Keep the Person at the Door

Check-in tablets and AI phone assistants save a wage at wineries and boutique hotels. The research on staffing, loyalty, and phone bookings says the trade costs more than it saves.

Check-in tablets have moved to the front of a lot of tasting rooms over the past two years, and self check-in kiosks have done the same at boutique hotels, usually around the same time a host or front desk position went unfilled. More of both are now handing the phone to an AI assistant too. The screen confirms the reservation and takes the waiver or the registration, and the business saves a wage. The research on staffing and service says that trade costs more than it saves, and the cost shows up later, in club members who never joined and guests who never came back.

Where wine club and hotel loyalty get built

The first conversation is where loyalty gets built. Commerce7's data shows roughly 49 percent of US club memberships are created in the tasting room. A 2008 study in the International Journal of Wine Business Research found that brand loyalty from a tasting room visit depends on a personalized experience that builds an emotional connection between the visitor and the winery, its wine, and its staff, and that smaller wineries were doing this better than larger ones.

Hotels show the same thing at the desk. A Cornell Center for Hospitality Research study of two brands at an international hotel company found that handling routine tasks like check-in and room keys at kiosks raised average daily rate, but when self check-in went wrong, guests became less willing to return. The kiosks also didn't make check-in feel any faster. The researchers' explanation was that guests were using check-in time to ask staff about the destination, and desk associates were using it to upsell. That check-in conversation was doing real work.

Guests say so when asked. In a UK consumer survey, 67 percent of hotel guests said they want a human greeting on arrival, and only 6 percent wanted check-in fully automated. The software companies report the opposite. A survey commissioned by Mews found 70 percent of American travelers likely to check themselves in by app or kiosk. Mews sells check-in software, and its founder describes the goal as removing the reception desk so staff can engage more personally with guests. That only works if the staff are still there.

The phone is a front door too

The call is usually a club member asking about a shipment, a group planning a reserve tasting, or a couple booking an anniversary weekend. Revinate's 2025 Hospitality Benchmark Report found the voice channel converts higher than every other hotel marketing channel, at around 50 percent across North America, and phone bookings bring in more revenue per booking. The problem has been unanswered phones. HSMAI reports roughly 40 percent of incoming hotel calls go unanswered, rising to 62 percent at properties without dedicated reservation staff.

Callers want a person on the line. A 2025 SurveyMonkey study found 79 percent of Americans strongly prefer dealing with a human over an AI agent, and just 8 percent prefer AI. Five9's 2025 Customer Experience Report found 86 percent of consumers value human interaction more than a fast response, and 40 percent would stop doing business with a company after one bad experience.

What cutting a body costs

The longest-running evidence comes from retail, where staffing and sales are tracked by the hour. Harvard Business School's Zeynep Ton spent four years studying a national retailer with more than 260 stores and found that understaffed stores with overworked employees had more dissatisfied customers and lower profits, and that pressure to cut payroll in the short term hurt the company's financial performance over the long term. An MIT Sloan study of an apparel chain found its stores were capturing only 85 to 95 percent of their potential sales at existing staffing levels, and that even slightly more staff would have produced sales that outweighed the added labor cost. A 2015 study of 41 stores in another chain found every one of them systematically understaffed during a three-hour peak period.

Tasting rooms and front desks follow the same pattern. Saturday at two in the tasting room and the late-afternoon arrival window at the hotel are where most of the week's club signups and return bookings are made. A schedule built for the average day loses the best hours.

Cutting price hasn't filled the gap. Of the wineries that lowered tasting fees, only a quarter reported better visitation, according to coverage of SVB's 2026 Direct-to-Consumer report. SVB's 2026 industry report also found visits falling at smaller hospitality-focused wineries, along with average check sizes at most small direct-to-consumer wineries.

Greet every guest in person

Every guest is greeted by a human before anything else happens. In the tasting room, the reservation list can live on the host's phone or a printed sheet behind the counter, and the waiver can go out by email with the confirmation. At the hotel, registration can be completed by email before arrival and keys can be waiting. A person still says hello by name and asks one question.

A person answers the phone

The host, club manager, or front desk picks up during open hours. After hours, the voicemail is recorded by someone who works there, and a person returns the call the same day. Every call about availability ends with an offer to hold the date.

Staff for the busiest hours

The MIT researchers found that basing staffing on past sales misses the sales lost to understaffing, which means a thin schedule keeps justifying itself. Schedule from traffic. Put the strongest person on the busiest hours, and add a second before the room or the lobby fills. The same thinking runs through Slow the Tasting Room Down.

Ask for the next visit

The email address gets asked for mid-tasting, when a guest has said something about a wine and there's a reason to send the notes on it. The next stay gets asked for at checkout, by the person at the desk. A guest who just had a good visit will say yes to the person who asks.

Cut somewhere else first

Before a position goes, look at the discounts that aren't moving wine, the OTA commissions a staffed desk could be winning back, and the software subscriptions, the tablet, the kiosk, and the AI phone service included. In the retail studies, the added hours paid for themselves.

Hospitality is about relationships, and nobody has ever built one with an iPad or a phone bot. A club member stays for the host who remembers what they poured last spring, and a guest comes back for the person at the desk who remembered the anniversary.

A winery or hotel that can't afford people to welcome its guests and answer its phone has a business problem no screen will fix, and I'd question whether it belongs in hospitality at all.

Questions winery owners and hotel GMs ask

Do check-in tablets hurt wine club conversion?

Commerce7 data shows roughly 49 percent of US wine club memberships are created in the tasting room, and a 2008 study in the International Journal of Wine Business Research tied tasting room loyalty to a personal, emotional connection with the winery and its staff. A tablet can confirm a reservation, but the greeting and the club conversation need to stay with a person.

Should a boutique hotel replace its front desk with self check-in kiosks?

A Cornell Center for Hospitality Research study found kiosks raised average daily rate when they handled routine tasks, but guests were less willing to return when self check-in went wrong, and kiosks did not make check-in feel faster. In a UK consumer survey, 67 percent of hotel guests wanted a human greeting on arrival and only 6 percent wanted check-in fully automated.

Are AI phone assistants worth it for wineries and hotels?

Revinate's 2025 Hospitality Benchmark Report found the phone converts at around 50 percent in North America, higher than any other hotel marketing channel, and a 2025 SurveyMonkey study found 79 percent of Americans strongly prefer a human over an AI agent. The better fix for missed calls is a person answering during open hours and same-day callbacks after hours.

Sources: Commerce7, "The Tasting Room Effect" data drop; "Making a Connection: Tasting Rooms and Brand Loyalty," International Journal of Wine Business Research, 2008; Cornell Center for Hospitality Research, "Integrating Self-Service Kiosks in a Customer-service System"; The London Economic, UK consumer survey on automation in hospitality; Mews, "The Rise of Self-Check-In Hotels," 2025; Revinate, 2025 Hospitality Benchmark Report; HSMAI Americas, "The Contact Center's Role in Commercial Strategy"; SurveyMonkey, 2025 consumers and AI in customer service study; Five9, 2025 Customer Experience Report; Zeynep Ton, "The Effect of Labor on Profitability: The Role of Quality," Harvard Business School Working Paper 09-040, 2008; MIT Sloan School of Management, Rogelio Oliva and colleagues on retail staffing; Mani, Kesavan, and Swaminathan, "Estimating the Impact of Understaffing on Sales and Profitability in Retail Stores," Production and Operations Management, 2015; Silicon Valley Bank, State of the US Wine Industry 2026 and 2026 Direct-to-Consumer Wine Report.