UCF Rosen College of Hospitality Management and Datanautix Partner to Deliver Artificial Intelligence to Local Hoteliers
Winter Springs, Fla. (May 23, 2018) – As a world-class institution focused on educating the hospitality leaders of tomorrow, UCF Rosen College of Hospitality Management has also been working with Winter Springs-based Datanautix to teach their AI-powered engine, Ana, about hospitality.
The results are bringing the use of artificial intelligence to hoteliers in the Orlando area, giving them a resource to ensure they provide their guests the ultimate service while visiting Central Florida.
“Ana is like any one of my students as she learns more over time and becomes better.” said Dr. Fevzi Okumus, CFHLA Preeminent Chair professor at UCF Rosen College of Hospitality Management. “My challenge with Ana was to design a test that would measure her performance like I do with my students.”
To see how good Ana was, the team at the college gathered open-ended, online reviews for a group of Orlando-area resorts and ran three experiments.
First, the data was given to a graduate student who used common tools and techniques to interpret the comments from the online reviews. This graduate student represented the typical analyst companies hire in their marketing analytics teams.
Next, the data was given to two hospitality professors using more sophisticated tools and techniques to analyze the same data and apply the best thinking in academia to interpret the results. The professors represented the types of external consultants companies hire to do a deep dive on their guest experience data.
Finally, the data was given to Ana, the AI engine, and Neel Patel, her creator. This team is a proxy for the potential future of guest experience analytics in hospitality.
In less than 15 minutes, Ana was able to uncover the same insights it took the team of professors over a day to analyze. As for the graduate student, the student spent well over a week working on the same data. While the dataset only had about 4000 comments, Ana could just as easily have gone through 100K+ comments in the same amount of time –no human powered team was willing to go head-to-head against Ana on that large a dataset.
“The results were surprising,” said Okumus. “Ana performed almost as well as the team of professors and outperformed the graduate student in terms of deriving actionable insights from the data. More importantly though, she was able to do it in less than 5% of the time. I would certainly give her an A for this.”
The test program used data from some of Central Florida’s leading hotels, including Grande Lakes Orlando and Rosen Hotels. Those hotels will be using the insights garnered from Ana in this test and in the future.
“We are very excited to be working with Ana, both for the insights she can provide and the speed in which she does it,” said Jim Burns, vice president and managing director. Grande Lakes Orlando. “This will focus our leaders on the things that can positively impact our guests and give them more time to focus on implementation of solutions vs. analyzing data.”
Ana has also been used by many leading organizations to determine customer feedback in an expedited manner. Other companies using Ana include Yale School of Management, the Orlando Magic and the University of Central Florida.
“Having Ana’s capabilities validated by an external team of experts is extremely valuable to us as a company” said Neel Patel, CTO, Datanautix. “Ana is built on the premise that she becomes smarter over time by guided and self-learning.”
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For more information, please contact:
Dr. Fevzi Okumus, UCF Rosen College, 407-903-8177, fevzi.okumus@ucf.edu
Sanjay Patel, Datanautix, 407-619-3411, sanjay@datanautix.com
Rafael Caamano, UCF Business Incubation Program, 407-408-4297 rafael.caamano@ucf.edu
Alan Byrd, Alan Byrd & Associates, 407-415-8470, alan@byrdconnections.com
About UCF Rosen College of Hospitality Management
The UCF Rosen College of Hospitality Management located in Orlando, offers students an unrivaled opportunity to learn and work in the heart of hospitality. Ranked #2 among hospitality management programs worldwide, Rosen College has been an educational leader for over 30 years. Uniquely positioned in America’s top tourism destination, we educate the next generation of industry leaders through internationally recognized faculty, innovative academic programs, cutting-edge research and strong industry and community partnerships. To learn more, visit hospitality.ucf.edu.
About Datanautix:
The Datanautix Ana platform helps companies quickly understand what matters to their customers by leveraging the power of open-ended feedback. Built on the latest artificial intelligence technologies, Ana has helped organizations like the Orlando Magic, JW Marriott, UCF and the Orlando Airport keep their finger on the customer’s pulse. For more information, visit www.datanautix.com.
About the UCF Business Incubation Program:
The University of Central Florida Business Incubation Program is a community resource that provides early-stage companies with the tools, training and infrastructure to become financially stable, high growth / impact enterprises. Since 1999, this award-winning program has helped hundreds of local startup companies reach their potential faster by providing vital business development resources.
With seven facilities throughout the region, the UCF Business Incubation Program is an economic development partnership between the University of Central Florida, the Corridor, Orange, Osceola, Seminole and Volusia Counties, and the cities of Apopka, Kissimmee, Orlando and Winter Springs. Participating companies sustain more than 3,600 local jobs and have had a total impact of $1.51B on regional sales and $2.48B on regional economic output. During the last fiscal year, the program has returned $7.95 for every $1.00 invested in the program. For more information, visit www.incubator.ucf.edu
