What a hotel should ask an AI vendor before signing
Twelve questions that separate a useful tool from a feature list with a new label on it.
Every hospitality vendor now has an AI story, and a general manager is expected to judge it between a staffing rota and a wedding enquiry. These are the questions we ask on a client's behalf. The good suppliers answer all of them within a day, and the answers themselves tell you most of what you need to know.
Data
- Where is guest data processed, and in which country?
- Is our data used to train a model that other customers benefit from? Get this in writing.
- How long is data retained, and can we require deletion?
- Who at your company can read the content our staff and guests type in?
- What is your position under UK GDPR: controller or processor, and where is the data processing agreement?
The product
- What does the tool do when it does not know the answer? A confident wrong answer to a guest is worse than no answer.
- Can we see it working on our own data rather than a demonstration dataset?
- What happens when the PMS integration breaks or the interface changes?
- Who is accountable when it tells a guest something incorrect?
The commercial terms
- What is the total cost in year one including integration, training and support, not just the licence?
- What does it cost at renewal, and what governs the increase?
- What is the exit: can we export what it has produced, and what happens to our data?
What to do with the answers
- Run a pilot with a written success measure and an end date. Decide before it starts what result would make you say no.
- Measure one thing that matters to the property, such as time spent on guest messaging or the time to produce the overnight summary.
- Check the features you already pay for. Most properties have AI capability sitting unused inside the PMS, the revenue tool and Microsoft 365.
Questions we get asked
Is it safe to put guest data into an AI tool?
It depends entirely on the supplier and the configuration. The questions that decide it are where the data is processed, whether it trains a shared model, how long it is retained and who can access it. A supplier who cannot answer those clearly has answered them.
Do we need new tools, or can we use what we have?
Start with what you have. Most hotels are already licensed for capability they have never switched on, and using it costs nothing extra while telling you a great deal about what would actually help.
What is a reasonable pilot length?
Long enough to cover a full trading cycle for the property, which usually means six to eight weeks including at least one busy weekend and one quiet midweek.
Start with the Wi-Fi
A guest Wi-Fi audit is the quickest way to see how we work: we survey the property, test what guests actually experience, and report on what needs doing and what it costs. The findings are yours whether or not you go ahead.
More guides
How to separate guest Wi-Fi from the PMS and card payments
Why one flat network is the most common finding in a hotel IT audit, and what the fix looks like.
Read moreWhat happens to a hotel when the PMS goes down
An outage is an operations problem, not an IT problem. What to have ready before it happens.
Read moreHow to change IT provider without disrupting a trading hotel
What a take-on actually involves, what can go wrong, and what to get in writing first.
Read more