Hotelchamp creates AI “Autopilot” to personalize hotel websites

Hotelchamp, an Amsterdam-based startup that provides technology to drive direct bookings on hotel websites, is launching a new product to automate a personalized user experience.

Autopilot uses artificial intelligence to identify customer segments and then adapt what those users see on a hotel website based on their characteristics and behavior.

Hotelchamp was founded in 2015, and CEO Kristian Valk says the company works with thousands of hotels in more than 50 countries.

The Autopilot system analyzes anonymized data from those properties along with GDPR-compliant visitor insights, third-party pricing data and data from the hotel’s website, combined with knowledge from millions of A/B tests conducted by Hotelchamp’s data science team, to show users offers that have a high likelihood of leading them to book direct.

Valk says Autopilot is an enhancement to Hotelchamp's existing tools, bringing in more data and automating the process of generating relevant offers.

“It knows how the direct channel is behaving in the broader context of the ecosystem, for example metasearch,” he says.

“Combine that and put it next to the patterns we’ve found in the data sets that we’ve gained over the years, we are quite good in predicting not only who you are, what you’re intentions are, but - more important - that Autopilot is serving you dynamically the right message. Based on that and based on your behaviors after that, it learns more about you, and every time we find the next action.”

As Autopilot gets “smarter,” Valk says the system can help hoteliers uncover new opportunities to drive revenue.

“Personalization is already the standard that guests have come to expect from hotels. The challenge has always been how to deliver that on a website in a scalable and meaningful way,” says Valk.

“We believe that with this type of technology now available to the hotel industry, hoteliers can bridge the gap between the online experience and the personal service hotels are famous for - a website that knows what guests are looking for, even before they do.”