Applying Artificial Intelligence in the Hotel Industry: Exploring Perspectives of Employees

Robots, Artificial Intelligence, and Service Automation, or RAISA, has become increasingly accessible and affordable for a wider demographic of businesses, including hospitality operations, to implement over the last couple of decades. Especially over the past five years, we’ve seen a significant surge of interest in automating within the service industry and a coupled sense of uneasiness that this technological development would in turn displace the human workers, due to factors such as cost of labor and perceived removal of human error; however, this thesis will posit that automation is most effectively used by augmenting the capabilities of the present workforce. Integrating smarter technology and an Internet of Things can vastly improve efficiency for the workers, and allow them to defer menial tasks while having more time and resources for more significant duties or issues. Therefore, instead of feeling apprehension about automation, it is more prudent to use it as a tool to better equip the service workforce. To justify this, five front desk workers from the Graduate Fayetteville hotel have been interviewed regarding their opinions and knowledge of RAISA. The analysis is qualitative in nature to gain a more thorough understanding of how a local selection of employees would benefit from these improvements