and the content does not exist on the website, the AI will be trained to state that it does not have the answer and refer the guest to a hotel contact.  This may frustrate the guest, so it is imperative that the hotel consistently reviews the questions being asked to ensure that the website has the correct information online.

How Shift Digital Can Help

At Shift Digital, we’re continually innovating to elevate our digital marketing solutions and processes, and AI is just the next logical tool in our toolbox. It’s becoming increasingly essential to stay relevant and ahead in the hospitality industry, and next-gen tools like AI offer excellent potential—but also complexity. If your hotel is ready to explore all that AI can provide but needs help figuring out where to start, our hospitality and tech experts can provide you with the guidance and support you need. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help.