Hotels, AI, and Building for Long-Term Economic Value

The Decision Brief Geoff Ballotti, President & CEO, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts Moderated by Sean O’Neill, Skift THE VERDICT Every hotel company is telling owners and franchisees that AI will improve their business. Ballotti is showing them the numbers. He said about 25% of calls into hotels are generally dropped. Wyndham’s AI Concierge, built on Salesforce’s Agentforce, picks up every call instantaneously. He also said 85% of callers stay with the AI agent and never transfer to a live person. The results: a 15% increase in booking conversion and a 16% increase in average daily rate on calls that do transfer to a live agent. Ballotti said these are not use cases but “these are real live benefits for our franchisees.” For any travel company with a franchise or partner network, there’s both an opportunity and a clear benefit of using AI now to deliver measurable value to their operators. PATHS FORWARD Deploy AI where revenue leaks. Ballotti said 25% of hotel calls are dropped and the average Wyndham hotel receives about 4,000 calls a year. The AI Concierge eliminated the drop and lifted conversion by 15%. Travel companies looking for an AI starting point should find the equivalent of their dropped call, a quantifiable gap where revenue is already walking out the door. Partner with best-in-class providers instead of building from scratch. Ballotti said Wyndham’s approach was “not believing that we could build it better than an Oracle or an Adobe or a Canary Technologies.” He said the foundation was a half-billion-dollar tech stack migration in 2016 that consolidated dozens of property management systems into two. His take was to modernize the stack first, then plug in the best tools available. Win Gen Z with simplicity and access. Ballotti said Gen Z has grown from 3% to nearly 10% of Wyndham’s revenue and membership base in about three years. Combined with millennials, the share has gone from the high 20s to 40%. He credited fixed-point redemptions and the fastest free night in the industry at seven to eight stays. WHAT TO WATCH Ballotti called extended stay “the most under-supplied product in our industry right now.” Echo Suites has hit 309 executed contracts against a 300 target, making it Wyndham’s fastest-growing brand. Occupancy, rates, and RevPAR are all up in extended stay more than any other US segment. The question remains whether the industry overbuilds the segment as multiple brands now compete. Ballotti’s AI results are specific to economy and midscale hotels where call volume is high, and staffing is thin. Whether the same ROI translates to upper-upscale and luxury properties — where guest expectations are different, conversations are more complex, and the 85% AI-resolution rate may not hold — is an open question for hotel companies applying the same playbook across their full portfolio. Access all the Skift Takeaways from this event, as well as full session videos, presentation documents, and more editorial coverage at our Skift Global Forum attendees hub.