Chris Silcock at Skift Data + AI Summit 2025 | Beyond the Booking: Using Data to Build Guest Loyalty

Yeah, and I think historically it's not an unfair suggestion that hotels have been behind the curve, in part because we've been focused on the experience, the human-to-human interaction, the service. But as you say, the foundation to enable the future that you just heard about is so critically important. We were fortunate enough about 10 years ago we started the shift of our core technology, that being our CRS, our distribution, our booking engines, into the cloud. And then COVID gave us the opportunity, amongst many not so good things, to finish that journey. So during COVID we achieved moving that distribution stack into the cloud, which gave us great benefits. Before that we were limiting traffic based on look-to-book ratios because of cost. That completely opened up; we can deal with as much traffic as can be thrown at us, through to the ability to then start connecting, especially as we then moved our property management system into the cloud, connecting the reservation with the on-property experience in a much more meaningful way. So going from selling a standard package which would be a room type or category, maybe with some other things thrown in, into selling a specific room type or a specific feature or benefit that a customer is really interested in. That's hard to do when you have property deployments of technology and connecting real time to see the availability and the inventory. So we're in that process now over the last couple of years, where over 5,000 hotels now have their property management system in the cloud. Huge benefits from what you can then offer a customer, but also huge benefits from innovation. We have 8,600 hotels across 139 countries, and if you have on-property technology trying to deploy a change, basically we can do one property management change a year. Now we can do two a month, three a month, so you can innovate much more quickly. The biggest benefit being what's coming now: when you have all your data in an environment where it can connect real time, you can suddenly start to use it in very different and meaningful ways. It's fantastic. So about 5,000 properties now, getting to 8,000 over the next year or two. We're at 5,000, we will get to near completion over the next couple of years. It's a huge milestone compared to where some of the major other peer hotel groups are.

Well, Hilton's strategy is around the stay. Hopefully you may have seen that in our advertising: we are for the stay. Because fundamentally, we believe we're not a tech company, but we deploy a lot of tech and we build a lot of tech. But we're not a tech company; we're a service company, a hospitality company, people serving people. So our strategy is to deliver a superior stay powered by technology as one part of that stay. The surroundings of that stay, the dream, the shop, the book, is going to evolve quickly. We believe there will be others who can do that and invest more in that than we can over time. So our strategy is if we have a superior stay, if customers know that when they stay in one of our 24 brands they're going to get a better actual physical experience, then whatever happens around us, whatever platforms develop in whatever ways, customers will make it clear to those platforms by their history, by their preferences, that whatever platform you choose to dream on, find me a Hilton brand. So fundamentally that's our strategy of superior stay, which in some way shields us from the evolution of dream, shop, book technology around us. And then from an AI perspective, we're focused on how do we improve the stay. I think it was said earlier, a lot of hype about dreaming and shopping and booking, and of course that will change dramatically over the next three, five, ten years. But we're focused on how do we infuse data and AI into the experience that customers have on property in a meaningful way that makes it better, that makes them tell their technology their preference, drives loyalty, drives higher returns, drives growth.

Yeah, I mean, we are. Thank you. Our strategy is brand-led. And don't get me wrong, scale is important, because customers want to consolidate their travel with companies they know can serve their need in any place at any price point for any occasion. So the platform is important, but brand-led is our strategy in order that customers know they will get a better experience. And by the way, we're big. We're not the biggest, but we got 8,600 hotels, 139 countries, 24 brands. We served a quarter of a billion customers last year. It's big enough. Size is important, it's not the most important thing.

Well, first off, how we show up in media is changing rapidly. From TV being the primary source of accessing customers to showing up with relevant friend-in-the-feed type content. We do a lot of listening, a lot of jumping in to solve travel problems real time. We find that garners us a return on investment far higher than any direct dollars we can spend on traditional marketing. We've started the pilots of enabling customers free form: I want this in this, not necessarily a destination, but at this honest price point or with these features or benefits. How can we use all of our data to then conversationally respond? We don't have that capability live; we've done some tests. The test outputs were not the best, but the learning was significant. So you'll see content explode, therefore access and knowledge of what you can get with Hilton everywhere. And then you'll see the ability for us to have conversations, digital conversations, more meaningfully with our customers and take what we know about them to change what they see from us. Right now, it's this that plays into hospitality being a bit behind the tech curve. Right now you open a hotel and you ask somebody in the hotel who is not an expert in content or marketing to write content about their rooms, about their experience, and they do it for one hotel once. We've demonstrated that you just feed that data into AI, it can produce more effective descriptions that play out in a better way and convert better. Not only can you produce one description, but you can produce a leisure description, a business description, a convention description. When we know what your interest is, we will surface different imagery, different text that satisfies exactly what you're looking for in a more personalized way.

Yeah, so over the last 18 months we transitioned our listening tools to much more modern technology. We used to do the post-stay survey, get it a week later, look at that data and give it back to the hotel so they could mine it to work out what they need to do differently. We now have micro-listening, so we know when you've checked in, we can buzz you with a five-star: was it good, bad, do you need to tell us anything? So throughout your stay, we deployed last year meaningfully and purposefully messaging technology to 99% of our hotels, so that customers can interact with us in a way of their choosing, whether that be text or WhatsApp or through our Hilton Honors app. Customers who interact with us via messaging have about a three-point improvement in customer satisfaction. So tick, good benefit. The more important thing is that rather than deploying it point-to-point, which it always historically has been a hotel talking to a customer, we route all that data through our engine. So now on a daily basis we are collecting millions of discussions that are taking place between a customer and a hotel. So now a GM can arrive in the morning and he will see the top five things he has to do in order to improve his customer experience. Next, we're taking that data, that treasure trove of data, and connecting it back into the property operation systems. So not only can we tell them what to improve, we can actually initiate the workflows and the activities in a hotel that lead to action by the people. So imagine a workflow being kicked off into the engineering department because we've seen a message that says there's a problem in a certain room. Part of the problem today is people get that information, somebody has to pick it up, somebody has to review it, somebody has to punch it into another system. The problem in the room might be a malfunctioning alarm, a fire alarm, heat, temperature, wear and tear, noise. But connecting that loop back to action is the key. How do you through technology put that information in the hands of the person whose job it is to then go and do something to change that outcome? Then you get from problem recovery to in-the-moment recovery of that situation before the customer has left the hotel. We see a problem solved during stay increases customer satisfaction by 30 points. And if you recover a problem, very often you get a more loyal customer than somebody who's never had a problem in the first place, because they trust that you're there for them.

No surprise, recognition is important. And strangely enough, simple things like we deployed messaging, we're deploying the property management system in the cloud, and we've deployed proprietary in-room technology on the TV, which is the most used digital piece of kit in a hotel stay. Just by acknowledging and recognizing the customer through the TV, a very simple process, it makes them feel like their stay has been more personalized, that you know who they are. Very simple. Second, the upgrade experience is critically important to our loyalty members. It's one of the key benefits along with the points and the redemption. Through more advanced forecasting and pricing capabilities, we can now forecast the specific availability of premier room types in advance of a customer's stay. Previously the hotels looked at their list and chose who they were going to upgrade. Now we can predict their upgraded room availability in advance. We do it 48 hours in advance. We will decide which customer on this day is going to get an upgrade, we'll tell them in advance, that takes away the anxiety of will I, won't I when I check in. And what we're getting to is not all stays are equal. Being upgraded to a suite when you're on a one-night business trip on your own is nice but of little value. But being able to determine that this is the stay that you're with your family and you want to become a hero and justify all the time you spend away, we can start to determine intent and not only make the stay better but make the traveler's family an advocate that the customer should continue to stay with Hilton because then they feel special because they get the experience that's beneficial all around.

Yeah, I mean agentic is the current buzzword and exciting. If you've listened to some of the ways it's being deployed in medicine, some of those conversations that took place were just incredible. The empathy that the agent has for the patient is incredible. So we think whether it be through digital communication, we're already using it in chatbots, which results in the simpler inquiries being answered faster, quicker, and more effectively. But the future of that for real conversational, I don't know if it's real if you're talking to an agentic thing, but it feels like real, is going to be huge. That's 12 to 24 months. Yes, okay.

On the left-hand side, really excited. And again, it comes back to the core strategy. If we are successful in our strategy that the stay is better, then whatever goes on around us digitally, if our customers are saying to it this is my preference, I get a better experience, I get recognized, I get a personal experience, then that will come to life within that technology. Most excited, as I've said, for us is how we can enhance the stay, the experience for the customer, the returns for the owners, and therefore further growth opportunity to serve more customers.

Yeah, I mean that where that falls down today is if we know that about a customer, kicking off the workflow that results in a person doing something. That's the bit we're starting to crack, bringing it back into the operational systems that enables team members to do something that makes the stay different. Team members will forever be a critical part of hospitality.