How to Stay in Touch with Current Trends in the Industry
Putting AI to Work in Your Day-to-Day
Jared Wehrle, Director of AI Integration
AI has moved past the hype stage and into the toolbox. The teams getting value from it aren’t doing anything exotic; they’ve simply built a habit of handing the repetitive, time-consuming parts of their day to a tool that’s good at them. You don’t need to be technical, and you don’t need a budget. You need a few good use cases and a willingness to experiment. Below are practical ways to start using AI better this week.
Treat it like a sharp assistant, not a search engine. The biggest mistake is typing a few keywords and expecting magic. Give it context, who you are, what you’re trying to accomplish, and what a good answer looks like. “Write a guest follow-up email” returns generic results; “Write a warm, brief follow-up email to a guest who had a maintenance issue during their stay, offering a small gesture to win them back” returns something you can actually send.
Hand it your writing chores. Draft and polish guest responses, OTA review replies, internal memos, promo copy, and email campaigns. Paste in a rough version and ask it to tighten the tone or shorten it. It’s fastest at the blank-page problem, getting a solid first draft you can edit, rather than starting from nothing.
Make it summarize and explain. Drop in a long report, a dense vendor contract, or a wall of guest feedback and ask for the key points, the risks, or the action items. Ask it to “explain this like I’m new to it” for anything outside your wheelhouse, useful for decoding industry jargon, a new dashboard, or a technical email.
Use it to think, not just to type. Ask it to brainstorm seasonal package ideas, pressure-test a pricing decision, or list the pros and cons of a strategy. It won’t make the call for you, but it’s a fast, judgment-free sounding board that surfaces angles you might have missed.
Turn data into plain language. Paste in a spreadsheet or a set of numbers and ask what stands out: trends, outliers, week-over-week shifts. It’s a quick way to get a read on performance data without having to build a single formula.
Build reusable prompts for recurring tasks. Anything you do weekly- the rate-shop summary, the team update, the social caption- can become a saved prompt you reuse and refine. The second time is always faster than the first, and a good prompt compounds in value.
Verify before you trust. AI can sound confident and still be wrong, so treat its output as a strong first draft, never the final word. Check names, numbers, dates, and any fact before it goes out the door. Used this way, as a force multiplier you supervise ,it gives you back hours every week.
Respond to inquiries instantly -speed wins the booking. Most direct-booking revenue is lost in the gap between a guest asking a question and someone answering it. An AI assistant or chatbot on your website and social channels can answer “do you have availability,” “what’s your pet policy,” “how far are you from the venue” the moment it’s asked, day or night- then guide the guest straight to the booking page. The booking often goes to whoever replies first, and AI replies in seconds while a competitor’s front desk is still asleep.
Personalize the offer to the guest in front of you. AI can read the signals -search dates, length of stay, whether it’s a family or a couple, a repeat guest or a first-timer, and tailor what you put in front of them: a midweek rate for the flexible traveler, a third-night-free nudge for the long stay, a local package for the event-goer. A generic rate competes on price alone; a relevant offer gives the guest a reason to book direct, right now, instead of clicking back to the OTA.
