Imagine you’ve hired a new person to work at the reception of your cozy Alps hotel. The guest is a new arrival and sends the message, “I heard your rooms have breathtaking views.” What are they like and how much will it cost to upgrade them?
Seize this upsell opportunityYour new employee must:
- Rooms with views available
- Search for images of these rooms, ideally with the scenery seen from the windows.
- Choose the best one for the guest
- You can describe the features of the room and the view.
- Upgrade the guest’s room and inform them of the cost
Consolidating information can be difficult, especially for new staff. Even the most experienced staff can be slowed down if room or image details are not readily available.
Imagine a tool which understands your inquiry, scans hundreds files in a matter of seconds, extracts relevant images, creates a description and checks pricing and availability.
It’s as simple as reviewing, making any final changes, and sending it on to the guest. Imagine this exchange between the guest, a chatbot and no human involvement.
Multimodal AI is a powerful tool.
What is AI multi-modal?
Multimodal AI represents the next generation of AI systems This software can simultaneously process and integrate data in different formats and types.
Multi-modal AI, for example, combines all of the data stored in a hotel’s systems to produce outputs that are more rich and contextually relevant.
Nikhil Shah is Cloudbeds Head of Data Science. He explains how multimodal AI “transforms virtually any type of content to numerical data points that reside in what’s called an embedding area.” The content is represented as vectors in the embedding space, be it room images or voice notes. It allows hoteliers create a comprehensive knowledge base specific to their property and search for anything with a single bar of text.
As an example, platforms like ChatGPT can create a picture from a textual message or create a graph from a dataset. Multimodality also includes integrating different data points.
If I say to ChatGPT “I will be going to Paris next week”, it’s a good example. I like museums, enjoy good food, prefer walking tours, and love to visit historical sites. You can create a plan for my two-day trip, taking into consideration the weather. Although the exchange seems to be text-based, it actually integrates several data points. My interests, my destination, the date, and the weather.
Applications in different industries
Globalization is a global phenomenon. multimodal AI market size The market is expected to grow by 32.3% per year, reaching $8.4 billion in 2030. These are some examples of other industries using it.
Healthcare
Multimodal AI can detect anomalies in X-rays and integrate them with other medical tests, genetic markers and the current condition of the patient to determine risk and provide a diagnosis.
eCommerce
Multimodal AI integrates data from different sources—in-store cameras, website interactions, purchase patterns, and social media—to gain deeper insights into customer behavior, personalize their shopping experience, and recommend products.
Agriculture
Farmers are already using satellite imagery, sensor readings and weather data to optimize their practices and inputs. Multimodal AI combines this data to create a single system that allows farmers to compare satellite images of crop health to soil conditions, weather forecasts, and irrigation decisions.
Transportation
GPS provides precise location information and route optimization. This is standard for fleet management. Multimodal AI improves on this by integrating video feeds for identifying obstacles, radars to measure speed and distance, and lidars (Light Detection And Ranging) that create accurate 3D mapping of the surrounding area, making operations safer.
Finance
Multimodal AI enhances fraud detection through the combination of transaction data, spending patterns and geolocation. If, for example, a credit card transaction is made in a foreign city while the phone’s geolocation shows the user in their hometown, the AI flags this activity as suspicious and compares it to historical spending patterns, ATM footage, or other surveillance data.
Why is AI multimodal important for hotels
Adam Harris is the CEO of Cloudbeds said on the Hotel Tech Insider podcastFive pillars are essential to a successful hotel. The first three have been around for a long time: attracting new customers, improving guest experience, and improving hotel operations. The fourth pillar of the hotel industry is data. The digitalization has made it easy to find data in hotels. This abundance, however, risks being siloed on too many platforms.
Data is everywhere. Harris pointed out that a typical hotel has 19 systems. This challenge creates the need for the fifth pillar: intelligence—the ability to control all the data points generated by the other four and derive insight from them. Harris said that harnessing AI in the right way can create superhuman front desk employees, better guest experience, better ways to reach guests, higher revenues, and better customer journeys.
Multimodal AI is a key technology. Communication in multiple formats has been a hallmark for human interaction since the beginning. Multimodality transforms AI, from smart software to an expert assistant. It brings it closer in terms of how humans operate and think.
Multimodal AI systems are better able to cope with noise and missing data. When one modality is unavailable, unreliable or incomplete, other modes can be used to provide consistent and accurate results.
Five ways hotels can benefit from multi-modal AI
Multi-modal AI has endless potential in the hospitality industry. Here are five of its potential uses.
1. Answering guest queries
If a chat guest asks what gym equipment is available, AI can locate and retrieve images or videos, create a description text using them, then send it to the customer. This approach uses both visual and textual information to quickly deliver accurate and engaging responses. enhancing the guest experience.
2. Upgrade your services and amenities
The AI can use visual and contextual information (e.g. room availability, number of travelers, etc.) to suggest an upgrade to a larger family room that has more space and features. The AI will confirm the booking if the traveler accepts. payment link automatically.
3. Event planning: Improved event planning
Multimodal AI is able to review images and videos of past event layouts. guest feedback It is helpful to note what works best. This allows teams to replicate the best setups for events such as weddings, conferences, and corporate events.
This functionality supports the configuration of rooms. AI can alert housekeeping if, for instance, a couple is celebrating their anniversary. The team will then be able to configure the room according to previous setups. This could include a chilled bottle champagne and rose petal.
4. Maintenance
Multimodal AI can analyze diverse data sources—maintenance logs and images or videos —to detect and address problems in hotel rooms, such as clogged drains or weak wifi.
For example, if a guest comes to the front office to report that the tap is leaking, maintenance could request a photograph before investigating to decide on a course of action. The front desk can thank the guest and give them a voucher for compensation after the problem is resolved.
5. Ad optimization
Before Launch a marketing campaignMultimodal AI can analyze previous data to determine the best visuals and messages. These data are used to create ads and landing pages that are highly engaging.
Cloudbeds: Multi-modal AI transforms hotel operations
Cloudbeds Intelligence (also known as Cloudbeds Intelligence) is a layer of AI built into Cloudbeds that uses causal and Multimodal AI to optimize time and cost, improve guest experience, and boost revenue.
Cloudbeds Intelligence uses multimodal AI for staff training, enabling teams to standardize processes, and quickly respond to guests’ queries to increase guest satisfaction and maximize revenue-generating opportunities.
Cloudbeds
Cloudbeds is a leading platform that redefines the concept of a PMS in the hospitality industry. It serves more than tens thousands of properties worldwide, across 150 countries. Built from the ground up to be masterfully unified and scalable, the award-winning Cloudbeds Platform brings together built-in and integrated solutions that modernize hotel operations & finance, distribution & marketing, guest experience, and revenue & analytics. Cloudbeds, founded in 2012, has been recognized as a top hotel PMS and channel manager by Hotel Tech Report (2021-2025), World Travel Awards (2022), and Deloitte Technology Fast 500 (2024).
