In Emerald Today: AI driving courtesy bus calls

This story by Di Stanley was first published by Emerald Today on 2 October 2026. It's reproduced here in full. Read it on Emerald Today.

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The Mayfair Emerald's executive chef Sebastian De Kort, head chef Nirajam Basnet Kshetri, Archibald McPhie, Meg McPhie, Kathy McPhie, Cameron McPhie and business partner Mark Smith celebrate being named the QHA Regional Hotel of the Year. (Supplied)

The Mayfair Emerald has embraced artificial intelligence to run its courtesy bus service.

Luke Halley, the Perth-based founder of start-up company Vertical AI, developed the model using an AI assistant called Casey.

It went live on 29 July and through to 22 September, Casey answered 533 calls, dispatched 389 pickups and dealt with 328 different callers.

Its busiest night was Friday, 28 August, with 44 calls.

Forty-eight calls were passed to a Mayfair staff member for matters outside the bus line.

The Mayfair Emerald executive chef Sebastian de Kort said the system had streamlined the business and allowed staff to focus on their jobs.

"We're serving thousands of patrons a week, and every call that pulled someone off the floor mid-service used to cost us," Mr de Kort said.

"Having the AI handle the courtesy bus bookings has taken that pressure right off, our team can stay focused on the guests in front of them, and we're actually optimising the bus run better than we were before."

Mr Halley said using Casey had meant efficiency gains for the Mayfair, with call pick-up rates reaching 98 per cent and average response times decreasing from five minutes or moe to around 54 seconds.

The system follows a 'human first' approach, allowing callers to bypass the AI and speak directly to a human if preferred.

"They were taking calls from a lot of people and writing it down on a piece of paper and sending it into a WhatsApp group chat with all the drivers in it and getting a thumbs up to the message as the only indication they were going to pick up the person," Mr Halley said.

"My background is in software engineering and architecture, so I understand how to make a good system.

"I think there are ways of improving people's lives and then there's also ways of replacing workers and because AI is in the news, there's a lot of fear.

"In this case, it's actually helping people out and the drivers are more organised, the managers are less nervous and there's less people making anonymous calls and people getting picked up faster."

Importantly, Mr Halley said all data harvested by Casey was stored securely in Sydney, ensuring that no customer or business information left Australia soil.

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Story and photo: Emerald Today, 2 October 2026. Read the original.

How the courtesy bus line works, step by step: The Mayfair Emerald case study.