Long cautious in the face of technological promises, the Barrière group embarked on a far-reaching transformation around artificial intelligence in 2024. Without overturning its core businesses or breaking with its traditions of excellence in hospitality and entertainment, the company has opted for a measured and considered integration of AI.
A new strategy for an evolving group
With 33 casinos, 20 luxury hotels and more than 150 restaurants, Barrière is one of France’s leading players in top-of-the-range entertainment. Its interest in artificial intelligence began at the end of 2024, following work carried out with Artefact. At the time, the company was looking to identify how these technologies could support its growth.
Salomon Bentolila, Director of Data and Acquisition since 2020, summed up three strategic areas:
- Improve productivity within the business
- Enrich the experience of customers and employees
- Explore new business models based on AI
But this last point remains, in his view, a field that has yet to be explored: ‘We are still in the exploratory phase.’
The challenge is clear: to make AI a lever for sustainable transformation, without accelerating to the point of losing coherence or security.
A secure AI assistant for in-house teams
The first concrete project involves the launch of an in-house AI assistant, based on Google’s Gemini technology, whose cloud feeds the Group’s data platform. The tool has been made available to 150 head office employees, around a hundred of whom are now actively using it.
To take things further, Barrière has designed libraries of prompts and encouraged users to share their practices.
Salomon Bentolila:
‘We realised that working in the traditional way, with a roadmap and use cases, was not necessarily adapted to the pace of change in AI.’
Rather than planning fixed projects, Barrière opted for a more flexible organisational model. The company set up a dedicated task force, capable of supporting each business according to the needs of the moment. The aim is to act quickly, adjusting projects on an ongoing basis and avoiding major roll-outs that do not keep pace with technological developments. This task force also serves to guarantee a secure framework for AI, in particular to protect sensitive data.
Strengthening customer relations through AI
One of the first concrete uses is in call centres. Barrière is deploying an RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) system to enable its 60 agents to respond more effectively to customer queries.
A set of 100 standard requests has been created to regularly measure the quality of the answers generated. It is worth noting that the tool’s performance score is calculated by another AI model, then supplemented by human assessments. This dual supervision is designed to avoid drift and approximation.
AI is not intended to replace agents, but to support them. It is a support, not a substitute.
A second RAG system has been designed to support the agents in charge of slot machine connections, particularly at times when human support is not available. The tool is based on an internal FAQ and offers guidance in the event of technical problems.
This service is currently being tested in a number of casinos. It is due to be integrated into an existing back-office tool in the near future, in order to become more firmly rooted in business practices. This is a way of reinforcing smooth adoption.
The Barrière group is not looking to revolutionise its model, but to strengthen it. AI is becoming a support for service quality, for the fluidity of operations and for increasing the skills of teams. This measured and structured approach shows that successful integration of AI does not require acting quickly, but acting correctly.