Skip to main content

AI Research Assistant

What is the AI Research Assistant

The AI Research Assistant is MARA's AI-powered reporting and analysis tool that transforms guest feedback into actionable insights. Instead of manually analyzing reviews, building reports, or searching for trends, you can simply describe what you need, and the AI Assistant will analyze your MARA data and generate a comprehensive report.

The AI Research Assistant is a paid add-on feature.

The assistant combines our strong sentiment analysis with generative AI to produce executive summaries, operational recommendations, trend analyses, and custom reports that can be delivered automatically as a web-based report and PDF via email to anyone inside or outside your MARA account.

The AI Research Assistant is your digital analyst within MARA. It has access to your guest intelligence data, including:

  • Review analytics

  • Sentiment analysis

  • Topic and category scores

  • MARA Score

  • Response Rate

  • Review volume

  • Property and account-level analytics

Unlike general AI tools, the AI Research Assistant understands MARA's data model and uses structured guest intelligence - not just review text - to generate meaningful reports and recommendations.

Key Benefits

The AI Research Assistant helps you:

  • Generate executive-ready reports in minutes

  • Identify operational issues impacting guest satisfaction

  • Discover root causes behind negative reviews

  • Monitor trends across properties or hotel groups

  • Automate recurring reports

  • Share guest insights with stakeholders who don't use MARA

Reports can be delivered automatically as a web-based report and PDF via email to anyone inside or outside your MARA account.

How It Works

Using the AI Research Assistant is simple.

  1. Open AI Research Assistant from the left navigation.

  2. Choose a pre-built template or create a custom task.

  3. Define the scope (property, cluster, or account).

  4. Select the reporting period.

  5. Schedule the report or run it on demand.

  6. Add recipients if you'd like the report emailed automatically.

  7. Review the generated report (available as a web-based report and PDF) and ask follow-up questions if needed.

Your task list can be filtered to show only scheduled or only on-demand tasks, and deactivated tasks can be hidden to keep the view organized.

Create Reports using Templates

To help you get started quickly, MARA includes several ready-to-use report templates. You can preview templates via the eye symbol.

To use a template simply click "use this template".

  1. select your property for property-level reports.

  2. Schedule the report or run it on demand.

  3. Add recipients if you'd like the report emailed automatically.

Examples include:

What to Fix Report

Identifies the operational issues that have the greatest impact on guest satisfaction.

The report includes:

  • Executive summary

  • Top quick wins

  • Strategic recommendations

  • Prioritized list of guest issues

  • Estimated impact on ratings

  • Number of affected reviews

  • Suggested operational improvements

  • Supporting guest quotes

This report is ideal for General Managers and Operations teams.

Monthly Executive Report

Provides leadership with a high-level overview of reputation performance.

Typical sections include:

  • Executive summary

  • MARA Score trends

  • Response rate

  • Review volume

  • Property comparisons

  • Performance changes month-over-month

  • Key drivers behind improvements or declines

This report is designed for hotel groups, regional managers, and executives.

Creating Your Own Templates

Beyond the built-in templates, you can create your own and reuse them across reports.

To create a template:

  1. Build a report as a regular task, then click Save as template on that task.

  2. Choose whether it's an account-based or property-based template.

  3. For property-based templates, review the description. MARA's AI automatically detects and replaces property-specific references with a placeholder so the template works across properties. You can manually select and replace any remaining references yourself.

  4. Choose who can use it: just you, your whole account, or the MARA community.

  5. Optionally set a default schedule.

Your templates appear under My Templates, alongside the built-in ones, with a generated preview so you know what the report looks like before running it.

Community templates let you benefit from report types other MARA customers have found useful, and let you contribute your own back.

Create Custom Reports

If the built-in templates don't match your needs, you can create completely custom analyses using natural language.

Simply describe what you'd like the assistant to analyze.

For example:

Show how our MARA Score, review volume, and response rate changed month-by-month from January 2025 to March 2026. Include our three largest review platforms and identify the top issues that negatively impacted ratings each quarter.

The AI Assistant will:

  • Interpret your request

  • Ask follow-up questions when necessary

  • Generate the report structure

  • Build charts, tables, summaries, and recommendations

  • Produce a web-based report and a downloadable PDF

Supported Analysis

The AI Research Assistant can analyze:

  • Guest complaint trends

  • Positive and negative sentiment

  • Root causes of operational issues

  • Topic impact on ratings

  • Performance over time

  • Property comparisons

  • Cluster comparisons

  • Account-wide performance

  • Platform-specific trends

  • Department-specific insights

  • Review response performance

Automated Report Delivery

Reports can be scheduled to run:

  • On demand

  • Daily

  • Weekly

  • Monthly

Generated reports can be emailed automatically to:

  • Hotel managers

  • Regional managers

  • Executives

  • Department heads

  • External stakeholders

Recipients do not need access to MARA to view the reports.

Follow-Up Questions

Every generated report becomes interactive.

After a report is created, you can ask follow-up questions such as:

  • Why did housekeeping scores decline?

  • What exactly did guests say about breakfast?

  • Show more detail about room cleanliness complaints.

  • Which issues increased during the last month?

This allows you to investigate findings without creating a new report from scratch.

What Makes the AI Research Assistant Different?

Unlike generic AI tools, the MARA AI Research Assistant is built on structured guest intelligence.

It combines:

  • Guest reviews

  • Advanced sentiment analysis

  • Topic categorization

  • Impact scoring

  • Historical analytics

  • Reputation KPIs

This allows the assistant to prioritize issues based on their actual business impact rather than simply counting keyword mentions.

For example, the assistant considers both:

  • Frequency — how often an issue is mentioned

  • Impact — how strongly that issue affects guest ratings

This results in more meaningful recommendations.

Best Practices

For the best results:

  • Be specific when describing the report you need.

  • Define the reporting period.

  • Specify whether you want property, cluster, or account-level analysis.

  • Ask follow-up questions to explore important findings.

  • Refine report instructions if the output isn't exactly what you expected.

  • Schedule recurring reports for regular operational reviews.

Current Limitations

The AI Research Assistant is continuously being improved and some capabilities are still evolving.

Current limitations include:

  • Occasional report generation failures

  • Reports are available as a web-based report and PDF; Excel export is not yet available (planned based on customer feedback)

  • No guest demographic filtering

  • No predictive forecasting before reviews are received

However, you can create reports that act as an early warning system by scheduling frequent analyses of new guest feedback.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the assistant only summarize reviews?

No. It combines review text with MARA's analytics, sentiment data, KPIs, and impact scores to produce deeper operational insights.

Can I customize report templates?

Yes. Every template can be edited. You can change reporting periods, instructions, output format, and analysis criteria.

Can I create my own templates?

Yes. Build any report as a task, then save it as a template. You can set it as account-level or property-level scope, and choose to keep it private, share it within your account, or share it with the MARA community.

Can I schedule reports?

Yes. Reports can run on demand or on recurring schedules such as daily, weekly, or monthly.

Can reports be shared with people who don't use MARA?

Yes. Reports can be emailed to any recipient, even if they don't have a MARA account.

Can the assistant identify root causes?

Yes—provided guests mention them in their reviews. The assistant analyzes review content alongside structured analytics to identify likely operational causes and suggest improvements.

Can the assistant detect new issues early?

While it cannot predict future issues before guest feedback exists, it can be configured to monitor recent reviews and alert teams when new complaint patterns begin to emerge.

Tips for Better Results

  • Start with a template before building custom reports.

  • Keep prompts outcome-focused rather than tool-focused.

  • Use recurring reports to automate management reporting.

  • Ask follow-up questions instead of rebuilding reports.

  • Share reports directly with department managers so they receive only the insights relevant to their teams.

Feedback

The AI Research Assistant is continuously improving.

If you encounter unexpected results, report generation errors, or have suggestions for new report types or output formats, please share your feedback with the MARA team. Customer feedback plays an important role in shaping future capabilities.

Related Articles
Did this answer your question?