How AI is used in hospitality industry - Benefits & use cases

Key takeaways

• AI tools automate tasks like responding to guest questions, sending confirmations, and tagging messages by topic or urgency.
• Hotels use AI to analyse demand, recommend room pricing, and forecast occupancy more accurately.
• Personalisation can be driven by AI’s ability to identify patterns in guest behaviour and tailor messages accordingly.
• You can also get more creative with AI and use it for things like energy management, security systems, and even reducing food waste.

What guests value most today

Guests want a personal and smooth travel experience, and they don't want to have to ask for it. Because of this, many of your guests are probably willing to share some of their personal data and preferences if they know it means they will get a more tailored service.

In a recent study from Medallia, 61% of guests said they would pay more for personalised experiences, but only 25% felt they received them. It's clear that guests want and are happy to pay for a better experience, especially among younger travellers who have grown up in a world of big data and personalisation and therefore expect every interaction to feel tailored to them.

AI helps hotels provide a more personalised experience without having to spend huge amounts or drastically change their way of working. By tracking preferences, previous stays, or communication habits, AI-powered tools can take data that you already have and use it to suggest upgrades, send well-timed messages, and create a more relevant guest experience from the first interaction.

1. Faster, more reliable guest support

AI chatbots and automation tools handle common guest questions such as booking status, check-in times, and service requests, instantly and at scale. This makes sure that every guest gets a fast, helpful response, even during busy periods or outside of regular hours. 

2. Personalised guest experiences

Guests remember the small details. AI helps hotels deliver tailored messages, room suggestions, and offers based on guest behaviour and preferences. Whether it’s suggesting an upgrade or recalling a guest’s preferred room type, these personal touches can make a stay more memorable, which can increase loyalty and even revenue per stay.

3. Smarter revenue management

AI can process years of booking data to spot trends and optimise room pricing in real time. Hotels can adjust rates based on demand, season, or events, which helps to maximise occupancy and profitability without time-consuming manual analysis.

4. Save your team time on repetitive tasks

From automating booking confirmations and reminders to prioritising urgent messages, AI can remove the repetitive tasks that slow your team down. This frees up staff to focus on more important interactions and improves response time across all channels.

5. Better data, better decisions

AI helps hotels understand what’s working and what’s not. It can analyse guest feedback, identify patterns in service issues, and help teams make better decisions. Whether it’s adjusting shift schedules or identifying the most popular room types, AI enables a proactive way to approach all kinds of business strategies.

6.Safety and sustainability

AI can contribute to security through smart surveillance and access control. It also supports sustainability by optimising energy use, reducing waste, and improving maintenance planning, helping hotels cut costs while meeting environmental goals.

1. AI chatbots for 24/7 guest support

AI-powered chatbots are now frontline ambassadors for many hotels, handling FAQs, booking requests, and local tips at any hour. Using conversation data, they learn which queries resolve successfully, then expand their abilities to take on inquiries over time. 

AI chatbots are a cost-effective way to deliver round-the-clock service and gather real guest insights. Trengo’s chatbots integrate seamlessly across platforms like WhatsApp, Messenger, and your website, letting your hotel staff save time by only jumping in when complex issues arise.

2. Conversational AI for service escalation

Sophisticated bots can triage chat, email, or messaging app interactions and build handoffs for the human members of your team. That means that high-priority requests, such as a booking change or a room issue, get dealt with quickly and by the right person. Trengo’s Flowbot supports conditional flows that flag urgent cases, assign tags, and trigger automated notifications so your team responds faster and smarter.

3. AI-powered revenue management

Advanced pricing tools scan local events, search trends, competitor pricing, and booking windows. They offer real-time recommendations, for example, should we raise rates for a weekend wedding? Or maybe lower them for a slow Tuesday? 

This proactive approach drives a higher Average Daily Rate (ADR) and occupancy. When paired with messaging tools, Trengo can trigger targeted upsell offers when demand anticipates price shifts, maximising revenue per stay.

4. Predictive maintenance for rooms and equipment

IoT sensors generate continuous streams of data on devices such as air-conditioning, elevators, and Wi‑Fi routers. AI models can detect drifting performance trends and alert maintenance before guests notice. This helps you avoid critical faults such as slow WiFi when a loyal customer has a Zoom call, and can help you schedule repairs during low occupancy, optimising both cost and reducing disruption to your guests.

5. In-room voice assistants and smart control

Voice-enabled devices in rooms are evolving. Hotels are moving forward from “Hey, room” prompts to fully integrated assistants for spa booking and ordering dinner. These devices create convenience and deliver valuable data on in-room behaviour such as volume preferences, which can be used to create fuller guest profiles. This data can then be used to create more genuine personalisation for return visits.

6. Multilingual translation in messaging

AI translation allows messaging platforms to support guests in their native language by automatically translating both questions and responses within seconds. This removes friction at important moments (for example, when there are room issues). Trengo's multilingual inbox ensures staff see the conversation in their own language, while guests see their own.

7. Automated check-in/out kiosks

AI-powered kiosks and apps handle check-in/out so that there's no need for queues. They verify identity, process payment securely, and issue digital keys. When AI detects a discrepancy, such as a mismatched ID, it can escalate it to staff. This speeds up check-in and checkout and frees up staff for face-to-face assistance for more complex issues during peak hours.

8. Facial recognition for contactless access

Facial recognition (when handled with strong privacy controls) speeds up check-in and enhances security. Combined with guest consent, it delivers seamless, keyless experiences which can be appreciated by guests, especially after long travel days when they don't want to wait in line to get their key. From a leadership view, it minimises fraud, improves attribution for incident logs, and delivers valuable analytics on guest traffic.

9. Personalised upselling and recommendations

AI can analyse booking habits and on-property behaviour to create personalised offers, such as adding breakfast to a business stay. By tagging guest intent and combining it with CRM profiles, Trengo can trigger timely messages to upsell services that guests actually want, which increases both spend and loyalty.

10. Sentiment and feedback analysis

Natural language processing flags trends across reviews and chat, identifying common pain points like noise or slow Wi‑Fi. These insights become invaluable for ops teams, turning feedback into service improvements before negative sentiment spreads.

11. Energy optimisation and sustainability

AI links together data for things like occupancy, weather forecasts, and room usage to adjust devices such as HVAC and lighting. This saves energy and supports ESG goals. Models can also detect anomalies such as lights left on after checkout, so that teams can quickly go in and turn those lights off.

12. Smart housekeeping and cleaning schedules

By analysing check-in and check-out patterns and real-time door activity, AI can forecast when a room needs cleaning. This helps assign tasks by priority and location, cutting wasted time between rooms. Staff also appreciate the clarity, while guests enjoy consistently clean rooms.

13. Smart kitchens and robotic delivery

In back-of-house kitchens, AI can help create prep schedules based on orders, avoid overstock, and minimise waste. Strategy-wise, it reduces labour costs and maintains speed during peak meal times.

14. Virtual tours and AR experience planning

Generative AI builds 360° virtual tours and overlays AR maps that guests can use to navigate lobbies, restaurants, and meeting spaces. This reduces uncertainty among prospective guests, especially large corporate teams or event groups, and builds excitement pre-arrival.

15. Automated marketing and guest journey orchestration

Generative AI can create personalised campaign emails based on guest profiles, like families or corporate travellers. Segmenting your audience can help you send the right message at the right time, for example, “half-board for leisure guests arriving Friday”, “boardroom offer for mid-week pros”. Paired with Trengo’s automation and tagging, this type of marketing creates more intelligent guest journeys.

16. Real-time guest sentiment dashboards

Hotels can use AI to analyse live feedback from multiple sources such as chats, emails, post-stay surveys, and social media to visualise sentiment trends in a dashboard. This helps management spot emerging issues (like slow room service) before they escalate. It also highlights top-performing staff or services, making it easier to reward excellence and improve underperforming areas.

17. AI-powered loyalty programme personalisation

Generic loyalty perks are easy to ignore. AI helps change that by analysing individual stay habits, service preferences, and spending patterns to recommend truly relevant rewards, like a late check-out after frequent business stays. Hotels using Trengo’s CRM integrations can automate these loyalty perks within messaging flows, improving both guest retention and redemption rates.

18. Dynamic staff scheduling and workload balancing

AI can predict peak hours based on bookings, check-in data, and historical foot traffic. It then recommends staff rosters that avoid over- or under-staffing. When integrated with a platform like Trengo, managers can automatically balance incoming guest requests among available team members in real time, helping to prevent burnout and improve response times.

Always-on guest support with AI chatbots

Your front desk team can’t be everywhere at once. But Trengo’s AI chatbots can be.

Trengo enables hotel teams to set up AI-powered chatbots that handle common questions, such as check-in times, breakfast hours, Wi-Fi passwords, and spa availability, instantly and at all hours. These bots work across the channels your guests already use: WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and your website chat widget.

These bots don’t operate in isolation. You can build intelligent flows with Trengo’s Flowbot, routing guests to the right answers or handing them off to staff when personal support is needed. That means faster response times, fewer missed messages, and a consistent guest experience, without adding to your team’s workload.

Omnichannel messaging made simple

Today’s travellers expect to reach you on their terms, whether that's email, live chat, Instagram, or WhatsApp. Keeping up with those messages shouldn’t require juggling screens or copy-pasting details from one system to another.

Trengo’s omnichannel inbox brings all guest conversations into one place. Your team sees one thread per guest, no matter how many channels they’ve used. That makes it easier to respond quickly, stay consistent, and never miss a detail, whether a guest books through your website or messages mid-stay about a room service request.

With AI-enhanced tagging and routing, you can even prioritise urgent messages or assign them based on team availability, so no message falls through the cracks.

Personalised communication at scale

Guests expect personal touches that reflect their preferences, history, and needs. With Trengo, AI helps you tailor every interaction.

Trengo connects with your CRM, PMS, or booking engine (like Mews or RoomRaccoon), giving your team real-time access to guest data. With automated tagging, you can segment messages by guest type, such as business travellers, returning visitors, or families, and send communications that are timely and relevant.

Want to promote a spa discount to guests checking in for a weekend stay? Or follow up with loyalty members who haven’t booked in six months? Trengo helps you automate these messages based on behaviour and data.

AI-powered sentiment analysis and feedback visibility

Understanding how guests feel about their stay can make or break your reputation. But when feedback is spread across email, chat, Google reviews, and booking platforms, finding trends isn’t easy.

Trengo’s platform can centralise feedback from multiple channels, and enables integration with sentiment analysis tools that automatically tag messages as positive, neutral, or negative. This gives your management team real-time visibility into guest satisfaction and the ability to respond before issues escalate.

You can also use AI-generated reports to identify recurring pain points or standout services. For example, if multiple guests mention long wait times at breakfast, you’ll know it’s time to investigate.

Automating workflows that scale with your team

Manual tasks such as sending booking confirmations, pre-arrival reminders, or post-checkout thank-yous are small on their own, but overwhelming at scale. Trengo lets you automate these workflows with rules that adapt to your operations.

Whether you want to send a welcome message the day before check-in or follow up three days after departure with a feedback request, you can build that workflow into Trengo. These automations reduce pressure on your team and ensure that every guest receives consistent communication.

Plus, with custom rules, Trengo can escalate issues automatically, like tagging messages with “late check-out” or “room issue” for faster responses.

Breaking language barriers with multilingual messaging

Welcoming guests from around the world comes with a major challenge: language. Miscommunication can lead to confusion, frustration, or poor reviews. Trengo addresses this with real-time translation built into your chat experience.

When a guest writes in French, German, Spanish (or over 100 other languages), your team can see the message in English (or another language) and respond without switching tools. The guest sees the reply in their language. This makes communication seamless, no matter where your guests are from or how they reach out.

For hotel chains and resorts with international audiences, this feature supports both efficiency and inclusion, without needing a team of multilingual staff.

Integration with your hospitality tech stack

Your guest communication platform shouldn’t sit in a silo. Trengo integrates with tools like Mews, RoomRaccoon, and leading CRMs so that you can connect AI insights with guest profiles, booking status, and past stays.

This gives you the opportunity to create more effective automation and smarter communication. For example, you can:

• Trigger targeted campaigns to guests who stayed during peak season last year
• Offer upgrades to guests who booked the same room type three times in a row
• Alert staff automatically if a high-value guest sends a service request

Move from reactive to proactive

In a competitive industry, your hotel will be looking for ways to stay ahead. Trengo’s AI-powered features help shift from a reactive model to a proactive one, anticipating needs, optimising operations, and delivering service that feels personal, not robotic.

Whether you're running a boutique hotel or managing a global chain, Trengo equips your team with the tools to communicate clearly, work smarter, and build lasting guest relationships.

Smarter team collaboration with AI-powered tagging and assignments

In hospitality, every second counts. When messages get missed or routed to the wrong person, service slows, and guest satisfaction drops. Trengo uses AI-driven tagging and workflow logic to ensure that messages are automatically categorised by tags such as "room request," "billing issue," or "late check-in" so that they can quickly be assigned to the right team.

This reduces internal back-and-forth and ensures that your team stays focused on the right conversations at the right time. For large properties or teams split across shifts, this level of precision helps maintain a consistently high service standard.

How is AI being used in the hospitality industry?

AI is transforming hospitality by automating guest communication, streamlining bookings, personalising services, and optimising operations. Hotels use AI-powered chatbots, like Trengo’s AI HelpMate, to answer questions instantly, manage reservations, and provide tailored recommendations 24/7. AI also supports dynamic pricing, predictive maintenance, and smart room controls, helping hotels deliver seamless, efficient, and memorable guest experiences.

Can AI improve the guest experience in hospitality?

Absolutely. AI enhances the guest journey at every stage before, during, and after the stay. It enables faster check-in and check-out, offers personalised recommendations, and resolves issues in real time. With AI-driven sentiment analysis and feedback tools, hotels can proactively address guest needs, leading to higher satisfaction and loyalty. Trengo’s platform, for example, helps hotels create automated, multilingual engagement that feels both personal and efficient.

How do AI chatbots help in hotel customer service?

AI chatbots, such as Trengo’s AI HelpMate, provide instant, round-the-clock support across channels like WhatsApp, email, and live chat. They handle FAQs, assist with bookings, send reminders, and even upsell services. By integrating with property management systems (PMS), these chatbots ensure accurate, real-time information and reduce the workload on staff, allowing them to focus on more complex guest needs.

What’s the role of AI in personalising guest experiences?

AI analyses guest data such as booking history, preferences, and feedback to deliver hyper-personalised recommendations and services. This could include tailored room amenities, bespoke dining suggestions, or automated in-room settings. Trengo and similar platforms use AI to automate personalised communication, ensuring every guest feels recognised and valued throughout their journey.

Can AI help hotels manage bookings and reservations more efficiently?

Yes. AI streamlines the entire booking process, from checking availability to managing modifications and cancellations. Trengo integrates with booking engines and PMS, automating reservation updates and ensuring guests receive timely confirmations and reminders. This reduces manual errors, saves staff time, and keeps guests informed at every step.

How can small hotels use AI without big budgets?

AI is now accessible to hotels of all sizes. Platforms like Trengo offer user-friendly, no-code solutions that centralise guest communication and automate common tasks. Small hotels can deploy AI-powered chatbots for guest messaging, automate marketing campaigns, and use analytics to improve service—all without major investment or technical expertise.

What’s the future of AI in hospitality?

The future will see even greater automation, with AI driving “user-interface-less” operations such as contactless check-in, fully automated hotels, and voice-activated room controls. AI will further personalise guest experiences, optimise pricing in real time, and integrate with IoT devices for smart rooms. As platforms like Trengo continue to innovate, expect seamless, proactive guest engagement and operational efficiency to become standard across the industry.

Can AI be used for hotel staff scheduling or operations?

Yes. AI can automate staff scheduling, predict busy periods, and balance workloads based on real-time data. Trengo’s automation features help route guest requests to the right team members, streamline operational workflows, and provide analytics for continuous improvement. This ensures hotels maintain high service standards while optimising resources.

Can AI help reduce guest complaints and improve satisfaction?

Definitely. AI detects issues early, provides instant support, and automates follow-ups, reducing the likelihood of complaints escalating. Platforms like Trengo use AI to monitor guest sentiment, summarise feedback, and suggest improvements, enabling hotels to address problems proactively and deliver consistently high guest satisfaction.