Wyndham Hotels Deploys AI to Boost Bookings
Wyndham Hotels is productizing its customer service using AI agents from SaaS partners like Salesforce and Canary. The implementation has reportedly boosted direct bookings by over 200 basis points while reducing labor costs. The hotel group's strategy emphasizes rapid deployment of third-party AI tools over building custom large language models.
- The primary technology partner is Canary Technologies, whose AI Voice tool was rolled out globally to thousands of franchisees after a successful pilot at more than 700 hotels. - The initiative aims to solve a key operational issue, as industry data indicates hotels can miss up to 30% of inbound calls, with a third of those being potential booking opportunities. - This AI voice agent is part of a broader omnichannel platform called Wyndham Connect, which integrates calls, text messaging, and web chat to create a unified guest communication system. - In addition to customer-facing AI, Wyndham is using AI agents in partnership with PwC to support its franchise owners, resulting in a 30-50% reduction in average call handle times and a 94% decrease in time needed to review brand standards. - The company's technology investment roadmap exceeds $425 million and is part of a strategy that has also reduced call handle time by 25% across the board. - To maintain technical flexibility and mitigate vendor lock-in, the company uses Bandwidth's Maestro platform to seamlessly route calls between its core contact center system and Canary's AI. - Other major hotel groups are also deploying AI; Marriott uses chatbots on Facebook Messenger for bookings and Accor uses AI to analyze guest preferences for personalized room setups. - The broader trend in hospitality involves using AI for more than just chatbots, including optimizing housekeeping schedules, enabling predictive maintenance of facilities, and managing energy consumption.
