Director of Voice Contact Center Systems
AI + Maestro™: Powering Wyndham’s next-gen guest experience
Wyndham’s Sr. Director of Voice Contact Center Systems and Collaboration, Joe DeLuca joined Bandwidth’s Chief Software Officer, Jeff Turner to talk about how they’ve launched seamless customer-facing generative AI experiences, with flexibility and resilience on the back end.
Personalized guest experience: Wyndham Hotels is leveraging generative AI to create smarter, more personalized interactions and drive value for its franchises.
Boosting direct bookings: New programs, Wyndham Connect and Wyndham Connect Plus, are designed to increase direct bookings and reduce reliance on third-party online travel agencies (OTAs).
Flexible and resilient call routing: Bandwidth’s Maestro platform provides Wyndham with a disaster recovery (DR) solution and flexibility by seamlessly routing calls to Canary’s voice AI, mitigating vendor lock-in.
Transcript:
[Music] [Applause]
David: Take a tremendous hospitality company like Wyndham Hotels and Resorts. Together with AI platform Canary and Bandwidth’s Maestro, they transformed the guest experience into something smarter and so much more personal. To tell you more about Wyndham and their approach to AI in the hospitality space, please welcome Joe DeLuca along with Bandwidth’s Jeff Turner.
[Applause]
Jeff: Joe, great to have you back here again at Reverb, two-timer. Thanks for joining us. So, last year on stage, you told us about your migration to the cloud, the foundation that (was) set for you. Tell us a
little bit more about how that enabled you to take your voice experience to the next level.
Joe: Well, thanks, Jeff. It’s great to be back. We have partnered with Canary Technologies for a voice AI solution. Now listen, this is not Wyndham’s first toe in the AI pond. Because we’ve been using AI both internally and externally for years, but this is the first customer-facing conversational AI that we’ve been using that uses generative AI in a large language model.
Jeff: Yeah, it seems like Gen AI is everywhere. We obviously love to talk about AI. Tell us a little bit about the business challenges you face in hospitality specifically, and how you use AI to address those.
Joe: Well, listen, AI is absolutely reshaping hospitality. Our focus is to drive value to our franchises, address staffing shortages, rising labor cost, and I got to tell you, ever-increasing guest expectations. So, this AI use offers the opportunity to improve efficiency, reduce workload, and it absolutely boosts customer satisfaction.
Jeff: Yeah, that’s awesome. So, I can see that being a big benefit to your franchises. What are some of the other key things you provide for them?
Joe: AI-powered hospitality being the future, right, we have introduced two separate programs—a Wyndham Connect and Wyndham Connect Plus that’s going to drive more direct bookings, reduce our OTA reliance and it’s based on three particular service pillars.
One is guest messaging and this is where our franchises can use SMS to connect with their guests both before, during, and after the stay. Then we have the QR code. QR code is fantastic, so guests could expedite the check-in process and avoid the lines at the front desk. And then most importantly, we have our voice AI. This answers property-related questions—Do you have a pet policy? What is it? You’re running a shuttle, you know, could we modify the booking? What are the area attractions? All that stuff.
Jeff: Awesome.
Joe: And so, we have actually migrated to date over 500 properties. And we continue to remain ahead of the technological curve against our competitors. That’s what I’m telling you. We’ve really only begun to scratch the surface.
Jeff: Yeah, that is tremendous progress and such a great use case for AI, I think. So, the real trick in doing this is prioritizing your uptime. So, you know, your foundation is set, your AI platform is there. How do you enable this in your call flows?
Joe: All right, so this is where Bandwidth has been instrumental for us. Utilizing Maestro, we’ve been able to seamlessly route calls from our CCaaS platform (Five9) to Canary’s voice AI. The great thing about this is it’s actually provided a de facto DR where we’re to maintain the continuity in our dial plan and ultimately mitigate vendor lock-in from that perspective. So, it’s completely flexible, and it’s been an incredible benefit for us.
Jeff: Awesome. We love to hear that. That’s why we’re here. Joe, love having this conversation. Really excited we have you here. Fingers crossed we can have you here again next year to talk about all the cool stuff Wyndham has done. Let’s give a round of applause for Joe, everybody.
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