Live! Casino & Hotel

Rob Esplen

Guest Experience Strategist

Think about some of your most memorable hotel or dining experiences. What do they have in common? Whether those memories center on a perfectly prepared filet mignon or a surprise turn-down service with candles and chocolates, they were made possible by humans. While almost everything else in our business has changed thanks to technology, the reality is that genuine hospitality centers on people and human connection.

How we are discovered often relies heavily on technology. A guest may see a restaurant on TikTok, book a reservation on OpenTable, order and pay for dinner on an iPhone and leave a Google review before leaving the property. As artificial intelligence increasingly becomes part of these steps, the challenge for operators is to make the most of emerging tools without losing the warmth of human interaction that makes service truly memorable.

In hotels and restaurants, AI is already doing the practical work of anticipating demand, monitoring guest feedback, managing pricing and finding useful patterns out of systems that do not always talk to each other. A revenue-management platform can help a hotel respond to booking trends. A restaurant reporting tool can connect what is happening in reservations, POS, labor and sales. Quick-service brands can move guests through the line faster through smarter ordering and demand forecasting. None of this is futuristic anymore. It is becoming part of daily operations.

In my work at Live! Casino & Hotel, I assess these tools by determining whether they will improve the guest experience and the day-to-day work of our Team Members. If the answer is yes, they are worth exploring. If they create distance between our people and our guests, then they are probably not right for us. Technology should never become the personality of a hospitality business. Instead, it should make room for the personality to shine through.

Some of the most useful improvements are not flashy. Handheld POS devices and pay-at-table technology, for example, can make a difference at the end of a meal. Guests can split a check without a long wait or confusing math, pay securely at the table and get back to the casino floor, a show, or the rest of their evening. Mobile pre-order and pickup, as well as 24/7 markets, work the same way. Someone coming out of a late concert or stepping away from a poker table may want something quick, fresh and easy. The goal is not to remove service, but to give guests more ways to get what they need, when and where they need it. In resort settings like ours, convenience matters and for many of our guests, speed is not the opposite of hospitality. It is part of feeling taken care of.

As excited as I am about these possibilities, the bigger opportunities may be hidden from guest view, in the back of the house. Food and beverage teams spend a lot of time looking at reports, sales trends, staffing needs and inventory questions. AI can make these processes much more efficient by quickly identifying where demand is building, which menu items are slowing down, or when labor schedules need a second look. In restaurants, inventory tools are already using sales history, weather, seasonality and local events to better predict what ingredients will be needed. That does not replace judgment, but it does give managers better information faster, so they can spend more time on the floor with guests and team members.

Training is another good example. Every team has standard operating procedures, but a binder or PDF is not always the best way to teach hospitality. Short training videos, especially for service steps, plating, or presentation standards, can make expectations easier to see and repeat. Used well, technology becomes a coach that creates consistency without taking away the personal style that great team members bring to their work.

This is the balance we have to protect. AI is good at eliminating friction with its speed, patterns and repetitive work. People are good at reading the room, showing judgment, using empathy and creating moments that feel personal. In hospitality, those human qualities are not a bonus. They are the reason guests come back.

The question in this new tech-driven era is not how much we can automate, but where technology can give our people more time to care. If AI helps a manager get out of the office and onto the floor, that is a win. If it helps a guest get what they need faster, that is also a win. If it makes service feel colder or less personal, we have missed the point. The future of hospitality will, without question, be smarter and more data-driven. But the heart of it will still be old-fashioned in the best possible way, with a guest walking away feeling seen, remembered and valued.