Hospitality and AI might seem like an odd couple, but Chris Kremzir (’06) and his team at Hyatt Hotels Corp. are working to implement machine learning while prioritizing a people-first vision.
As regional vice president of sales operations — also known as sales enablement — Kremzir assesses the needs of Hyatt’s greater global sales team. The team’s tasks include introducing new data programming and technological tools.
Kremzir got his start with Hyatt before graduation. He recalls a trip to New York City his senior year, funded through a scholarship and Hyatt. He and his fellow Hart School students were invited to stay at the Grand Hyatt and attend a presentation. But the trip soon turned into an interview, and he was offered a place in Hyatt’s corporate-management training program.
Right after graduation, he learned of an opening with the company in Chicago, Illinois, and took his first trip to the Windy City, which he would end up calling home for the next 12 years. Coincidentally, he started at the world’s smallest Hyatt and eventually moved to the largest.
Next was a brief stint in San Francisco, California — still in the hotel business — before returning to Chicago about eight years ago to work in Hyatt’s corporate offices.
His early roles were technology-based and later evolved to more broadly encompass sales operations. He feels lucky, even after the shift to corporate work, to remain close to customers — a core aspect of hospitality for him.
Kremzir pushes back on the notion that corporate work renders you out of touch with clients. “I think the thing I love about my job most is that it’s actually very critical to my success and my team’s success that we are very plugged into what’s happening in the field.”
Following the COVID-19 pandemic, Kremzir noticed that data reflected a notable change in consumer demands. There was a newfound expectation of urgency among customers to hear back from hospitality staff members after reaching out for information on booking an event space.
“We actually have data that tells us if you respond within a certain window of receiving a lead, you have double the chance of securing that piece of business, just because everyone’s trying to move really, really fast these days,” he shared.
Kremzir and his team started questioning how machine learning may support them in the face of this new consumer trend. “We can’t just shoehorn AI into our business just to say that we’re doing it,” he said. “It’s really important that it serves a meaningful purpose or that it’s solving a problem your colleagues have or your customers have; it needs to be creating a better experience somehow.”
They discovered there was a lot that AI could do on this front, particularly in the sales space, when it came to maximizing profitability by finding gaps in the booking process and maximizing usage of event spaces. Customer-service response times can make all the difference in landing a sale.
“In general, our salespeople take a very data-driven approach to the way that they evaluate leads and the way that they evaluate business,” he said. “Those working in sales are posed with the question, ‘How do I take a couple hours to research this one piece of business, when this is one lead out of 10, and I’m expected to respond to all 10 of these leads today?’”
Their team believes they have developed an AI-powered system to address this — although not one that customers directly interact with.
“One of the AI tools that we’re building essentially takes all of that work off of a seller’s plate,” Kremzir said. “[The AI] scans all that data and all these reports that are in different systems … and it helps evaluate the lead and even sometimes points out things that a person might not notice when they’re looking at some of this data. … [T]hat helps our salespeople respond to leads with a lot more speed and accuracy.”
Kremzir stresses that the plan is not to replace human-to-human elements of the travel experience. “I have been telling my team from the start that it’s a nonnegotiable, in my mind, that we need to remember we need people doing people things, because we are a hospitality company,” he expressed.
This new tool serves to streamline the behind-the-scenes operations of the booking process for Hyatt employees and their customers while still relying on the expertise of the salesperson. “AI is not making any final decisions, nor is it directly interacting with our guests or our customers,” Kremzir said. “People are still at the forefront.”
To Kremzir, successful AI implementation lies in quicker response times and conversion rates. “We know our customers want faster, more accurate responses. They want to make decisions quicker. So if we’re looking at how swiftly we respond back to those customers, and the fact that hopefully we’re converting more to leads that come into us, those are our immediate success metrics.”
Currently, this project is in its pilot phase, with early-stage implementation in hotels being studied and compared to the results obtained through control groups. So far, results are promising, showing statistically significant improvements.
“If our salespeople can be more efficient and are getting help researching their leads and prioritizing their leads, which means they’re getting back to customers faster, and we’re helping customers make decisions faster … I mean, that’s a win for everybody, right?” Kremzir said.
Recently, he has been reflecting on his years at JMU as a Hospitality and Tourism Management major. “I didn’t realize it at the time,” he said, “but at JMU, I felt like we were really encouraged to experiment and try things, not to be afraid to put ourselves out there.” It’s a kind of motivation that he thinks translated seamlessly into his professional career.
“I’ve seen a lot of workplaces, at Hyatt in particular, especially since COVID-19, embrace that mentality and that culture of experimentation,” Kremzir said. “You need to feel comfortable taking chances and making informed, independent business decisions.
"And coming from a school like JMU, we should have a lot of confidence in our ability to make sound decisions, because [JMU] does such a great job preparing us for that.”
