Do you work in the hospitality industry? For sure you know that providing excellent customer service is essential to success. For a long time, hospitality businesses have battled to keep pace with evolving customer expectations and stay ahead of the competition by investing in more manpower and training employees. In recent years, however, especially due to the devastating effects on the industry by the COVID-19 pandemic, the hospitality industry has started to adopt new technologies to enhance guest experience and operational efficiency. One way to provide great customer service is by using a hotel AI chatbot.
Hotel or other hospitality business AI chatbot is a conversational artificial intelligence software program that can be used to communicate with customers before, during, and after their service. For example, hotels worldwide are already using chatbots to help guests with everything from booking a room to ordering room service. Have you already heard about Edward from Radisson Blu Edwardian London? In 2019, 3 years after his creation, he could reply to over 16,000 guests’ questions and perfectly deals with the duties of the Concierge. He is so popular among the hotel guests that they nominated him for the Employee of the Month and even give tips to him. Edward is a smart concierge chatbot. According to a case study about Edward, up to 75% of the questions it replied were the ones that the Reception Desk staff replies to, 24/7/365. As AI chatbots continue to evolve, they are only going to become more sophisticated, and able to handle even more complex requests and tasks.
According to one survey, 84% of travelers responded that the usage of technology in all touch points of travel is the key to the decision-making if, when, where, and how they will travel in the post-pandemic world. They expect technology to help them to avoid queues, keep social distance, be safe and receive instant up-to-date information. 73% of travelers also prefer hotels with self-service technology, according to a new study, “Hospitality in 2025: Automated, Intelligent…and More Personal” and they want to use their mobile devices to manage their hotel experience, including check-in and check-out, food and others service ordering, finding information and more. 77% of travelers are interested in using automated messaging or chatbots for customer service requests at hotels. 38% want a fully self-service model, with staff only available upon request. 39% want to order room service from their phone through a mobile app or a chatbot. That’s why 96% of hotels are already investing in contactless technology, with 62% noting “a fully contactless experience” is likely to be the most widely adopted tech in the industry in the next three years.
The hotel AI chatbot is designed to provide a personal touch to the guest experience by providing a way for guests to ask questions and receive answers in a more natural way. The hotel AI chatbot is also designed to help hotel staff with tasks such as making room reservations and providing information about the hotel and its facilities. It is very easy to use – doesn’t require downloading and installing, and communicates in a chat format, and is trained with data from hotel guest interactions and hotel staff interactions. It could constantly learn and be improved by its users’ searches and questions. The hotel AI chatbot is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days per year. The chatbot can be accessed through the hotel’s website – the most common usage, but also in the hotel’s mobile app, or elsewhere.
Why implement an AI chatbot on your site?
In 2021, the hotel website became one of the top 3 revenue generation channels for hotels globally (in 2nd and 3rd place after Booking.com and Expedia.com). At the same time, up to 56% of users leave the hotel website after viewing 1 page. The AI chatbot upgrades the website as an interactive tool for 24/7 instant communication that attracts potential guests, assists them with their questions or inquiries, and helps them book a room fast and easily. In addition, the chatbot functionalities allow the hotel to direct customers to a precise page on the website with a concrete element in a chatbot (information, form to fill, or other) literally from anywhere with 1 click on a link or scan of a QR code (in social media, emails, messenger, in the room, on a flier or else) increasing the traffic to the website, its visibility, and usability. Although we give a sample of a hotel AI chatbot, the benefits are equally valid for all other businesses in the tourism industry.
Hotels have a hard time hiring and retaining employees and need to optimize the performance of their staff by removing routine questions and tasks. In hotels, approximately 75% of the questions asked by guests are related to topics handled by Reception Desk and other Front-of-the-house employees and are mostly routine ones, therefore could be easily automated and delegated to a chatbot. On the other side, 72% of the guests expect to be served in real-time and 24/7. 73% of guests are likely to return to a hotel that meets their technology needs, highlighting the significance of technology in guest satisfaction. The pandemic brought to the hotel additional expectations and standards such as avoiding unnecessary face-to-face contact with staff, keeping social distancing, avoiding queues and crowds, and offering digital-first assistance and experience. The hotel AI chatbot addresses successfully all these issues.
It is not a surprise that due to the challenges the hotels have, 54% of hotel operation companies say that their highest priority is to adopt tech that improves or eliminates the need for the front desk experience between now and 2025. As a result, it was expected that the usage of chatbots by hotels in 2022 would increase by 53% (64% among independent hotels). Currently, hotel chatbots are in 4th place as an investment in technology by hotels after revenue management systems (RMS) and property management systems (PMS).
In the hospitality industry, first impressions are key. That’s why it’s so important for hospitality businesses to have a hotel AI chatbot that can make a positive impression on potential guests.
What duties could be performed by a hotel AI chatbot, 24/7/365, in many languages, while servicing multiple customers simultaneously and immediately:
– Providing leads, guests, and corporate clients and partners instantly with information about the hotel, its services, facilities, surroundings, etc. that would lead to reducing costs and increasing efficiency and satisfaction by automating these tasks that are currently performed by human employees
– Assisting with room reservations and related questions by providing a more personalized experience, hotel AI chatbots can help to improve customer satisfaction rates and sales
– Assisting hotel guests with reservations at a restaurant, booking an appointment for a massage, room service, shuttle to some place, gift vouchers, wake-up calls, and various other service inquiries – from a link online, from the hotel website, or from scanning a QR-code in the room, restaurant, SPA or placed at other location so guests could open instantly the needed inquiry form or content in the hotel AI chatbot
– Notifying the hotel Reception Desk or other departments about a new customer inquiry
– Communicating with clients and staff 24/7 all year round
– Improving data collection – hotel AI chatbots can gather data about guest preferences and behavior, which can then be used to make marketing decisions or improve operational processes. This valuable information can help hotels understand their guests better and provide enhanced experiences
– Answering FAQs
– Covering the night shifts, holidays and weekends, and peak times – with an average of 35% nightly chatting and 20%-45% of service requests happening at night in the hotel chatbot, there is finally a solution that is fast, easy to use and convenient for customers, and helps hotel and staff with dealing with various challenges around the clock.
At restaurants, the AI chatbots work similarly to the hotel AI chatbots:
– Providing information about a restaurant and its products and services
– Providing a menu based on a client’s preferences
– Assisting with table reservations
– Accepting requests for takeaway
– Promoting vouchers for future visits, marketing campaigns, etc.
The usage of chatbots in hospitality and tourism is not limited to hotels and restaurants only. The chatbot solution can be in service at SPA centers, tour agencies, and other providers of tourism services, parks, entertainment centers, museums, city info centers, and others. A smart digital assistant as a City Concierge is already a part of the Smart Tourism Strategy of many destinations and cities all over the world. Because of the variety of tasks and services that an AI chatbot can perform and automate, there is no doubt about the benefits of an AI chatbot in the hospitality industry. The questions to the business that would like to add a digital assistant to the list of service solutions: what the AI chatbot would do, what tasks or processes it should optimize, and whether the business is ready to implement a chatbot into its daily tasks.
Now, there are many solutions for hotels, but do-it-yourself AI chatbot platforms could fit the needs of all hotels, small and big ones. For example, one such platform is the centralized hotel AI module on the Umni platform that is ready to start working from day 1 on the hotel website trained in advance to over 750 hotel topics and over 8000 customers questions (by the end of 2022) to meet mostly all hotel customers’ questions and inquiries and to provide a 2-way online communication with guests.
The family-owned 24-room hotel Izgreva is using such a solution – a hotel AI chatbot on their hotel landing page. The hotel in the first place had challenges with guests’ communication because the hotel manager (the owner) had numerous phone calls throughout the day and the night by customers asking questions on various hotel topics. All incoming phone calls were taken directly by the manager which led to extended working hours every day. That caused a delay to all her duties related to the management of the hotel. That’s why a decision was made to automate the online communication with the hotel to release the work of the hotel management. A hotel AI chatbot was integrated into the hotel communication and reservation strategy. Since its implementation, for the first year (2022), the results were amazing and more than the expected ones.
The hotel AI digital assistant saved at least 1,400 working hours for the hotel manager further accomplishing:
– Over 1,100 hotel topics were covered in Bulgarian and English
– 16,222 customers have communicated with the chatbot one or more times
– Over 82,500 interactions from customers (clicks or questions) were taken care of, an average of 200 to 480 interactions per day on busy days, with a peak in July 2022 – over 13,500 interactions from hotel guests in that month (and over 4000 customers interactions in just 1 day!)
– 10 different inquiry forms in Bulgarian and English were used over 880 times by people from 17 countries
– 41% of the forms were submitted outside the working hours
– 42% of the communication happens between 18:00 and 8:00 (up to 47% in some months)
– 74% of the communication is via mobile phone
– Digitization of the Restaurant menu through the chatbot
– Automation of accommodation requests via chatbot
Now almost all customers of the hotel note how digitalized the hotel is and how convenient is communication with the hotel during each step of their holiday planning and stay.
Another success story is the one of the 5-start Hotel Casa di Fiore SPA & Medical with their hotel AI chatbot Miss Fiore – the face of the hotel and its facilities. Miss Fiore was part of the idea of digitalizing as many as it can of hotel services. Now the hotel AI chatbot is assisting hotel guests all year round at any time of the day and helps with direct reservations through the integration of the chatbot with a hotel reservation system for fast and easy bookings. In 2022, Miss Fiore achieved impressive results:
– 83,543 users were assisted in Bulgarian and English. Even if every customer took only 1 minute to be assisted by the chatbot, for 12 months Miss Fiore has chatted with guests for over 1,390 hours, and it is estimated that the AI chatbot had saved close to 7000 working hours for the hotel employees! This is the work of 3 to 4 people on duty every month! Industry statistics show that a conversation with a hotel guest takes on average 6 to 12 minutes. Miss Fiore also took the night shifts, the weekend job, and the duties on holidays.
– Over 545,600 actions in the chatbot including clicking and chatting in just 12 months.
– 62% of the communication was via mobile phone which proves that customers use more their phones for self-service from any place they are.
– 39% of night chatting (up to 45%) – that many guests searched for information outside of regular business hours.
– 32% of requests were submitted outside of regular business hours. That many people made their decision for booking a room or service or needed assistance with certain questions before going to bed.
– On its busiest month of the year, Miss Fiore had close to 61,000 interactions by users (4,000 customer interactions in 1 day) – that’s cool, right? Looks like guests love to interact with the smiley assistant!
– Among the top 5 most frequently asked questions were questions about room availability and prices which justifies the need and the implementation of integration with the hotel reservation system for direct reservations through the chatbot.
At hotels or other hospitality businesses, the AI chatbot is a must-have tool for online and offline (via links and QR codes) customer communication, assistance, sales, and marketing. When well executed and properly maintained and developed, the AI chatbot could be the digital employee of the month that customers would love to communicate with.
Sources:
1) Hotel Tech Benchmark: Guest-Facing Technology 2022, Nov.22
2) “Hospitality in 2025: Automated, Intelligent…and More Personal” study by Oracle and Skift
3) Top booking revenue makers of 2021 plus practical tips and traveler insights for 2022 by SiteMinder
4) Hotelier Technology Sentiment Report by NYU Tisch Center of Hospitality and StayNTouch PMS
5) Rethink Travel Global Survey, 2020 by Amadeus
6) 2021 Digital Experience Benchmark report by Contentsquare