Hospitality revolution: more artificial intelligence and machine learning.
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In the era of hospitality 4.0, the world of the hotel industry and technologies must increasingly collaborate. To keep up, hotels, holiday homes and b&bs can no longer escape embracing the hospitality revolution and the advance of new technologies. The large chains, pioneers of hospitality, were the first to notice and intercept the technological trends underway, leading the way. Indeed, there are technologies, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, which are already used and applied in everyday life to improve the performance of individual structures.
Technological innovation is essential to implement a revolution in the hospitality sector
Research by McKinsey & Company and its economic research institute, the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) has estimated an increase in GDP of 13% over the next decade, equivalent to 228 billion euros: this is the contribution that innovation, and in particular artificial intelligence, could bring to the Italian economy by 2030. Conscious of the evident lack of innovation and of the importance of a revolution within the hospitality sector, Tommaso Centonze, Luca Rodella and Eugenio Bancaro, founders of Smartpricing, have created a software for accommodation facilities capable of calculating the selling prices of the most profitable rooms, using proprietary artificial intelligence. In 2022 alone, revenues and customers quintupled compared to the previous year, the software managed the record share of 1.5 billion bookings and 1 billion in turnover.
“AI algorithms are becoming increasingly accurate and will play an even more prominent role in the coming years. It is likely that all operational revenue activities will become automated while the person will remain fundamental in maintaining control and management of the software. In the case of Smartpricing, for example, the system learns new information also based on the actions that the hotelier himself performs on the platform” stated Luca Rodella, CEO of Smartpricing.
The future challenges to be faced in the tourism sector
After the phase of political uncertainty, the conflict in Ukraine and now with skyrocketing prices and thinned family budgets, holidays are no longer considered a luxury but a need by Italians. 2022, albeit with these premises, has nevertheless proved to be a good year for tourism recovery but, in fact, 2023 presents itself at the starting blocks as a year full of challenges. The preferences and dynamics of the market change, and with them inevitably the hoteliers. What was once hopeful uncertainty is turning into a courageous spirit of adaptation, to keep pace with an ever-changing reality.
For hoteliers, adopting new technological tools has now become essential to manage the business and make it thrive. It is essential to convey that investing in technology allows you to reduce costs and increase liquidity in the short term, applying small precautions and strategies to management activities to increase not only performance, but also turnover. We must therefore not be found unprepared, broadening our horizons, looking with confidence towards a new and different future perspective. The goal of Smart pricing it is safeguarding the value of the structure itself, leading to the development of certain digital entrepreneurial skills in the generation of new hoteliers to come.
Managed 1.5 billion hotel reservations in just one year
2023 opens in style for the Italian startup, in the last twelve months it has consolidated its presence in our peninsula and has begun to expand into other European markets, in particular in the one called DACH, Germany, Austria and German-speaking Switzerland. The use of their artificial intelligence software managed the room prices of over one thousand five hundred customers in hotels, holiday homes, residences and other structures in Italy and abroad. Data from the platform report that in the last year alone, around 1.5 billion bookings were made thanks to the software.
The growth went hand in hand with that of the internal team, which went from a few dozen at the end of 2021 to the current 97 employees. For 2023 there are over 20 applications open and for which you can apply. The talent search focuses on positions ranging from business development to customer service and sales, passing through HR management roles, information technology, not forgetting the creative areas related to copywriting and social media.
