A year ago, many conversations we had with hoteliers circled the same question: does AI really belong in my business?
Today that question has changed — what hoteliers want to know now is where to begin. That shift, from curiosity to commitment, is the biggest change we're seeing across the industry.
It’s not just a feeling. When we surveyed more than 400 hoteliers for our latest research, Navigating AI: Hospitality Shifts From Exploration to Execution, 85 percent told us they are dedicating meaningful budget to AI this year. That held true whether a property had ten rooms or more than a thousand. And the momentum is strongest in the region many RMS customers call home.
93 percent of hoteliers in APAC are dedicating meaningful budget to AI. The region is not following the curve - it’s setting the pace.
Where AI meets the guest first
For most modern travelers, AI enters the guest journey long before someone reaches your front desk. Travellers are now comfortable letting AI search for destinations, compare flights and even plan entire itineraries. As more people become AI-native, the expectation for this level of fast, personalized service will follow them to your property, too.
That’s why guest communication is the first place most hotels put AI to work. In our research, 58 percent of hoteliers ranked guest communication solutions as their highest priority for AI adoption, and more than two-thirds have already implemented AI for guest messaging or plan to within the year. It makes sense: hoteliers want to free the front desk from answering the same handful of questions. Guests don’t want to queue to find out when the pool opens. And drawing on a hotel-specific knowledge base to provide a fast, accurate answer is exactly what AI does well.
Agents, not just chatbots
The word “agentic” may sound overly technical, but the distinction is simple.
While a chatbot answers a single conversation in the moment, an agent works on a schedule to complete a task you have defined, inside the rules and guardrails you set. It doesn’t need a person to trigger it, which means it can answer a question or complete a booking whether or not someone is standing at the desk.
RMS handles every transaction, receipt generation, daily reconciliation*, and intelligent retries if a charge fails. You’ll get a notification only when action is required. And you’ll be able to see all incoming and outgoing transactions via the Automated Payments Dashboard in RMS.
Around a third of calls to a hotel go unanswered. That is revenue left on the table, night after night.
Voice AI, also known as an AI receptionist - now captures those calls, handles more than a hundred languages, and can process booking and payment from start to finish. Self-service kiosks do the same job at arrival, pulling the reservation straight from RMS, confirming details, scanning ID for protection against fraud and chargebacks, encoding the key and processing payment. A guest landing at one in the morning is no longer left waiting in an empty lobby.
Proof, across every size of property
The results are what showcase the true value.
Crowne Plaza Perth cut administrative work by 40 percent with Canary’s Guest Messaging and doubled its Tripadvisor reviews (which is a revenue driver in its own right). Elements of Byron, a luxury property in Byron Bay, saw 75 percent of guests choose Canary’s Mobile Check-In and has generated more than $250,000 dollars in upsell revenue. Von Trapp Family Lodge in Vermont, a property of under a hundred rooms, brought its response time down from nine minutes to thirty seconds. At the other end of the scale, Wyndham now handles more than 65 percent of its calls with Canary’s AI Voice. Different sizes, different classes, the same pattern: better guest experience and stronger revenue, together.
Your guest data, protected
Data privacy and system integration were the most frequently named barriers to AI adoption for hoteliers, and it is a fair concern. Your guest data is your most valuable asset, and no one should ask you to trade control of it for convenience. When using Canary’s AI solutions, the answer to this is easy. Because Canary works only with hotels, and because brands like Marriott and Hilton put our security through rigorous review, that same enterprise-grade protection reaches every property we serve.
The standards that satisfy a global brand should protect a fifteen-room independant just the same. Security is not a privilige of scale.
Start where it hurst, keep hospitality at the front
If you’re wondering where to begin, start with what already frustrates your guests and your team. Long hold times and ringing phones point to a solution like AI Voice or AI Guest Messaging, while an overwhelming number of online inquiries can be addressed through AI Webchat. Much of what you need to train your property’s AI, such as your FAQs and your brand standards, can be uploaded in bulk — that’s why properties often go live in days rather than months.
Find the quick wins, the small efforts that make a big difference, and build from there.
One principle matters above all the tools: AI should free you up for better hospitality, not replace it. Escalate the special requests and the sensitive moments to your people. The warmth a guest feels at your property is what they will remember, and it is what they will write about afterward.
That is the future I am most excited about. With Canary and RMS connected through a single platform, it’s one our shared customers can start building today.'
Download Canary's latest AI research: Navigating AI: Hospitality Shifts From Exploration to Execution
Visit Canary Technologies to learn more.
