Leveraging Generative AI to Minimize Toil and Increase Joy

The HSMAI Foundation recently published a report, The State of Generative AI in Talent Management for Hotel Sales, Marketing, and Revenue Management, exploring the impact of generative AI on various facets of talent management, particularly focusing on the domains of hotel sales, marketing, and revenue management. This is an excerpt from the report.   

Hotel commercial teams across revenue management, sales, and marketing face daily operational burdens that diminish efficiency, job satisfaction, and retention. Generative AI offers a transformative opportunity to alleviate these repetitive tasks, allowing teams to refocus on strategic and creative endeavors. 

In revenue management, toil often involves manual tasks such as updating rate plans, consolidating data from multiple systems, and generating performance reports. These repetitive activities consume valuable time. Generative AI can eliminate the burden of these time-consuming activities, so teams can focus on more strategic activities such as crafting innovative pricing strategies, identifying hidden market opportunities, and designing guest- centered packages. This shift from operational drudgery to strategic thinking restores excitement to the revenue managers work.  

For sales teams, administrative burdens create another layer of inefficiency. Managers spend excessive time creating proposals, managing contracts, and updating systems with duplicate information. Sales teams are spending valuable time formatting presentations, customizing proposals, and maintaining CRM records, which ultimately reduces the time they spend selling. AI’s ability to automate these administrative tasks, enables sales teams to prioritize relationship-building and client engagement. With instant competitive insights during meetings, sales managers can conduct more impactful conversations, leading to higher conversions and deeper satisfaction in their roles.  

Marketing teams also encounter significant toil in their daily operations with routine tasks like scheduling social media posts, updating website content, and compiling basic performance metrics. With generative AI handling these mundane tasks, marketing professionals are rediscovering their creative spark. This allows them to focus on storytelling, brand development, and campaign innovation. Immediate feedback from AI analytics further enhances job satisfaction by showcasing the tangible impact of their creative efforts.  

The positive impact AI has on these commercial roles can foster genuine joy at work. As the Boston Consulting Group described in their study, this “joy effect” not only improves retention but also builds long-term commitment and innovation within organizations. By reducing toil and enhancing meaningful work, generative AI redefines the employee experience, ensuring teams stay engaged, fulfilled, and dedicated to success. Hotels that effectively address toil through AI and process improvements will experience better retention, enhanced innovation, and stronger business outcomes. The key lies in balancing automation with human input to ensure technology supports, rather than replaces, the strategic thinking that drives success in hospitality.  

Read the full report for even more insights into talent management using AI here: global.hsmai.org/research    

The work of the HSMAI Foundation is made possible with support from our Corporate Talent Partners.     

Michael Goldrich, Founder and Chief Advisor, Vivander Advisors, & HSMAI Foundation Board Member. Connect with Michael on LinkedIn.

This article originally appeared on HSMAI.