Hilton and Universal Music Group share their early AI wins
Hospitality and the music industry intersect every time a guest walks into a hotel listening to their favorite artist on their earbuds, or when they’re sitting poolside with the latest hits playing on rotation. Then there’s artificial intelligence (AI), which is also showing up in both sectors as brands like Hilton and Universal Music Group seek to enhance customer experiences (CX).
Speaking during a session at last month’s NRF ‘Big Show’ in New York, representatives from the two firms said AI was a key focus area as they try to deepen customer engagement and respond to the needs of their marketing departments. Reaping the benefits, however, is prompting a hard look at the state of data readiness, how to bring teams together and determining which use cases to prioritize.
At Hilton, for instance, the company needs to deploy AI while taking into account the needs of multiple brands, hundreds of millions of its Honors loyalty program members and other guests.
“We are sitting on mounds and mounds of data, but where we were sitting is that the data was very siloed by channel or by system,” Holly Moreland, Hilton’s senior director of MarTech product, told the NRF audience session, which was hosted by CDP provider Treasure Data.
“What we knew about you and how we interacted with you on email was different than web, different from (when you are) on property.”
Hilton has since centralized that data to get a single view and integrate it back out to those marketing through its digital channels. The next step, Moreland said, is taking stock of Hilton’s overall “data maturity,” and figuring out whether it can effectively use that data with AI tools to deliver what the organization needs. This could influence the way guest profiles are designed, she added.
Standardizing data and spotting customer identifiers
Universal Music Group’s senior director of product management Shailesh Mohanty said for his firm, each artist represents their own brand, and data has to not only serve them to drive more fandom but extend through more than 50 territories in which it operates. This has led to a project whereby UMG has standardized how it collects and ingests data.
“We also want to learn what are the identifiers that can ‘connect the dots’ so we can better understand our own story,” he said. “We’re constantly hearing from marketers who want us to build things. The time to deliver has shortened a lot and faster delivery is now a big part of the equation.”
That said, Mohanty said AI should only be deployed as brands understand where to invest and how to ensure the technology has appropriate boundaries. UMG has formed an AI advocacy group dedicated to this purpose, he said. Given the pace of AI change, meanwhile, he said his team relies less on an annua plan and has moved to quarterly planning.
Moreland said AI has affected the way Hilton prioritizes and plans too. This not only includes deciding if teams have the capacity to take a new AI project on, but what the interdependencies are across various lines of business. While Hilton may focus on its business-to-consumer (B2C) segment, for instance, it also operates B2B services, and many of those clients are Honors members too.
Bringing on AI requires sketching out what the “before” and “after” will look like, Moreland said.
“We did the road shows, and the teams nodded on the concept and were supportive, but for the teams that were going to be directly activating in these systems, there was not enough change management about what it would actually mean,” she said.
Recognizing in-the-moment rewards opportunities
As employees have gotten more comfortable with AI, Moreland pointed to early wins from having all Hilton’s engagement and interaction data in one place to provide a dynamic view of the customer.
“If you’re on our site and browsing for a two-night stay, we can see that they’re two nights away from achieving Diamond status (in Hilton Honors),” she said by way of example. This can lead to better service for the customer while serving the business too.
Mohanty said UMG is benefiting from deeper engagement and personalization through AI in areas such as signups and purchases. Perhaps even more importantly, the company now has the data to validate the strategic decision it takes and change tactics when needed.
“It’s allowing us to build more signals about our fans that didn’t exist before,” he said. “We see a lot of pluses in terms of how we can leverage data as we go forward.”
