Marriott Deploying Front Desk AI Tool To Assign Rooms, Elite Upgrades

Marriott will soon be automating the process of assigning guest rooms. While replacing human tasks with AI doesn’t always sound like a customer centric move, maybe this is actually good news?

Marriott is automating task of assigning rooms

Marriott Chief Technology Officer Naveen Manga participated in the Skift Data and AI Summit this past week, talking about the incremental progress that the company is making with AI. One comment stood out to me, in particular.

Marriott will shortly be deploying an AI tool that will automate the task of hotel room assignments for front desk staff. As described by Manga, “essentially, taking hours and hours of manual work — all that heads down work the associates do — and in a fraction of a second, 1.2 million rooms can be assigned.”

Hotels assigning rooms on a daily basis is a huge task, both given that it needs to be done daily, and also given the number of considerations that go into this. Front desk staff have to consider things like arrival times, room preferences, occupancy levels, elite status or other upgrade eligibility, etc.

When it comes to upgrades, it’s my understanding that Marriott currently has a system that secretly prioritizes guests for room upgrades, based on elite status and other factors. Then it’s up to the front desk agents to run down that list, upgrade guests, and assign rooms.

Is automation good or bad for hotel guests?

Generally speaking, when we hear of AI in the hotel industry, it’s not good news. The intent is typically for the hotel to cut costs and improve the bottom line, rather than improving the guest experience. However, on the surface, I feel like automating room assignments might actually have some upside, or at worst, be neutral.

After all, a computer can assign room types most fairly based on a variety of factors. Furthermore, for hotels that aren’t great about upgrading, maybe automating the assigning of rooms will actually increase the number of upgrades that are given out. That assumes that the AI tool doesn’t have a “hotel owner hates Bonvoy members” setting, that hotels can choose to toggle on. 😉

As always, the devil is in the details, and a tool like this is only as good as it’s instructed to be by its creators. Marriott’s general issue is its lack of attention to detail with guest experience. Let me give an example, specifically impacting room assignments.

Today, I’m supposed to check into a Marriott that I’m actually pretty excited to visit. I only booked a couple of days in advance, but I booked a room with two beds (which was all that was available with points). So I immediately messaged the hotel in the app to request a room with one bed, if at all possible, and the associate confirmed that was notated.

With check-in being today, I noticed that I’m still assigned my initial room, which is a bit surprising, since this is supposed to be a luxury property, I’m an Ambassador member, and there are lots of premium rooms with one bed available. So I just called the front desk this morning to confirm that there was a notation on my reservation that I preferred one bed. He said there wasn’t.

My point is simply to say that it doesn’t matter what AI does, if humans can’t even do what they say they’re going to do in noting basic preferences.

Bottom line

Marriott will reportedly shortly be automating the process of assigning guest rooms on the day of arrival, making jobs easier for front desk staff. While I’m generally skeptical of the extent to which AI improves customer experience, I have more faith in a computer than I do in the average front desk Marriott employee when it comes to assigning upgrades, so I wouldn’t necessarily consider this to be bad news.

To be clear, that’s not a dig at Marriott employees, as they’re typically just doing what they’re told to do. The issue is the hotel owners that want the global distribution power of Marriott (thanks largely to the Bonvoy program), without providing the benefits that make it popular. It’ll be interesting to see if we notice any difference with upgrades and room assignments once this is rolled out.

What do you make of this new Marriott AI tool for assigning rooms?