Hoteliers are lagging in the innovation stakes

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“What we’re lacking in these big companies is this revolutionary thinking, this radical change,” he says, adding that “the reason we’re lacking it is because it’s very tough at the C-level’ and few are prepared to risk “doing something crazy.”

The industry has become fragmented, he continued, with customers having far more choice than they had previously. Consequently, there’s a lot less loyalty. “Most of the guests using our properties are much more savvy in the use of technology … than us actually providing it. So that’s probably going to keep us challenged.”

Disruptions have slowed

“I think disruptions have actually slowed, if not completely stopped over the last 10 years.” The internet as an ‘information retrieval and exchange system’ and the smartphone have been “somewhat derivative” and have not made us any healthier or happier, he says, whereas antibiotics and motorways have had a profound effect on “human lifespans, levels of income and how societies function, said Zia Chishti, chairman and CEO of Afiniti

“There’s a perception that AI will change everything but it’s not like that. AI is just a set of statistical tools and various incarnations of this have existed for the last 40 or 50 years. It’s just that the machines in which these tools run have become somewhat more advanced and more powerful over the years, but this is not a seismic shift. There’s no dramatic and disruptive event happening here. It’s just the slow and steady emergence of a technology that’s been around for quite a while.”

Robots have already appeared in some hotels, particularly in Japan. Suggest to Chishti, however, that robots may end up having a major impact on society as fewer people would be working anymore, and his response is “that’s not going to happen.”

“If you take all of the computational capacity that exists in the whole world today – every single smartphone, mainframe, supercomputer, every single PC and you put it all together – it’s approximately equal to the brain power of a dog. That’s an extraordinary figure if you think about it. The best estimate for the entire computational capacity in the whole world, approaching that of a human brain is five to seven years out. The best estimate for a single machine approaching human level intelligence is north of 30 years out. And the cynical view … I bet, it’s north of 50 years out.”

Redistribution of work

“What is more likely to happen is a redistribution of work. So, in many cases AI actually enhances human labour productivity and should increase labour demand. There are some areas where the increasing power of computational systems in AI will absorb labour capacity but it’ll do so in a manner that enables rather than destroys.”

“Symbolic systems are maybe 100 years out to compete. And between here and there – and the hospitality industry is part of it – we create a magical experience that borders on art and borders on beauty that enable our customers to come back. That just doesn’t get replicated by machines. The twinkle in the eye that a waiter has when they serve a particularly delightful meal will not be replicated by machines in the next 30-50 years, so I wouldn’t worry about it.”