The hospitality industry is facing a number of challenges with COVID 19. It was already dealing with high turnover rates and replacement costs with constantly hiring new workers. Hotels can use AI in recruiting to help reduce costs. This can be done by improving the outcomes of the workers hired and streamlining the whole process. Hotels need to be especially concerned with losing money at a time when people are not traveling as much due to the pandemic around the world.
AI will help hotel chains gather information, teach their employees, analyze data, and learn from successes as well as failures. Hospitality HR may be the next step for AI.
According to Deloitte, hoteliers spend approximately one-third of their revenue on labor costs. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the turnover rate for the hospitality industry in the United States is over fifty percent.
According to Forbes, “Hilton is one company already on the journey using AI for HR. Sarah Smart, Vice President of Global Recruiting for Hilton said,’By using artificial intelligence to source, screen and interview candidates, we have increased our speed to hire by 85%. We have also experienced other business benefits; such as increasing the diversity of our talent pool and enabling our recruiters to identify a high performing candidate faster. Having started our journey using AI in 2014, we see future use cases for AI include improving new hire onboarding and providing internal talent mobility for Hilton employees.’ To date, Hilton has invested in upskilling the recruiter rather than making the role redundant. Think of artificial intelligence as a tool in the recruiter’s tool belt to help them streamline the hiring process, while never making the final decision about hiring.”
AI can help reduce turnover rate because they can attract and keep talented employees with little human intervention. It can also facilitate decision making. AI does this by using a lot of data and looking for patterns that organizations previously couldn’t find. AI reduces the time to hire. There is increased productivity for recruiters as well as an enhanced candidate experience. Using chatbots, AI can help with sharing knowledge from a knowledge base. This can be done for requests for information from applicants and employees.
AI can be used to find employees that have the specific characteristics of high performing employees that have remaining at the hotel for many years. AI can help with e-recruiting. AI can develop games that show applicants what it’s like to work at that particular hotel and can help assess their personality and see if it would be a good fit.
AI can help with training especially with many generations now in the workforce. AI can personalize corporate learning for large hotel chains. It can gather a wide range of employee data, as well. AI can make a huge difference in workflow problems. It can be difficult to get the base level data on individuals when hiring but this changes with the capabilities of AI, weeding people out faster and making fewer mistakes along the way. AI can predict turnover rates, employee engagement levels, concerns about employee communication, and problems with the completion of projects.
AI can help analysts write job descriptions and specifications. It can get rid of previous descriptions and match them with new ones and update them. AI can help hotel organizations develop tests that can be used to assess the taker’s skill and find patterns. Chatbots can set up interviews and auto handle any scheduling and coordination of candidates.
AI can support finding data in digital interviews. It can be used as a coaching tool as well. Coaches will work with mentees to improve skills. AI can make hiring recommendations from applications and interviews from predetermined algorithms that weigh and combine results.
Conclusion
The hospitality industry faces challenging times in a COVID19 world. It already struggled with high turnover rates as it is labor-intensive. AI can help find candidates that are likely to stay at a hotel and streamlining everything. AI will help gather information quickly, facilitate learning, accelerate processes, and help a company learn from past mistakes. HR may be the next frontier for AI and will be transforming it at a rapid pace. Hotel chains need to save money during troubling times and AI can be a way to do that. Hopefully by using AI in HR hotels can be on the rebound.
Alexander Mirza
The Founder & CEO of Mogul – Humanizing Travel. Its platform Staymogul.com provides booking, service and talent solutions for the hospitality industry.
