This text is part of the special Business Tourism section
Since the arrival of ChatGPT in our lives, more and more companies are exploring the uses of generative artificial intelligence, and the tourism industry is no exception to the trend. While some hoteliers have mastered the codes very well, others wonder how to get on board this high-speed train. The answer seems to lie in data mastery and business intelligence.
“Business intelligence, in my opinion, is the way in which a human can be able to use data wisely to make their business more efficient,” summarizes Florence Barbeau, director of partnerships and innovation. open to MT Lab, a tourism, culture and entertainment incubator.
Thibault Nahon, general director of Reservit, a Franco-Canadian company which provides reservation management and marketing software for hotels and restaurants, believes it is essential that establishments first have access to “pure” data, that is to say the rate of occupancy (the number of rooms rented), then customer reviews, collected, for example, on online reservation platforms. “Then, we can use artificial intelligence to synthesize all these opinions, for marketing and content creation linked to [ces retours] “, he explains.
But to have access to this data, you still need to have a computer system that centralizes it. Mr. Nahon says that according to his company’s estimates, a third of Quebec’s hotels still operate on paper, taking reservations by hand. “It’s a lot, but we must take into consideration the fact that in certain remote regions, for example on the North Shore or James Bay, they only had the Internet a year or two ago,” specifies. he.
A reversed trend since the pandemic
The starting point towards taking control of your data is of course to computerize them, according to the CEO. It is then a matter of centralizing them in a database, which opens up a multitude of possibilities, including that of “ yield management » — dynamic pricing comparable to that which we see in the sale of plane tickets and shows, which fluctuates according to supply and demand or even the season. A database will also allow the hotelier to establish trends.
“Before, the data was always based on the past, over a comparable period of the year,” underlines Thibault Nahon. [Du fait de] COVID, data from the last three years is meaningless compared to other data from the past. Business intelligence has [donc] completely turned. From now on, we will base ourselves on predictions, on what we will have in the future. »
The human behind the machine
If generative artificial intelligence can help make these predictions, you still need to know what questions to ask it to obtain usable results, recalls Florence Barbeau. “There is always a human who must be behind to analyze and ask the right questions upstream,” she emphasizes.
“Then it takes people who have a background analyst, for example, to structure this data and be able to better analyze it. And the next step is how to share them and help with visualization for the rest of the team. » The tourism industry, however, includes many small and medium-sized businesses that are not necessarily equipped for this, indicates M.me Barbel.
“Of course, everyone is slowly starting to wonder how to get resources,” she continues. We see more pooling than before, we work less in isolation. Some will ask questions to their regional tourism association, which will redirect them to experts who can help them with digital transformation… We work a lot in collaboration. »
Thibault Nahon also sees two main types of hoteliers among his clients: those who are very efficient in terms of technology and who want to push artificial intelligence further, and those who are not yet computerized.
“We really have the two extremes,” he explains. Those that are present everywhere are often large city center hotels, like the Germain or Monville hotels, for example, which are very technical. But if I tell you about a small inn in the Eastern Townships, its number one need is to fill its hotel and make sure things go well for its customers. She is not into data analysis at all, because she does not have the human resources to do so. »
If the situation improves from year to year, indicates the general director of Reservit, Quebec continues to lag behind France, where his company serves many clients.
This content was produced by the Special Publications team at Dutyrelating to marketing. The writing of the Duty did not take part.