Your Primer on Chatbots for Hospitality and Travel Industries

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Key Takeaways

• 74% of internet users favor engaging with chatbots for straightforward inquiries.
• Facebook Messenger currently accommodates more than 300,000 active chatbots, and 48% of respondents prefer them over human assistance.
• The global chatbot market, valued at $5.4 billion in 2023, is projected to reach $15.5 billion by 2028, with a growth rate of 23.3% CAGR.

Smart travel and hospitality chatbots can become your hard-working front-line agents, meeting and communicating with your prospects like humans. A modern chatbot is a sophisticated addition to any customer support team and can be trained to handle bookings, reservations, and recommendations swiftly and naturally.

“Today’s hotel chatbots can accompany guests from the minute they step out of a taxi to walk into a hotel till the end of their stays,” says Acropolium’s Founder Oleksii Glib. “They give hotels and travel businesses effective control over customer communication whenever guests initiate a conversation.”

HoReCa (Hotel, Restaurant, Cafe) is one of the industries Acropolium has been serving with AI-powered solutions for years, providing chatbot development and AI automation services.

Let us share what we’ve learned about chatbots for hoteliers so far and why they can become a catalyst for your business growth.

Hospitality Chatbots — What Are They?

Chatbots for hotels are AI-powered virtual assistants. They interact with customers to provide information and support throughout their journey. This includes anything from booking accommodations to post-stay feedback.

Hospitality chatbots leverage natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning algorithms. They understand user inquiries, provide personalized offers, handle reservations, and answer FAQs.

Additionally, they give real-time updates on travel plans and resolve customer issues — just like logistics chatbots driving dynamic routes for timely deliveries and customer satisfaction. Similar to healthcare chatbots connected to medical management systems, hospitality integrates them into websites, mobile apps, and messaging platforms.

They offer 24/7 assistance and enhance the overall customer experience in the travel sector. In fact, according to 64% of consumers, availability around the clock is the most helpful feature of a chatbot.

The Global Chatbot Market

Today, Facebook Messenger alone hosts over 300,000 operational chatbots, with over 48% of survey respondents choosing digital helpers over human assistance. Thus, valued at $5.4 billion in 2023, the global chatbot market is estimated to reach $15.5 billion by 2028, growing at a CAGR of 23.3%.

7 Reasons to Implement Travel and Hospitality Chatbots

What AI chatbots do best is automate conversations to achieve a streamlined customer experience. When seeking answers to simple questions, 74% of internet users prefer interacting with chatbots.

However, this is only the first step of a smoother customer journey. With a chatbot for the hotel and travel industry — be it a custom enterprise travel bot or an off-the-shelf tool — your business can get much more tangible benefits.

1. Bots can lighten your workload

Hotel chatbots can be set up using existing software in the messengers your guests are already familiar with. You don’t need to reinvent communication channels to deliver round-the-clock service without human oversight. They can interact with hundreds of customers at once in a no-latency way, whether your guests need details of a travel itinerary or want to book a room. Although a hotel chatbot can’t replace your customer support team, it can handle routine requests and free up your staff.

2. AI-powered chatbots can add to your global service

Artificial intelligence in hospitality is highly resilient in terms of language functionality, increasing the value of AI chatbots for travel companies. A multilingual bot ensures you can provide support to globetrotters without worrying about misunderstanding or communication failures due to language barriers. For a chatbot with programmed natural language processing (NLP), customer inputs are always easy to understand and respond to, whether in English or Arabic.

3. They can lower customer service costs

Reduced customer service costs often mean a worse experience for travelers and hotel guests. But that’s not how it works with chatbots. When using them as your digital assistants across multiple channels, including your website messaging and travel apps, you can maintain your service standards while saving money. Chatbots in hotels help you avoid unnecessary hires and high training costs without dealing a blow to your business reputation, contributing to better revenue management.

4. Customer-centric communication can give your business a leg up

An AI bot enhanced with NLP is like a good therapist for elevated customer experiences. It’s an active listener that pays attention to every single detail your customers tell it. Once a conversation is over, the bot collects and analyzes the inputs to treat your guests in a personalized way the next time they initiate a dialog. This can distinguish your hotel or travel company from your competitors while also enabling you to make targeted offers, send notifications, and get to know your customers better.

5. Chatbots can increase your direct booking rates

Direct bookings are your bread and butter, but getting them may be a tall order. Automated bots are helpful here, too. With your bot integrated into your booking system, guests can easily check room availability, reserve a good fit, and even select dietary preferences. They don’t need to leave the page or messenger where their first interaction with your AI assistant started.

6. They can reduce booking abandonment

A high abandonment rate should never be left unaddressed. Even though you can’t eliminate abandoned bookings, you can reduce them by simplifying the booking process with a hotel chatbot. Make sure your guests can reserve rooms without a hitch and be AI-assisted along the way so that they don’t abandon the reservation. This is a crucial point for chatbots in the hospitality industry.

7. Improved customer experience means more positive reviews

Traveler reviews matter. If a company has many unaddressed negative reviews, 86% of people would likely pass up a good deal from them. What does this have to do with chatbots for hotels? Bots allow you to surround your customers with personalized attention, improving their experience with your business. They can be used to follow up with your guests during and after their stays, collect feedback, and increase your chances of getting positive traveler reviews.

7 Noteworthy Use Cases of Chatbots for the Travel Industry

Online travel agencies (OTAs) and hotels use AI-powered bots for many reasons. For some, the rationale behind adopting one boils down to making it easier for guests to book tickets, rooms, and restaurant tables. For others, it’s a way to provide customers with a higher level of care during their stays and keep them coming back.

No human agent is better at multitasking than an AI bot. Standing on top of hospitality tech trends, it can be programmed to take on many roles, and here are the most common of them.

Service request management

As a digital concierge, a hotel chatbot adds convenience to your guests’ stays. Do they want to get pointers on the best spots to dine out at or request a ride? Usually connected to a hotel IoT system, an AI concierge is at their service. Your guests will feel like they’re managing their stays with a smartphone since a digital concierge will allow them to send housekeeping requests, schedule room service, and even open their room doors.

When serving repeat guests, a virtual concierge can retrieve information about their previous stays, like dietary preferences, food delivery choices, and special bedding requests. It can then build a more targeted communication and provide you with more upsell opportunities, like promoting restaurants or making exclusive hotel offers.

Reservation management

An AI chatbot is a thoughtful manager and a great tool for integrating with booking systems. It doesn’t irk your guests with endless filters and search results when they want to reserve a room or book a sightseeing tour. Your customers only need to let your bot know their preferences and dates to get the best options.

The caring nature of chatbots in the hotel industry also takes shape as reservation reminders. Your digital assistant can automatically send messages to your guests to make them feel cared for and receive confirmations or cancellations in advance.

Flight bookings

Flight booking assistance is one of the prevalent use cases of travel agency chatbots. Built with big-data algorithms, they work best for OTAs to deliver an exceptional experience for busy travelers who don’t have time to compare ticket prices and baggage policies.

A bot brings travelers all available flight options on a silver platter based on their inputs. The process happens through a natural conversation without going to airport websites or calling your agents. Plus, this is where a bot can suggest flight upgrades to make a traveler’s experience even more comfortable (including a boost to your margin, of course).

Tour guidance

Chatbots that serve as tour guides are designed to make your guests’ time at your hotel more memorable. They can cherry-pick the places worth visiting and the things worth doing for every traveler individually.

What’s more, chatbots can be integrated with location systems to provide travelers with directions. You can show you care about your guests and make sure they won’t get lost halfway to some hidden gem.

Virtual reception

We all hate it when we have to line up to check into a hotel. To put it in numbers, if you make a traveler wait at the front desk for five minutes, you’re reducing their satisfaction by half.

Chatbots can ensure your guest experience gets off to a good start. It’s a good idea to bring your AI receptionist and mobile check-in technology together for a keyless and paperless front-desk experience. Chatbots in hotels also improve the check-out process, with document uploads and billing integrations allowing your guests to make post-stay payments without human interactions. Still, if there’s something beyond a chatbot’s capabilities, they can also call on a human customer service specialist and get their issues solved instantly.

Guest satisfaction surveys

Guest satisfaction surveys in hotels can be facilitated through chatbots, which continue engaging with guests even after their departure, gathering feedback in a natural and intuitive manner.

Compared to email surveys, chatbot-delivered surveys often yield higher response rates due to their user-friendly interface, including sliding scales and quick reply options. Additionally, modern hotel chatbots offer real-time reporting and analytics, enabling hoteliers to promptly address any issues or concerns identified by guests before they escalate.

Prompt notifications

Proactive communication through notifications is instrumental in providing guests with the reassurance of a well-planned stay. This aspect is particularly significant since peace of mind often influences guests to opt for hotels over peer-to-peer platforms.

Thus, hotels must prioritize keeping guests informed to effectively manage their expectations. For instance, if the hotel gym is undergoing maintenance, a hotel chatbot can promptly inform guests of the closure, preventing unnecessary inconvenience.

Such proactive measures not only enhance the overall guest experience and satisfaction but also help prevent negative incidents that could affect guest loyalty.

Roadblocks to Creating Chatbots for Hotels and Travel Agencies

When getting started with a chatbot for the travel industry, you must steadfastly maneuver past:

• Technological challenges. A chatbot is only an interaction-ready part of your service: processes like data collection and room notifications need to be set up for a bot to function properly. Since no-code chatbot builders are of little avail here, creating a custom travel software chatbot is the only way to get a tool for your unique business processes.
• Usage challenges. As every user has a different attitude toward chatbots, you should implement the technology along with traditional information delivery ways, such as a website or a hotel app.
• Integration challenges. If you want your bot to provide personalized bookings and hotel stays, it needs to be embedded into your property management systems. Note that creating an omnichannel chatbot for a travel business takes more time to integrate, but your customers will be grateful for it!
• Data privacy concerns. Chatbot conversations must be closely guarded against security weaknesses and data breaches. For flight details or booking information, get ready to adopt advanced encryption solutions for authentication and authorization while complying with data privacy regulations.
• Maintenance challenges. Bots are not fully independent. They still require humans to monitor interactions and join communication if a chatbot fails to resolve their problems. Your team should be well-versed in technical matters to handle unforeseen events or potential security issues.

Given that, you shouldn’t go alone when breaking new ground with an AI chatbot. The best way to bypass implementation challenges is to have someone to guide you through them.

Acropolium and Chatbots

At Acropolium, we have a soft spot for smart technology and chatbots, and we love creating AI and ML solutions for the tourism and HoReCa industries. You can find the Acropolium name carved behind many advanced analytics and hotel management systems, among other software.

Acropolium can develop a chatbot for a travel agency or hotel located in any country while navigating the challenges that may get in the way. With our expertise, backend as a service, and the power of AI, you can treat your guests to a fantastic experience, whether solely on your website or across multiple channels. We’ll walk you through everything.

Here are some of our success stories about chatbot development for different businesses!

Restaurant Chatbot Development

Our client approached us to help them digitalize restaurant operations in the post-pandemic business environment. The restaurant required a reactive development approach, where a chatbot would reduce staff costs, spark client loyalty, and attract new customers online.

Solution

• After assessing the client’s needs, we opted for a pre-built Low-Code solution for the backend of the restaurant chatbot. This enabled our team to concentrate on developing the chatbot’s business logic, such as content and carts, and seamlessly integrate it with the low-code system.
• Our approach saves costs on ongoing support while eliminating potential bugs that could arise in a custom chatbot backend project.
• Furthermore, the adoption of Low-Code reduced the development time for the custom business logic from three months to just three weeks.

Results

The restaurant chatbot development costs were reduced by 75%, while time to market decreased by 60%. Additionally, further support costs were reduced by 80%.

Car Dealer Chatbot Development

Our client, a premier car dealer, asked Acropolium to develop a chatbot to automate the vehicle selection process for their users. The solution had to back time-consuming consultations provided by the company’s managers personally, cutting down the car-selling funnel time.

Solution

• In response to the client’s needs, we devised a car dealership chatbot solution comprising three primary scenarios.
• The first scenario catered to individuals without a car, providing a questionnaire and recommending car options based on their responses.
• The second scenario targeted clients in the purchasing phase, offering test drive options.
• Lastly, for those who had already purchased a car, there was an FAQ section addressing potential car issues and an online car manual accessible without downloading.

Results

The client loyalty rate saw a 62% increase, while the number of new clients rose by 30%. At the same time, the sales funnel time decreased by 38%.

The Bottom Line

AI- and NLP-powered chatbots are the final piece in your customer support puzzle. They answer questions like humans, they sound like humans (if voice-enabled), and they are tireless, unlike humans.

With bots, automation is the name of the game. That’s why they are so valuable for customer support teams in travel and hospitality, the industries where customers require a personalized experience 24/7.

Do you want your OTA or hotel to be synonymous with killer customer service? Acropolium can show you the way. Let’s talk about instilling automation and personalization into your business with hospitality or travel chatbots — we offer flexible subscription-based cooperation for your budget.

Sources of Information

• Global Chatbot Market Predictions — Markets & Markets
• 2024 Chatbot Statistics — Chatbot.com