Why Hospitality Needs Human-Centered Automation

When I founded Lanyard, I set out to understand every process involved in delivering corporate housing: every workflow, every handoff, every pain point. We’ve always believed that our job is to make employers’ lives easier when they need housing for their teams, and we’ve done that successfully in what I’d call a “high-touch, low-tech” industry.

But as the company approaches our fifth anniversary, one truth has become impossible to ignore. We spend far too much time repeating low-value, manual tasks. Once we understood our business processes from end to end, the next logical step was to find ways to scale without sacrificing the personal, relationship-driven service that defines us.

That’s where Sarah comes in.

Meet Sarah, Our AI Voice Assistant

Sarah is not a chatbot. She’s a voice-based AI agent that calls properties to gather information like availability, lease terms, and whether they accept corporate leases. In short, she’s doing the “wash, rinse, repeat” work our team used to spend hours on every week.

The idea for Sarah grew out of a very human realization: the property managers and owners we work with don’t live in their inboxes. In many cases, the best way to get an answer is to pick up the phone. So instead of trying to change the way the industry operates, we designed technology that meets people where they already are.

Sarah calls, asks clear questions, and logs the answers into our proprietary system for review. She’s transparent about who she is. She identifies herself as an automated agent calling from Lanyard, and so far, property managers have responded with curiosity and even enthusiasm. No one’s been fooled, and in fact, Sarah often interacts with voice agents used by properties to share basic information like rates, terms, and availability. Sarah helps make that happen faster.

Technology Should Serve People, Not the Other Way Around

I don’t believe in building technology for technology’s sake. Our clients don’t care whether we use AI; they care that we find safe, comfortable housing that meets their requirements quickly and that we communicate clearly along the way.

Sarah doesn’t replace our people; she gives them their time back. Instead of spending hours dialing phone numbers and leaving voicemails, our team can focus on higher-value work: negotiating rates, improving our client experience, and anticipating housing needs before they arise.

We’ve already seen the same philosophy succeed with another automation we built: an email parsing tool that filters and consolidates property notifications such as maintenance requests, pest control schedules, and payment reminders into a single, streamlined email for employers. What used to be five portals and fifty emails is now one clear message. It’s not flashy, but it’s incredibly effective.

Our Real Competitive Advantage Isn’t AI

There’s a lot of noise in the market right now about artificial intelligence. Every company feels pressure to “work AI into their processes.” But I believe the true competitive advantage isn’t in the technology. It is in the knowledge that shapes how you use it.

Anyone can access a large language model. What they can’t replicate is deep domain expertise and an intimate understanding of the problems we solve for our clients. Our advantage comes from having lived the pain points of corporate housing and knowing the workflows, the bottlenecks, and the people or voice agents on the other end of the phone.

Technology without context doesn’t change an industry, but technology informed by experience can.

The Future of Work in Hospitality

What excites me about Sarah isn’t only what she can do today. It is also what she represents. The hospitality and housing industries are full of legacy systems and manual processes that no longer make sense. We are still asked to fax information and have customers send checks. (Yes, really.) Meanwhile, employers are under pressure to move faster, comply with visa requirements, and care for their workforce.

Human-centered automation, meaning technology designed to augment, not replace, human relationships, can bridge that gap. It’s not about making people obsolete. It’s about making good people even more effective.

As Sarah evolves, she’ll handle more of the repetitive sourcing work, freeing our team to focus on empathy, creativity, and problem-solving, the things no AI can truly replicate. And that, to me, is the future of hospitality: where human connection and intelligent automation work hand-in-hand.