Accor Collaborates With AWS to Deliver Exceptional Guest Experiences

November 29, 2023 at 03:01 AM EST

Europe’s largest hospitality company works with AWS to enhance travel planning and booking, offering personalized recommendations and intuitive, conversational advice

At AWS re:Invent, Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company (NASDAQ: AMZN), today announced that Accor S.A., Europe’s largest hospitality company, has launched a first-of-its-kind generative artificial intelligence (generative AI) solution using AWS. Incorporating an intuitive conversational interface, Accor’s new Travel Assistant will empower guests to find the best experiences according to the style of travel they prefer, transforming the entire booking journey from inspiration to after their stay.

Expanding its relationship with AWS, Accor worked closely with experts from AWS Innovation Program, AWS Prototyping, and AWS Professional Services on a customer innovation program to reinvent the guest travel experience, beginning with the Travel Assistant product, which will be incorporated into Accor’s booking platform ALL.com. Using Amazon Bedrock, a service that makes multiple foundation models available via an API, and Amazon SageMaker, a fully managed service to build, train, and deploy machine learning (ML) models, this powerful AI platform will replicate an expert travel agent service from initial inspiration through ongoing service following a guest’s stay. The Travel Assistant engages guests in a tailored discussion, meticulously crafting and refining a proposal of experiences designed to enhance their journey. Beyond rooms, it unveils activities, special offers, and experiences, such as wellness, food, and beverage choices, that guests might overlook in a traditional search.

The Travel Assistant uses the ML and generative AI capabilities of AWS to learn from and pick up on guest preferences, allowing Accor to cater to the needs of multimodal guests, who combine business and leisure experiences into the same trip. Travel Assistant’s generative AI can recommend much more than just hotel locations and facilities, by using millions of online sources with information and trusted reviews to compile the most relevant local attractions across shopping, food, and entertainment. This enables Accor to offer guidance and inspiration to guests in the early stages of booking and guide them to its direct booking channels.

The technology will streamline the booking process down to a matter of minutes, while increasing conversion rate and revenues and reducing call volumes at Accor’s contact center. At the same time, it will further Accor’s commitment to enriching its ALL member experience and maintaining top-tier guest satisfaction scores. The Travel Assistant also reflects the commitment of Accor and AWS to the highest data privacy standards. Fully GDPR-compliant, it enables guests to enjoy personalized travel experiences from the start of their booking journeys, trusting that their personal data remains secure.

“Using Amazon Bedrock to develop our AI-based travel assistant demonstrates our commitment to offering our customers a wide universe of search possibilities but also simplified travel solutions,” said Jean-François Guilmard, chief data officer of Accor.

“At Accor, we strive to improve our customers' experience every day,” said Myriam El Harraq, senior vice president, Brands, User Experience and Innovation at Accor. “Our collaboration with AWS is part of our commitment to innovation and our determination to harness the latest AI technologies to make travel easier, smarter, and more enjoyable.”

“This is a powerful application of generative AI that demonstrates its potential to transform guest experiences, enabling innovation and helping businesses to do more,” said Steven M. Elinson, head of travel and hospitality at AWS. “AWS is working with Accor to anticipate and innovate what’s next using cloud capabilities. It’s great to see this technology deliver such impressive returns on investment, right from the start.”

About Amazon Web Services

Since 2006, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud. AWS has been continually expanding its services to support virtually any workload, and it now has more than 200 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management from 99 Availability Zones within 31 geographic regions, with announced plans for 15 more Availability Zones and five more AWS Regions in Canada, Israel, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Thailand. Millions of guests—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.

About Amazon

Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Amazon strives to be Earth’s Most Customer -Centric Company, Earth’s Best Employer, and Earth’s Safest Place to Work. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Career Choice, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, Alexa, Just Walk Out technology, Amazon Studios, and The Climate Pledge are some of the things pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit amazon.com/about and follow @AmazonNews.

About Accor

Accor is a world-leading hospitality group offering experiences across more than 110 countries in 5,500 properties, 10,000 food & beverage venues, wellness facilities and flexible workspaces. The Group has one of the industry’s most diverse hospitality ecosystems, encompassing more than 40 hotel brands from luxury to economy, as well as Lifestyle with Ennismore. Accor is committed to taking positive action in terms of business ethics & integrity, responsible tourism, sustainable development, community outreach, and diversity & inclusion. Founded in 1967, Accor SA is headquartered in France and publicly listed on Euronext Paris (ISIN: FR0000120404) and on the OTC Market (Ticker: ACCYY) in the United States. For more information, please visit www.group.accor.com or follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok.