Developing a custom GPT solution for Hoteliers
Boosting Revenue, Streamlining Operations, Optimizing Channel Management, and Enhancing Guest Understanding
GPTs are specialized versions of ChatGPT that can be customized for specific tasks or business needs. These models are hosted at a unique URL, run in the cloud, and can be created quickly by anyone, often in just a few minutes.
Setting one up is simple: You start by clearly defining what you want the GPT to accomplish using plain language. Then, you can upload documents or data that provide context or “train” the model, such as internal roadmaps, guidelines, or proprietary information. You also have the option to adjust its functionality, enabling it to perform tasks like browsing the web, using tools like Zapier for automation, or even interacting with APIs.
While standard ChatGPT is sufficient for most general tasks, custom GPTs offer more flexibility. If you need to work with proprietary data, fine-tune the interaction style, or share a purpose-built chatbot with your team, creating a custom GPT is the best solution.
How to create your own GPT
It’s really easy. Go here, sign up, click “Create” in the top right corner, and tell the AI what you want it to do.
Next, upload all the resources you need (this is a one-time process). Let’s say you are the general manager of a hotel, you can provide the following key information:
Guest demographics (age, nationality, repeat visitor status)
Booking trends (lead time, high seasons, weekends vs. weekdays)
Room preference and upgrades (types of rooms most booked, upgrades purchased)
Booking sources (direct, OTAs, travel agents, corporate bookings)
Guest reviews and feedback (from TripAdvisor, Google Reviews, in-house feedback forms)
Channel performance data (e.g., OTAs like Booking.com, Expedia, GDS, direct website bookings)
Commission rates and costs for each channel
Occupancy rates (historical and current)
Room rates (seasonal pricing, discount strategies, etc.)
Staff scheduling and payroll data
Inventory management for food, beverages, housekeeping supplies, etc.
🎯 Key Uses of GPTs for Hoteliers
1. Revenue Management: Maximizing profitability with AI insights
💰Yield optimization and dynamic pricing
GPTs can analyze market trends, competitor pricing, booking demand, and seasonality data to offer real-time insights on pricing strategies. By using advanced AI models, hotels can implement dynamic pricing systems that optimize room rates for maximum revenue while staying competitive in the market.
Automated Upselling and Cross-Selling
GPTs can deliver personalized upsell and cross-sell suggestions to guests based on historical booking data, preferences, and behaviors. Whether suggesting room upgrades, premium services, or special packages, AI-driven upselling can increase average revenue per guest.
Advanced GPT Prompts for Revenue Management:
“Analyze current room occupancy, market trends, and competitor pricing to recommend the best room rates for maximizing revenue.”
“Identify opportunities for upselling room upgrades or premium services based on guest preferences from previous stays.”
“Generate a report on the best-performing room types and recommend optimal pricing strategies for the upcoming high season.”
2. Channel Management: Optimizing distribution strategies
💻 Improved visibility on multiple channels
GPTs can integrate with a hotel’s channel management system to optimize visibility across online travel agencies (OTAs), direct booking platforms, and GDS. With AI support, hoteliers can optimize their channel mix to reduce reliance on high-commission platforms and prioritize direct bookings, leading to better profit margins.
Real-Time Market Positioning
GPT models can monitor real-time shifts in booking trends across different platforms and recommend changes in channel allocation. This allows hotels to instantly react to market fluctuations and adjust their distribution strategy accordingly.
Advanced GPT Prompts for Channel Management:
“Evaluate which OTAs or booking platforms deliver the highest ROI and recommend how to adjust our distribution mix to reduce commission costs.”
“Monitor room availability and pricing across different channels and suggest real-time adjustments to optimize direct bookings.”
3. Operational Efficiency: Streamlining Hotel Operations with AI
🤖 Automating Back-End Processes
By integrating GPT into your property management system (PMS), you can automate labor-intensive tasks like inventory management, staff scheduling, and report generation. This minimizes human error and allows staff to focus on high-impact activities that improve the guest experience.
Predictive Maintenance and Resource Allocation
GPTs can analyze historical data from hotel systems to predict when maintenance is needed before problems arise. This allows hotels to save on emergency repair costs and minimize guest disruptions.
Advanced GPT Prompts for Operations:
“Analyze staff performance data to recommend optimized scheduling for the next month, balancing labor costs and guest satisfaction.”
4. Direct Sales: Boosting direct bookings with personalization and targeted marketing
⚙️ AI-Driven Personalization for Direct Booking
GPTs can help craft hyper-personalized offers based on user behavior, booking history, and preferences, enabling hotels to increase direct bookings. By automating email campaigns, targeted ads, and personalized content on the website, GPT models can guide potential guests toward direct booking channels.
Conversational AI for Direct Sales
Deploying GPT-based chatbots on hotel websites can increase conversion rates by answering guest inquiries in real-time, providing booking assistance, and offering personalized promotions. These chatbots can handle complex inquiries, including multi-room bookings, event hosting, and special requests, thus increasing direct sales conversions.
Advanced GPT Prompts for Direct Sales:
“Generate personalized email offers for past guests based on their previous stays and behaviors, encouraging them to book directly with exclusive deals.”
“Analyze website user behavior and recommend adjustments to the layout or content to optimize the user journey and encourage direct bookings.”
Additional uses by Carlos Roldan Senior Sales Manager at Shiji
1.- Have conversations with your personas
👤 “Everyone has personas. You can take out your detailed guest personas—business travelers, families, luxury vacationers, etc.—compile them into a document, make it a PDF, and upload it to the GPT as knowledge. Then, you created a custom GPT to interact with these personas.
It can help: ↳ Refine service offerings and packages that match the specific needs of each guest type. ↳ Better understand and empathize with different guest segments, allowing you to anticipate their preferences. ↳ Develop targeted marketing campaigns and personalized communications for each persona, increasing direct bookings. ↳ Identify common pain points or suggestions that may have been overlooked in guest feedback, improving service quality. ↳ Guide the creation of new amenities, promotions, and loyalty programs based on each persona's desires and expectations”.
2.- Innovate Guest Communication and Offerings
“Train GPT on your hotel’s brand guidelines and past successful promotional materials. This gives it a strong sense of tone, messaging, and style that resonates with your guests.
Set up an automation: Use a Google Sheets → Zapier → GPT connection. Whenever you input a promotional email, chatbot script, or service description, GPT will generate two variants with different hypotheses, explaining why each variant might appeal to different guest segments.
Analyze the results: With a GPT → Zapier → Google Sheets connection, input the results of those experiments (e.g., which email got more bookings or engagement), and GPT will hypothesize why a particular variant performed better, offering insights on guest preferences.
Continuous learning: Upload a CSV of all promotional and service experiment results into the custom GPT, so it can continually improve its hypotheses by learning from past successes”.
📅Next industry events
Next week, on September 18-19, the Independent Hotel Show Miami will take place, offering a unique event tailored to the needs of luxury, boutique, and independent hoteliers.
First established in London in 2012, the show has become a key gathering for hotel owners, general managers, and operators, fostering collaboration, idea-sharing, and networking. With its recent expansion to Miami, the event now reaches a broader U.S. audience, providing a platform for hoteliers to access valuable insights and resources aimed at enhancing guest experiences and elevating their operations.
Some of the key players attending the event will be:
Cloudbeds: Booth: 512
Hilton: Booth: 120 (supply vertical)
Paraty Tech: Booth 536 (They will be hosting the opening night at Villa Azure on Wednesday the 18th, from 6:30pm to 9:00pm. For more info here)
Siteminder: Booth: 538
Pricelabs: Booth: 417