I went through CdG airport a few weeks ago and was served a very nice Minuty rose by a charming (if taciturn) robot. It didn’t judge my 11 am order, didn’t make conversation, didn’t smile and didn’t spill a drop. Is that our future?

Surely, you say, hospitality is the ultimate face to face job; you want your Martini made ‘your way’, your omelette without salt, a bedroom that has been tried and tested by human designers (already unusual in itself). I agree: I feel like a freakish lone voice, preaching the value of a career in hospitality to my friends. My truth, as I preach it, is that they are mad not to encourage their kids into a sector which by its nature is resilient to the tsunami of AI. But while Pierre (as I call my ‘bot) is a literal symbol of AI at work in my field, the fate of your future downtime was sealed some years’ ago. Human contact is a rare commodity; access to almost everything - including romance and in some respects actual intimacy - is online. On the plus side, doesn’t this make actual contact, because scarce, valuable? If I can bottle the best of this in my business then won’t people seek it out?

Pierre made me think more deeply about my smug argument and what will be our future; is hospitality unique in being all about people and, if so, do we value this enough for it to survive? The answers are, I think, respectively, no and (hopefully) yes. Survival is always adaptive and our old world has already well and truly been swallowed up: for better and for worse, because there were plenty of weaknesses in 21st century hospitality, as well it’s punchy strengths. In a truly Darwinian sense, the rise of adaptive AI should refine the best (strongest) qualities of the hotels, bars and restaurants that remain on the landscape.

Take AI at its most basic: we’ve become a nation of remote eaters and drinkers. Are we so hungry, so time-poor that we need to feed ourselves through an App? Well, yes: it’s cheaper for starters because the cost of production and delivery is lower. It needs no advance planning. No one is going to judge what you order - it’s Pierre all over. Food is fuel, wherever you get your fix. Your App of choice will get to know what you like, share that information around, and so your gastronomic horizons will gradually narrow, maybe without you noticing.

Which leaves any bar and restaurant, dependent as it is on people smelling, seeing, eating and talking about food made by people, where? A niche treat? Breakfast at Tiffanies, or Tea at The Ritz? When you hand over your coat and go to the table, is AI left at the door? How did you even hear about the place? Chat GPT right? AI has been manipulating your hospitality choices for years: look how easy booking.com makes it - a little universe shining a light in your tastes, budget and plans. It’s not really autonomous though; it still needs to feed off your data. While booking.com lurks in the background, the economic burden about to hit us in April will have the unintended consequence of boosting AI in hospitality into areas we had not previously intended to go…..just yet. Look at the signals coming from big scale retail: cutting hours, cutting part time jobs. Jobs that if and when they can be done by AI, will be. And autonomous AI is heading your way fast, if Jeff Bezos’ investment portfolio is any kind of sign.

Any hospitality business that doesn’t already populate it’s digital life is on the back foot, or is making a deliberate point from a very secure financial position. The art of nurturing your footprint in social media must be subtle and aimed squarely at your customer. But still all of that alchemy is aimed at getting the customer to walk through the door: and what they find when they get there. We still rely on a tangible product for flesh and blood people.

Like me, you’re probably just grateful for someone who smiles and knows their stuff when you do go ‘out, out’. I am keenly aware of the vicarious responsibility of being a customer: the fewer times I go ‘out, out’, the more often I order ‘in, in’ the more I perpetuate the myth that hospitality isn’t important, that jobs in this sector are something we could live without, and that going ‘out, out’ is a milestone event.

Talking of jobs: Pierre was a bit of knowing French fun, but did you know that you can have your own Pierre made flesh? Dating Apps exist for casual hospitality shifts. If you need an extra pair of hands on any given night, you can put out a shout and, like a taxi, someone will come along. The taxi may get you from A to B but it won’t have more than the basic knowledge, or investment in being there. Nor will it have any statutory employment rights, by the way. This is an extreme example: in my world, like Uber itself, uber-waiter hasn’t yet come to Exeter. Nevertheless, standards of service in hospitality have been fundamentally diluted by many factors recently - and AI without doubt has accelerated this. For an employer, the challenges of investment in training and retention are greater than ever - and about to hit another brick wall.

Put bluntly, come April smaller businesses less able to withstand massive increases in payroll will shave all the hours and jobs they can to protect their most valuable (highest performing, longest term) staff. As a customer, every part of the guest journey that does not require human contact will be automated. The ‘bots will deal with your booking, your pre-stay requests, your check in and check-out. Yikes but not yikes - we’re already familiar with the process. I cling to the idea that hospitality is about the personal, the real. There will be a dramatic divide between the everyday and the bespoke - and we’ll have to acknowledge that bespoke comes at a price, and isn’t an everyday option for the customer. Yet humans need to feel human; it’s the only thing we have that fully automated AI does not. This is why I keep the wheels turning and why I love this business. Look your wait staff in the eyes when you next order in a bar or restaurant and think about that.