Digital transformation and application of artificial intelligence in the hospitality industry to optimize business operations is an irreversible trend. While artificial intelligence has been effectively applied and become the key to success in many businesses such as retail (eg Amazon), entertainment (eg Netflix), or social networks (eg Facebook or Tiktok), the hotel tourism industry is still slow in applying technology. However, the world’s leading hotel businesses have been implementing ambitious projects to change the game and dominate the market. For example, Marriott Hotels Group has deployed an artificial intelligence system to manage personal recommendations and reward points for individual customers in the Marriott Bonvoy program.
Meanwhile, Vietnamese businesses lack both the capacity and resources to invest in such ambitious projects. Meanwhile, the hotel tourism industry makes an important contribution to the development of the economy (contributing an average of 10% of GDP each year) and has a huge social impact (for example, creating jobs, solving hunger and poverty in remote areas). After the Covid-19 pandemic, when tourism business activities recovered and there were major changes in customer service usage behavior, Vietnam’s hotel and tourism industry faced the risk of being acquired, annexed and controlled by foreign corporations. Therefore, this project is urgent to support Vietnamese businesses in grasping technology and creating a competitive position in the market in the face of rapid technological changes.
This project is implemented based on a multidisciplinary approach, combining both social research and technical research perspectives in developing an artificial intelligence system suitable for the characteristics of the hotel tourism industry. One of the main reasons leading to the failure of technology application and artificial intelligence projects is that these projects are built from the perspective of technology experts alone, lacking the link to the specific business operations of the industry and the enterprise. This leads to artificial intelligence systems built on the latest technological advances (e.g., deep learning) but are not well received by end-users and customers. Therefore, this project is an important step forward in building a team of multidisciplinary experts, with rich experience from many fields: AI experts, customer behavior research experts, and business administrators. From there, the research team discussed and came up with ideas for system design suitable to the business characteristics of the hotel tourism industry. At the same time, the project includes conducting the necessary customer research, using the latest customer research methods (e.g. eye-tracking devices) in experiment and improving artificial intelligence systems.
This project will allow the construction of a theoretical framework on the application of artificial intelligence in customer experience management in the hotel tourism industry, which has important implications in terms of academics and business administration training. This project meets the urgent need in the hotel tourism industry to implement digitalization effectively and quickly, thereby adapting and recovering in the post-Covid-19 pandemic period. The hotel tourism industry has a huge social welfare impact, opening up important employment and economic development opportunities for many disadvantaged regions and localities. More than ever, hotel administrators need powerful and effective tools to attract potential customers and personalize customer experiences to achieve growth goals set after the pandemic.