Hospitality Hackathon Embraces AI to Improve the Guest Experience
The 2024 Hospitality Hackathon winning team, Pineapple Posse, working on their proposal (left to right) Prakhar Singhania, an exchange student from India; Fati Mixha ’25, Yangzom Noga Tenzin ’27, and Raquel Rupisan, MMH ’24
Hotel guests who think they’ve been mistakenly charged for a bottle of water from their room mini-bar or for an early check-in typically have to challenge the fees on their bill with a front desk attendant.
But there may be a better solution: clicking on a hotel app that uses an AI chatbot to process the claim, according to a proposal that won the 2024 Hilton Hospitality Hackathon held at Cornell University.
“It would take forever for both the employee and the customer to resolve this,” said Fati Mixha, a senior at the Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration who led the winning team’s presentation. “This simple fix would take that over and put it into AI and chatbots on the built-in app, where it would be easily refunded.”
Mixha’s four-member team received the $2,000 grand prize at the end of the three-day hackathon, hosted by the Leland C. and Mary M. Pillsbury Institute for Hospitality Entrepreneurship at the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. Sixteen teams participated in Cornell’s sixth Hospitality Hackathon, representing nine schools across campus.
The competition, which attracted 71 students, is sponsored by Hilton Hotels & Resorts along with ZS Associates, a managing consulting firm, and Qualtrics, which created the data platform used for the competition. The students spent two days developing a proposal that would address the issue of how to deliver an exceptional experience for the hotel guest of the future.
The emerging focus on AI
Many of the competitors at this year’s hospitality hackathon turned to AI to tackle the question they were asked to answer. “What’s happening in the industry is everyone is excited about the potential of AI but struggling to figure out what the applications are,” said Kelly McGuire, MMH ’01, PhD ’07, managing principal for hospitality at ZS Associates and one of the event’s five judges. “A lot of us are turning to young people who are more native to AI.”
The proposal by the winning team, Pineapple Posse, would use AI to handle billing disputes below a certain dollar amount that would be determined by the hotel’s owner. Complaints about fees above that limit would be handled by a hotel staff member.
Another team that integrated AI into its proposal was the second-place winner, LARJE Pineapple, which focused on enhancing benefits for Hilton Honors Members in the Silver Tier. Their plan used machine learning to tailor the Honors Members’ hotel experience by allowing them to select their favorite room location, room amenities, and mini-bar beverages on the Hilton app.
“Our solution is to have an AI-powered personalization platform for loyalty,” said Logan Mims, MMH ’25, whose team received a $1,000 prize. “It will interact with guests when they set up their accounts and when they access benefits, and it will learn about their preferences and suggest opportunities for new ways that that they can use their benefits or personalize what they care about.”
The third-place winner, Cornell Coding Concierge, which received $500, proposed increasing responses to guest surveys by requiring them to answer questions about their experience at the hotel before they can access Wi-Fi.
Two other teams that received $500 awards at the event were: Comfort Champions, recognized for the best visualization for a proposal to direct guest requests to hotel departments rather than the front desk; and Peak, awarded for the best pitch for its proposal to open up hotel conference rooms for community groups to rent.
Learning from the hackathon experience
The students at the hackathon formed their teams after the competition began at 4 p.m. on Friday, September 20. Using industry data from Hilton, the teams had until 7 a.m. Sunday to create a presentation they would deliver at the Statler Hotel Auditorium
The teams brought together a diverse group of students from a variety of majors across campus. “Students see the power of diverse teams and different ideas,” said Christina McDowell, interim academic director of the Pillsbury Institute. “Additionally, the event exposes students to the hospitality industry as well as current challenges industries face.”
Mixha, who led the winning team, agreed that working with students with various backgrounds and skills was critical to developing their proposal. His teammates included Prakhar Singhania, an undergraduate exchange student from India; Yangzom Noga Tenzin, ’27, a science and technology major; and Raquel Rupisan, MMH ’24. “The collaboration and the different perspectives they brought are what did it,” he said.
Leonard Gooz, vice president and global brand leader for Hilton Hotels & Resorts and one of the event’s judges, said that the winning team provided an efficient solution to the problem of how to resolve disputes over hotel fees. “In the spirit of making it right, the winning team helped us identify an area where we’re seeing a high number of complaints,” he said, “and they came up with a creative way of addressing it.”
Gooz said he was impressed with all of the teams’ proposals and said Hilton will review them as it works to improve the guest experience. “One of the initiatives we’re focused on internally is how do we make it right for each guest, before and during each stay,” he said. “There are a number of solutions that will not only make it right but will be user-friendly and reliable for every guest that we serve.”