The only reason GHotel Hotel & Living Bohum came to our attention was the mention of 'Fritz' - a virtual avatar that has been claimed by one of the research papers on AI to having transformed the hotel self-check-in. Apparently, Fritz was designed to help with 'a humanlike presence, providing information, and responding to enquiries, delivering customised recommendations, and engaging in small talk'.
We have not had a chance to check out Fritz, but what we had an opportunity to do was to communicate with an AI Assistant on the website of the above mentioned hotel, which in itself was rather 'outlandish', and not in a good sense of it. Hence, the GHotel Hotel & Living Bohum ending up on our list of 'How Not To'.
The AI Assistant widget that we found on the hotel's site is attributed to a certain DialogShift company based in Berlin, Germany. To be honest, we are not fond of Berlin as to our mind there is lots of empty 'talk' and not much 'walk' there, especially when it comes to different so called start-ups and innovative companies. But this is our personal opinion which might differ from the rest of the world. Now, back to the GHotel and the DialogShift creation - an AI Assistant who does not assist.
Our conversing with the named AI Assistant started with a simple request - 'Tell me about the hotel.' Here is what the Assistant replied:
Not bad, we thought and surged on. But little did we know... To the request of expanding on the types of rooms we got a very 'assisting' reply. Basically saying 'go check yourself':
Why we needed to visit the hotel's home page when we had the AI Assistant to assist us with our inquiries and provide all the information will remain a mystery. But as we are a persisting lot we still had another go by trying to bring the AI Assistant's focus to the specific type of rooms - Superior rooms, and asked the question: 'Can you tell me more about Superior rooms?' The answer given perplexed us further:
Apparently, the only feature worth mentioning about the Superior room in the GHotel was the minibar that is restocked daily, which apparently adds 'extra touch of convenience' to our stay. What other 'conveniences' the Superior type of room offered remained unknown to us. Further questioning in regards to the rooms took us deeper into the 'unknown.' Instead of hotel room rates we got a picture of a hotel room and a mention of 10% discount but on which price no one knows. The full answer stated: 'Through our hotel page, you will always receive a 10% discount on the accommodation price with the promotion code DIRECT! You can check the availability of your desired date right here, click or enter the promo code and book rooms at the preferential price.'
The inclusion of an image into the reply is good but since it is not attached to any specific rate or room it has very little meaning, if any at all. The message itself also means very little as without knowing the rates the discount of 10% is as useless.
We are not sure if GHotel or DialogShift realise but text-based AI Assistants, even in the form of a widget on a website, exist to communicate with clients by providing information, answering inquiries here and now, and offering recommendations that ideally prompt bookings. To our mind, sending a client to a website page and telling to check everything themselves is NOT considered to be helpful and undermines the very purpose of AI Assistants.
Further conversation with the GHotel AI Assistant revealed that to learn about breakfast we needed to locate the menu ourselves, as the Assistant was not trained to provide this information. To the question whether there is parking at the hotel, we were informed that there is and even given the prices but, at the same time, were told that it was not possible to reserve places at the parking as they were subject to availability. And right there and then, we were offered two options, one of which was 'book parking'. Perplexed by the illogical way of presented information we asked a clarifying question:
By asking 'someone from the team' the AI Assistant obviously failed to provide the assistance needed. We were not interested in talking to a member of the GHotel team, as it was not the purpose of chatting with their AI Assistant.
Whether the GHotel unhelpful AI Assistant is the fault of the hotel itself or the company which designed the widget for them is difficult to say, since we do not know the background of this particular AI Assistant creation. However, what became very clear in the course of this test is that such AI Assistants as GHotel has does not help or assist. Perhaps their function is purely decorative or serves to tick a box - 'we are now into AI', and shows the world that GHotel keeps the pace with the times. Either way, the GHotel AI Assistant is NOT the way to go.
The way to go is to train AI Assistants in a thoughtful, caring, and intelligent way with the end goal of creating a perfect customer experience.
For you to see the difference between the above mentioned AI-Concierge and the AI Assistant who is faster and more helpful, we have created two Testers which you are welcome to try out. Both testers are based on Claude 3.5 Sonnet LLM.
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