Dive Brief:
- Accor has launched ALL Concierge, an artificial intelligence-powered conversational travel tool designed to guide guests from “initial travel inspiration and hotel comparison through to booking management and post-stay support,” the French hospitality company announced Wednesday in a release shared with Hotel Dive.
- ALL Concierge represents the hospitality industry’s “first end-to-end conversational travel companion deployed at scale,” according to Accor. Following a pilot phase, the company will roll out the AI concierge across its global digital channels, including its ALL Accor website and mobile app and messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and iMessage, per a release.
- The launch is part of Accor’s broader AI strategy, tapping into travelers’ increased use of AI for planning and decision-making, Alix Boulnois, chief commercial, digital and tech officer at Accor, said Wednesday during an online press conference. Accor is among hotel competitors, including Marriott International, Hilton and IHG Hotels & Resorts, that have recently launched their own guest-facing AI-powered travel tools.
Dive Insight:
The ALL Concierge will act as an “intelligent companion that is always present and helps [travelers] make the right decisions with conversations that take only a few seconds to interact with and are completely smooth,” Accor’s SVP of Data Science and AI, Nicolas Maynard, said during the press conference.
The tool assists travelers along every point of their journey, starting with discovery, according to Accor. The virtual concierge provides tailored hotel and destination recommendations based on travelers’ “mood, needs and story,” per the company. It compares options by synthesizing guest reviews and hotel details.
At booking, ALL Concierge acts as a personal loyalty coach, providing guests with updated information on perks and allowing them to use points while finalizing their purchase. The concierge can also update a room reservation upon request.
Once a guest is at their hotel, the tool can provide detailed information and recommendations on the surrounding destination and answer questions throughout and after their stay. While using the concierge, guests will also have access to a human agent upon request and can naturally transition their conversation if that support is needed, Maynard said.
The new tool aims to “capture this growing willingness that customers have to interact with us differently,” Boulnois said. According to recent research from Allianz Partners, a growing number of travelers use AI to plan travel and expect “fast, intuitive and mobile-first interactions” throughout their trip.
The launch aligns with Accor’s broader AI strategy, which includes enhancing its AI visibility as the hotel search landscape evolves, according to Boulnois. In January, Accor launched its ALL Accor app in ChatGPT.
“Brands must be built for AI discovery,” Boulnois said. “The way people are going to discover brands, the way brands are going to express themselves, the way they’re going to engage with their customers and even their community is going to dramatically change over time.”
Over the coming months, Accor will enhance the ALL Concierge by making the tool available in “all” languages and adding experiences, Maynard said. This aligns with the company’s strategy to move away from a points-driven loyalty system to one that creates emotionally relevant, highly personalized rewards, per Boulnois.
“Loyalty is going to dramatically change,” Boulnois said. “If you look at loyalty programs today, especially in the travel industry, they are mostly transactional and rewarding the past … AI is going to enable us to do something more predictive, more personalized and more emotional.”
Hotel companies such as Marriott and Choice Hotels International are similarly tapping into guests’ emotions to drive loyalty.
In tandem with its launch of the ALL Concierge, Accor debuted The Butler, an AI-powered tool designed to serve hotel teams by “giving them instant access to the information, guidance, advice and recommendations they need” to assist guests, per the release.
As the tech landscape evolves, hotel players industrywide have ramped up guest-facing AI development this year and deployed AI across their organizations to assist owners and corporate teams.
