Case Study

Case Study: Hospitality, AI, & The Power of Outsourcing

Owners of a mid-sized hotel located in the heart of a buzzing business district had goals of expanding. However, they struggled to deliver the quality service their guests deserved and dynamically price room rates to meet occupancy and revenue goals. Outsourcing a behind the scenes team with Smiles’ BPO generated positive results in only 6 months.

Challenges

Operational, administrative tasks took a back seat to front facing guest support. This resulted in an inability to navigate workflow, provide quality guest support, and dynamically price room rates, all of which negatively impacted occupancy rates and room revenue goals.

• High Labor Costs: Dual issue of under staffing leading to high overtime costs or overstaffing leading to unnecessary payroll expenses

• Poor Guest Experience: Booking requests were not consistently addressed and guests experienced long front desk wait times which resulted in a low return rate, poor reviews, and high rate of refunds

• Lack of Competitive Dynamic Rates: Struggled to stay ahead of competitors’ high/low room rates which negatively impacted Occupancy Rate and Revenue Per Available Room (RevPAR)

• Human Element: After onboarding an AI platform to optimize and automate operational tasks, management realized there was an important element missing from their powerful tool – humans

Solutions

To achieve revenue results, the hotel needed dedicated agents working behind the scenes to manage data to better support workflow planning and the guests experience.

A team of 10 Smiles on Demand agents were hired to handle:

• Data entry used for dynamic pricing to support occupancy goals and accurate resource planning (i.e. staff schedules, housekeeping, food, & beverage inventory, etc.)

• 24/7 Customer Service Coverage

Booking and modifying reservations by phone
Verifying AI generated room placements for online bookings
Managing guest special requests and questions (room preferences, hotel floors, bedding, beds, etc.)
Monitoring AI chatbots to flag reoccurring guest issues and provide additional assistance
Manage customer feedback data for AI generated reports to make chatbots more efficient in assisting guests

Results

By pairing experienced and qualified Smiles agents with their powerful AI tool the hotel was able to elevate the guest experience, strengthen their dynamic pricing strategy and optimize workflow/resource planning in the first 6 months.

• Increate overall CSAT rating by 19%

• AI Chatbot now handles 23% of guest inquiries

• Increased occupancy rate by 7% and Revenue Per Available Room (RevPAR) by 14%

• Labor costs reduced by 16%