The booking system went down, and the phones went with it. We couldn't call anyone, and guests still needed to get into their rooms. So I took the master key and the emergency cards and walked six floors, opening doors room by room across about 300 rooms. It took four or five hours and a lot of stairs.
That day showed me what I'd seen before. When a hotel gets busy or a system fails, the standard procedures are the first thing to go. They were never built to survive pressure.
The same pressure showed up every day. The front desk kept answering the same guest questions, which pulled them away from guests who needed a person. So we set up an AI agent to answer the basic questions and pass anything difficult to a human. We also set up an agent to summarize the shift notes. Staff could speak or send a voice message, and everything was stored and searchable, so anyone could find out what had happened that week.
That is how I work now. I start with what breaks under pressure, and I use AI where it helps.