We are a quarter of the way through the 21st Century. Every year brings on something new and we hustle to adapt. One thing that is now ubiquitous, but which was once science fiction, is Artificial Intelligence.
Useful tools
I have had many stories from friends about how much it helps them, and how it has changed many things for the better. Other people criticize it for ethical or ecological reasons. We can certainly see why it can be helpful, and would not wish to condemn those who find it useful in their daily or work lives.
Indeed, we can use AI in its limited forms – like spell-checkers. Not everything has to be handled by a human, because that is exhausting! Even our washing machine is a “smart” machine which knows how much water to use in each load. However, AI often makes things difficult for us and can be frustrating in running our business.
Frustrating!
Some weeks ago, a guest contacted us because she wanted to cancel her reservation due to a change in plans. Since she booked through and Online Travel Agent, we were unable to make the cancellation, but we told her we would be happy to waive any fees if she cancelled the reservation through the website where she made it. Nothing further happened. Maybe she changed her mind? So, the next day, I contacted the OTA about the cancellation. No, she had requested the cancellation, and we confirmed waiving any fees. But nothing happened. The reservation still remained in our calendar and on the website.
After numerous phone calls to many different representatives, and many emails, the problem became clear. The OTA had Artificial Intelligence handling this system, and there was some sort of glitch. Their AI thought that the reservation was already cancelled. We could not convince the AI that the reservation still existed, despite the representatives of the Online Travel Agent being able to see that the reservation was still in place. There didn’t seem to be any manual override to make the cancellation.
You’re always talking to us.
This is one example of the frustrating nature of AI. There are many more. It’s almost impossible now to write emails or messages to our guests without our booking software or our travel agents insisting that we use AI to compose or schedule our missives. The problem, of course, is that our Guesthouse is a non-standard business in a non-standard building and most AI generated content is simply incompatible with us.
Therefore, you can rest assured that any email you get from us will be written and sent by us, personally. While we cannot control everything that the OTAs decide to do, we will do our best to make sure that you have a real human being at the other end of your calls and emails. We are not opposed to technology! Not at all. But there has to be a way to ensure that a real person has override capacity and that a machine is not making important decisions. Especially when those decisions concern our guests.
Recent Comments