Is your hospitality group ready for AI? Our framework for assessing your AI readiness.
By In 2023, Collin’s dictionary named ‘AI’ as their word of the year. To many, particularly in industries like hospitality, that may have felt more like ‘buzzword of the year’ – more talk than action, with tangible use cases and demonstrable value a rarity.
Now in 2025, there is no doubt that AI is here, it’s real and every operator we speak to is on the journey to make it a core part of their tech stack. For many, there is still a long way to go – but the majority agree it’s becoming an operational necessity.
There are strong signals that AI adoption among hospitality operators has increased exponentially over the last few years. Gail’s hit the headlines earlier this year with news that it uses machine learning in part to select new locations, Itsu utilises AI for employee training, while BKUK revealed it kept 2024 labour costs neutral despite a minimum wage increase with AI-powered scheduling.
Accelerating AI adoption in hospitality
At Fourth, we’ve been at the forefront of enabling operators to leverage AI and Machine Learning. We are well known for our AI forecasting and labour optimisation solutions, which typically delivers a 1-3% reduction in labour costs and boosts sales by 10-15%.
As a result, we’ve helped operators of all shapes and sizes on their journey to AI adoption. In the process, we have developed a framework by which hospitality leaders can assess their progress, align teams, and identify opportunities to apply the technology.
Find out how AI-driven forecasting and auto-scheduling supercharges BKUK’s labour optimisation.
While AI was once ‘something for the future’, it is fast becoming a fundamental necessity for hospitality operators today. The businesses that can implement it successfully already benefit from a competitive advantage, since AI enables them to deploy their resources more efficiently, reduce waste, drive sales and increase profitability. We believe every operator, large and small should already be under way on their own AI journey.
Our framework includes five pillars to help operators answer the question, “Are we AI-ready?” They reflect the journey an organisation should take to adopt AI successfully, from establishing its strategy and use cases to successfully implementing them. The goal is not a single ‘AI maturity score’, but an understanding of where you stand on each pillar, since different parts of the business may progress at different speeds.
Fourth’s Customer Advisory Board (CAB), a group of diverse hospitality operators, recently completed the exercise, providing a snapshot of where we are as an industry. Each ranked their businesses on every pillar as either not addressed, actively considering, in development, or deployed. Here, we share the five pillars and the findings from our CAB.
Fourth’s five pillars of AI readiness
AI strategy
Adopting AI is an organisational-wide project that needs to be driven by an executive leadership team and championed by senior leaders, who themselves have a mandate to experiment, innovate, and drive change.
That requires a robust AI strategy that clearly identifies objectives, roles and responsibilities, and funding. It’s a critical part of the process, empowering leaders across the business to deliver change while keeping everyone focused on what needs to be achieved at an organisational level.
92% of operators at our CAB said they were at least considering AI at a strategic level, but only 8% reported a fully operational AI strategy.
Survey of operators attending Fourth’s Spring 2025 Customer Advisory board
Strategic initiative
The next step is to create a structured programme that identifies and prioritises AI use cases and then manages the implementation. This should include pilots, experiments and assessments of where AI can add the most value and the ‘doability’ of implementing. These potential use cases are vast but often start in areas like demand forecasting, optimising scheduling, suggested inventory ordering, automated invoice processing, or optimising marketing with generative AI tools.
58% of our CAB are already in AI development, with 17% reporting full operationalisation – making this the most mature pillar of the five.
Survey of operators attending Fourth’s Spring 2025 Customer Advisory board
Change management
Adopting AI is one of the biggest change management programmes your business will likely ever run, and that requires a serious amount of planning. Communication is key – requiring the objectives and impact to be made clear to everyone.
Staff should be given support and reassurance as to their role working with AI solutions, highlighting the potential to augment their skills and allow both them and the business to be more effective and successful. They should be actively involved in the process of rolling out solutions and providing continual feedback, ensuring all AI solutions have widespread buy-in from the start.
Our CAB survey showed a widespread understanding of this pillar’s importance. 40% of those surveyed are considering a change management programme, 30% have one in development, and 20% feel theirs is fully operational.
Survey of operators attending Fourth’s Spring 2025 Customer Advisory board
Data readiness
Ensuring data is accessible, structured, accurate and is an important step for AI modelling and deployment. Making available data sources, like point-of-sale and loyalty data, allows operators to spot trends and correlations they might not have previously known about, as well as forming the basis for AI predictions and automation. No business has perfect data, and this should be seen as an ongoing improvement project – and certainly not as a barrier to get started with AI as soon as possible.
Nearly half (56%) of our CAB said their data readiness is ‘in development’, and an impressive 23% reported full readiness.
Survey of operators attending Fourth’s Spring 2025 Customer Advisory board
Identify the right Tech Partner
For most operators, the easiest and most efficient way to adopt AI will be to work with technology partners that have industry experience and proven solutions. These vendors have access to large datasets, continuous product development, relevant use cases, and the experience to get you up and running quickly.
Building your own solutions from foundational AI technologies can of course offer a competitive advantage that no others can match. But that approach requires deep expertise, time, and a significant investment – something that will be out of reach for many.
For the majority that go down the route of buying solutions from a tech partner – look at their existing track record, assess the depth of their industry expertise, scalability, and how well their solutions align with your likely use cases.
50% of CAB respondents are actively considering vendors, 33% have selected or operationalised AI in their tech stack.
Survey of operators attending Fourth’s Spring 2025 Customer Advisory board
It’s time to get ready for AI
By taking a moment to understand your position on each of Fourth’s five readiness pillars, you can identify the areas where progress has been made and where to focus next – whether that’s exec buy-in, selecting a pilot use case, managing change, preparing your data or partnering with the right tech vendor. It’s time to get ready for AI.
Find out how we can accelerate your AI journey.
Fourth works with hospitality operators at every stage of their AI readiness — building an exec-level business case, offering ready-to-go solutions, and supporting data integration, implementation and change management.