Virtual reality trains staff more efficiently by placing them in immersive experiences.
Hilton, like other hotel chains, struggles with staff shortages. Employees often come from different sectors and therefore have little or no industry knowledge. Many hospitality skills must be practiced, but are too crucial to get wrong in the real working environment. Service recovery skills are an important example, as they greatly improve guest satisfaction by resolving any negative experiences.
Since 2015, Hilton has been working with San Francisco-based corporate training company SweetRush. Together they are using virtual reality (VR) and AI to address these issues and train Hilton’s staff while not affecting the guest experience.
Hilton’s virtual world
The GlobalData Strategic Intelligence Virtual Reality report defines VR as “a technology that immerses the user in an entirely artificial world, which has the illusion of reality”.
The 3D digital space Hilton and SweetRush have created can be accessed by a trainee either via a VR headset or on a web browser in any global location and with existing technologies. Immersive scenarios include digital guests with a common issue that real-life guests may have, such as unmet special room requests. The learner then attempts to provide a solution by speaking into a microphone. Their answer is analysed by a large language model (LLM) that provides a pass or fail grade and personalised feedback on the trainee’s performance.
The power of VR
The digital characters have been designed to reflect the expressiveness and diversity of real guests and can show their moods and level of satisfaction through gestures, tones of voice and posture. This is vital, as staff will need to be adept at reading these cues in real life.
VR puts employees in real-life working scenarios, role-playing and decision-making simulations with no risk of damaging real-life customer relations. This approach is more realistic and often more effective than in-room training or e-learning. Using this system, Hilton has trained its staff faster and on a larger scale, reducing its in-class training time from four hours to twenty minutes.
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Foto: VR puts employees in real-life working scenarios. Credit: Sorbis via Shutterstock.
https://www.hotelmanagement-network.com/analyst-comment/hilton-vr-staff-shortages/?cf-view
