RIYADH: Artificial intelligence will soon recommend personalized services to hotel guests based on their previous stays and preferences thanks to its emerging hyper-personalization features, revealed the CEO of a US-based AI insights company. Speaking at the Future Hospitality Summit in Abu Dhabi on Monday, Esquire AI CEO Cenk Sidar told Arab News that technological developments will allow market players to provide customized solutions. “Hyper-personalization is an important subject for travel and would require millions of dollars of investment now that there are hundreds of large language models like ChatGPT,” said Sidar. According to Amsterdam-based hospitality technology company User Guest, personalization drives performance and better customer outcomes. Companies that grow faster drive 40 percent more revenue from personalization than their slower counterparts. User Guest’s tool utilizes advanced data analysis to identify guest preferences and behavior patterns, allowing hotels to offer highly personalized experiences tailored to each guest’s needs. For instance, if a guest is searching for a last-minute booking, the hotel can offer a special rate for those dates while optimizing its occupancy needs. “Any solution that would provide simplicity and convenience to the end user will have a competitive edge,” added Sidar. He revealed that the more data is collected, the better the understanding and analysis will be, consequently contributing to devising the appropriate solution. Sidar envisaged this kind of technology becoming commonplace in the coming years. Branded residences Speaking at another panel on branded residences, Turab Saleem, head of hospitality, tourism and leisure advisory services at Knight Frank in the Middle East and North Africa, shed light on the power of the brand. “You easily get an average of 18 to 25 percent increase in value by switching from non-branded to branded,” Saleem highlighted. He spoke about how even with two developments right next to each other, the branded one fetches 50 percent better pricing. Centered around the theme “Focus on Investment,” the summit serves as a catalyst for change, facilitating interactions among over 1,000 hospitality leaders through debates, dialogues, initiatives and announcements. Hosted at the Hilton Abu Dhabi Yas Island, the agenda for the three-day event includes contributions from more than 150 speakers in panel discussions, one-on-one interviews, roundtables, innovation pitches and student-led sessions.