From left to right, Panos Almyrantis (President of The European Hotel Managers Association), Andreas Keese, (General Manager of Hotel Sacher Wien)and Yamel Henriksen (AHLEI)
London, 13 March 2026 – The European Hotel Managers Association (EHMA) has honoured Mr Andreas Keese, General Manager of Hotel Sacher Wien, with its prestigious “EHMA Best Practices 2025” Award. The accolade recognises an outstanding, guest-centred approach to the theme “How IoT and AI Help Hoteliers Enhance the Guest Experience”, celebrating applied innovation that strengthens service quality while protecting the essence of human hospitality. The award was presented during the 52nd EHMA Annual General Assembly, held at The Dorchester in London.
EHMA created the Best Practices Award to spotlight innovative initiatives that generate tangible benefits for guests and hotel teams. Mr Keese’s submission stood out for its disciplined, service-led philosophy: technology should sharpen quality, speed and insight, while human responsibility, empathy and tone remain constant. It is a model that resonates strongly with the realities of luxury hospitality in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.
Commenting on the award, Panos Almyrantis, President of EHMA, National Delegate for Greece & Cyprus, and Chief Growth & Commercial Officer at Ella Resorts in Athens, highlighted the broader significance of this year’s winning project:
“Best Practices is, at its core, about translating innovation into meaningful service — leveraging technology to enhance the guest experience, empower our teams, and preserve the warmth and authenticity that define European hospitality. Andreas Keese has shown, with great clarity, how AI can elevate excellence while fully safeguarding the human touch that remains at the heart of our industry.”
A Showcase of Vienna’s Heritage and Human-Centred Innovation
At Hotel Sacher Wien, guest communication continues well beyond checkout. Online feedback is treated as a natural extension of the guest journey, deserving the same care and attention as on-property interactions. As part of the winning Best Practices project, the hotel implemented an AI-enabled platform designed to help teams respond to guest reviews with greater speed, consistency and nuance, without diluting human accountability. Drafts generated by the system are never sent automatically: every response is read, refined and approved by a team member, who assumes full ownership whenever feedback is emotional, sensitive or complex.
The initiative delivered benefits far beyond efficiency. By consolidating reviews from multiple platforms into a single interface and analysing sentiment, language, volume and trends over time, the system strengthened the hotel’s service intelligence. It enabled teams to spot recurring themes, anticipate emerging service gaps and identify meaningful opportunities for improvement — while freeing up time for personalised follow-up and thoughtful service recovery.
A second strand of the project showcased Hotel Sacher Wien’s characteristically pragmatic approach to innovation: the introduction of an AI-powered voicebot deployed as a controlled experiment to improve speed and availability in guest communication while protecting the hallmarks of high-touch luxury service. The trial handled 2,362 guest calls, resolving 50.3% autonomously and absorbing 2,128 minutes (approximately 35.5 hours) of call handling—freeing Front Office, Concierge, Spa and Restaurant teams to focus on higher-value, emotional guest interactions.
Importantly, the project also demonstrated the discipline to stop what cannot scale responsibly. The voicebot contract was ultimately terminated not because the concept failed, but because there was no roadmap for deep system integration — an insight that underlines a broader operational truth: AI delivers sustainable value only when it is embedded within the hotel ecosystems, not added as a standalone layer.
Key highlights of the winning Best Practices project include:
- Human-led AI guest communication, where AI supports drafting while people retain full ownership of voice, empathy and decision-making.
- One interface for multi-platform review management, reducing missed interactions and improving response speed and consistency.
- Stronger service intelligence, using trend and sentiment analysis to identify recurring issues and drive targeted improvements.
- Measured innovation in voice-led guest support, demonstrating time savings and team relief without compromising luxury standards.
- A “test, learn, refine” mindset, grounded in integration, scalability and operational impact.
AHLEI Scholarship Benefit
Thanks to EHMA’s partnership with AHLEI (American Hotel & Lodging Educational Institute), the EHMA Best Practices 2025 winner has received a complimentary scholarship for the Certified Hotel Administrator (CHA) programme, as well as a Certified Hospitality Manager (CHM) programme scholarship for an emerging leader who collaborated on the Best Practices project — reinforcing EHMA’s commitment to practical learning and leadership development.