Hotel AI: How to Help Guests Plan Better Trips

Post-pandemic travel is not returning to pre-2020 norms. One of the most marked changes is that personalization and customization have become much more important to travelers. Among tour operators, 56% have reported increasing interest in custom tours, a change that reflects the shift toward trips designed to involve unique, memorable experiences as opposed to traditional all-inclusive packages.

As travelers seek more specific, personalized experiences, AI is reshaping how they search for and book trips. Recent data emphasize this trend: 87% of survey respondents want AI to offer specific, reliable recommendations, while 82% want it to surprise them with suggestions they wouldn’t otherwise have found or considered.

These preferences suggest that integrating AI into hotel property search could have a significant impact on travel planning, particularly as hotels focus on making the discovery process more inspiring and the booking process more efficient.

For hotels, implementing AI technologies is an essential upgrade. If you’re looking for ways to help guests avoid sorting through search results that aren’t relevant to their travel goals and access an easier trip planning experience, Mobi Intent Driven Search™ might be the solution.

Let’s explore how adopting AI-driven travel search can help you meet changing travel demands, expand on traditional methods, and open up new opportunities for your guests to plan their best possible trips.

The Current State of Hotel AI Solutions

Artificial intelligence is already making major waves in industries like retail, finance, and healthcare, where it’s often applied to automate processes, improve business and product decisions, and simplify self-serve customer experiences.

However, the hotel industry is still in the earlier stages of bringing AI into its operations. While some hotels see the potential of features such as chatbots, virtual assistants, and smart room technology, many are still assessing AI tools and weighing which use cases will deliver the most value for their guests.

That leaves many of the potential applications of hotel AI untapped. Mobi.AI presents a clear vision to fill this gap in the form of AI-powered search. Mobi Intent Driven Search™ paves an innovative path for hotels by giving them a clear use case (personalized travel recommendations along with easier planning and booking) and building the technology they need to implement it.

If your organization wants to remain competitive and provide a superior experience, adopting the latest innovations in AI for hotels could be the key.

Guest Challenges with Travel Planning

Travelers face an overwhelming number of options when it comes to destinations, accommodations, and activities. With so much to decide, your guests likely struggle to finalize plans, and they might even feel frustrated with the process instead of excited to travel.

Today’s travelers need a faster, more straightforward way to find what they want—and hotels are perfectly positioned to help them overcome this challenge.

The current standard in the industry typically involves searching for stays based on a pre-established destination, date range, and number of guests. That means research and planning have to come first—before guests ever reach your website.

By offering flexible, personalized travel recommendations based on each traveler’s preferences, such as suggestions for relevant activities, local attractions, and tailored accommodations, you can ease the work of planning a trip from the very beginning. With convenient trip planning that helps them achieve their travel goals, guests will likely be able to enjoy more fulfilling and memorable experiences.

The Growing Need for Hotel AI in Travel Planning

As AI and natural language search become more common across platforms that your guests use every day, such as for online shopping, customer support, and more, consumers will grow accustomed to receiving detailed answers based on direct searches—and might even come to expect the same ease of use in travel planning. Instead of filling in form fields, people are increasingly adapting to entering exactly what they want in their own words.

For example, a traveler might search for “Five-star hotels with a rooftop pool and Michelin-starred dining within walking distance.” As AI technologies become more popular, your guests might expect a tailored list of recommendations that match those criteria. Open-ended searches are quickly shifting from a luxury to the norm.

By integrating AI-powered natural language search paired with rich location data about every property, hotels can meet evolving guest expectations by allowing them to describe their ideal trip and access highly personalized results in return. This could cut back on the time they spend researching and increase booking confidence.

The Shift from Traditional Travel Search to Intent Driven Search

Historically, travel searches have relied on a rigid format: enter your dates, location, and the number of travelers, then scroll through pages of results. While this system provides hotels with the basic information they need, it’s highly commodified, puts pressure on room prices, and often leads to sharing revenue with third parties. It does not offer a personalized, engaging experience for travelers. Guests today are less interested in sorting through generic options and want instead to find trips that accommodate their preferences and travel goals.

Intent Driven Search is built to interpret the real intent behind the traveler’s search. Whether a guest is looking for an adventurous family vacation or a city getaway for a group of friends, AI can instantly sift through millions of data points about locations and properties to present options that align most closely with the traveler’s vision.

This approach expands search options beyond basic filters to offer a richer and more relevant travel search and booking experience. Instead of finding it tedious, your guests might begin to feel inspired.

Offering More Meaningful Recommendations

One of the standout features of hotel AI integrations for travel planning is the new opportunity to offer unexpected yet highly relevant recommendations. Intent Driven Search from Mobi can reference more data to find matches that a traveler might not have known about or thought of before. Someone booking a trip to Paris might not initially plan to visit less touristy neighborhoods, but their search results could end up recommending charming local spots that are closer to their interests in activities around art and culture.

This chance to surprise guests helps hotels build more memorable and tailored experiences. With so many data points to pull from, guests can receive surprising AI-driven suggestions that still match exactly the travel experiences they’re looking for.

The Future of Hotel AI in Travel

While it’s still just beginning to enter the hospitality industry now, the influence of AI is only going to increase. Hotels that implement AI-driven search tools early will gain the competitive edge of delivering high-quality guest experiences and personalized service that encourage long-term guest loyalty.

AI continues to evolve, and every industry is finding new ways to introduce it to their systems and processes. For travel and hospitality, new technology enables even more seamless cooperation between digital tools and on-property teams. By allowing hotels to understand and cater to guest preferences from the very beginning, the right hotel AI solutions can help travelers plan the best activities, accommodations, dining options, and more for their trips.