Front desk teams don’t have to be your switchboard

For too long, front desk teams in hotels have carried an extraordinary amount of operational weight. They’re everything from the concierge, customer service agent, complaint handler, internal dispatcher, local guide, problem solver and, increasingly, a kind of human switchboard. When a Holiday Inn property decided enough was enough, here’s what happened…

We’ve all met that frazzled hotel receptionist.

The one who has just sprinted upstairs to sort out extra pillows for room 407, while simultaneously fielding calls about broken TVs, late check-outs, taxi bookings, missing chargers, and whether the bar is still serving food. By the time they finally return to the front desk, another queue has formed, the phone is ringing again, and people are getting…irritated.

Front desk teams are often the nerve centre of the building. And as a guest, you feel for them. You can only imagine how exhausted they must feel by the end of the shift.

The issue is, much of this switchboard-style work pulls them away from the very thing hospitality is supposed to be about. Greeting people. A warm welcome. Making guest stays seamless and smooth. And ideally, exceeding expectations.

This was exactly the challenge facing Holiday Inn Kenilworth. The constant stream of repetitive guest requests was dragging staff away from the front desk, denting morale, and taking employees seriously off course from their actual job descriptions.

Then AI entered the picture.

Not another hospitality tech trend that created more noise than value. One that is genuinely working.

On a recent episode of my Hoteliers’ Voice podcast, I spoke to Nick Rubin, Chief Strategy Officer at BGAM Hospitality – which manages Holiday Inn Kenilworth, and Daniel Ojeme, Co-founder, CEO and CTO of Eccobell Limited, about how an AI-powered voice agent transformed operations at the hotel.

Staff as a switchboard, not a team

“For many years within hospitality, front desk time has been taken up by menial administrative tasks,” Nick explained. “You're having to deal with finding someone's TV remote, or finding somebody to go help them find their TV remote, or a guest who's had a bad night's sleep because they don't like the pillow. Instead of being a happy, smiley face on reception – which is ultimately the job – you're becoming a switchboard.”

Anyone who has worked in hotels will recognise the pattern. Reception teams are constantly firefighting small operational requests instead of focusing on guests standing directly in front of them.

The distinction matters.

Hospitality businesses spend a lot of effort designing arrival experiences, refining service standards, and creating welcoming atmospheres. Yet often the very people responsible for delivering that experience are overwhelmed by admin.

“We wanted to find a way to bring hospitality back to its roots of being welcoming and warm to people as they enter a hotel,” Nick said.

The solution arrived in the form of Eccobell, founded by Daniel Ojeme. “It's an intelligent voice agent that allows guests to chat in a natural conversational style and make their request to reception,” Daniel explained. “There's a lot of unnecessary traffic going down to reception. Guests making requests that are routine; hotel staff having to deal with the same thing over and over and over again.”

Instead of reception manually coordinating every task, the AI routes requests directly to the correct department, whether housekeeping, maintenance, or another operational team.

Ditch the administration

For Nick, the appeal was immediate. “It was an absolute no-brainer to give the front desk the opportunity to go back to what they wanted to do, and what they needed to do,” he said.

Importantly, AI implementation was far less painful than many hoteliers might expect. Daniel explained that Eccobell uses MCP architecture, simplifying integrations significantly.

“Once you have one MCP with a semantic layer sitting right above the hotel's tech stack, everything else just connects to it,” he said. “So rather than having the thousands of API connections that you had in the past, you just have one connecting layer.”

That flexibility also allows connections beyond the hotel itself, including to external vendors and local partners such as golf clubs and transport providers.

For guests, the experience is intentionally frictionless. Every room contains a QR code guests can scan to interact with the AI agent; frequent users can download an app if they wish.  And because the system is voice-activated, the interaction feels more natural than traditional hotel apps or chatbot interfaces.

“You’re not asking too much of a guest,” Nick explained. “And it’s got a warmer effect; it’s better for our guests.”

Of course, introducing AI into a hotel operation inevitably raises concerns among employees. “People almost instantly fear for their jobs,” Nick said. But he was clear this was never about replacing staff. The purpose was to support them, reduce repetitive admin, and allow them to focus on genuine hospitality.

An front desk transformation

So did the reality live up to expectations? The statistics are impressive.

“In the first week of us having this, we saw over an 80% drop in calls to reception,” Daniel said.

That reduction fundamentally changes the rhythm of the front desk. Guests no longer need to call reception for every minor request, while the system also includes service recovery safeguards. If a request is delayed, guests are proactively updated with timeframes before frustration escalates into complaints.

Daniel believes voice AI works particularly well because it mirrors communication habits guests already have in daily life. “We believe this is going to be the future of the space, because this is what people are used to,” he said. “You need to give them something they're already familiar with, and voice is going to be the de facto means of communication within guest hotel interaction.”

But operational efficiency is only part of the story. Eccobell is also being used as a dynamic upselling tool. Using affinity scoring, the platform analyses guest interactions and identifies which products or services guests are most likely to purchase, from restaurant bookings to spa treatments and taxi services. And the recommendations become smarter over time.

“It's changing with every guest interaction,” Daniel explained. “Every time they speak to the voice agents, we understand a bit more about them. For example, if they mentioned on a call previously that they're vegan, now we know that. So, the next suggestions are tailored in that direction.”

Making AI pay

For an industry operating under constant financial pressure, that matters enormously. With a portfolio of seven properties totalling 700 keys, and expansion into third-party management underway, BGAM Hospitality is acutely aware of how quickly hotel profitability can tighten. “That bottom line gets squeezed every single year in a different sort of way,” Nick said.

What makes the Holiday Inn Kenilworth example particularly interesting is that the technology is no longer simply covering its costs. It’s actively generating revenue.

“Now the commissions we're receiving from the additional taxis that guests book, the restaurants that they're booking – outweighs the initial cost outlay for this,” Nick said. “So we're cost positive.”

The operational impact has been significant enough that BGAM Hospitality is now looking to expand the technology across their hotel portfolio. “It's something that we're looking to roll out across the board, because the team at Kenilworth has seen what it can add to their day,” Nick explained.

Bringing hospitality back to hospitality

Hospitality is full of conversations about AI right now. Some exciting. Some overhyped. Some frankly exhausting.

But what makes the Holiday Inn Kenilworth story compelling is that this isn’t a story about replacing humans with technology.

It’s about removing friction. Removing repetitive admin. Removing unnecessary operational bottlenecks. Removing the constant distractions pulling staff away from guests. Perhaps the irony of modern hospitality is that the more operational noise hotels create around employees, the harder it becomes for teams to actually deliver hospitality.

At Holiday Inn Kenilworth, AI hasn’t replaced the front desk. It simply allowed the front desk to become the front desk again.