TOPICS: Chatbot for Travel    Building a chatbot   

Hotel chatbot – 4 ways hotels can improve their services using chatbots

A good location, fair prices, and comfortable rooms – are these enough, or do 21st century hotels need more?

The answer to that question is fairly obvious. Modern hotels cater to a wide variety of guests – digital nomads who work out of their hotel rooms, families looking for a month’s worth of relaxation in a week’s time, busy professionals catching forty winks between meetings, to name just a few.

What do all these guests have in common? The need for a hassle-free stay where everything they need is at their beck and call.

Do hotels have to spend a fortune to offer that? Not if they use hotel chatbots.



Hotel chatbots make for a simple and inexpensive upgrade, allowing hotels to take better care of their guests by providing efficient and personalized services. Here’s how:

1. Chatbot Instant answers to common questions:

Guests can have a whole bunch of questions, both before and after checking in. For instance, Eddie, who’s traveling with his wife and kids wants to know if he and his wife can enjoy a couple’s spa day at the hotel while someone watches the kids.

“Do you have babysitting services?” Eddie asks the hotel chatbot.

“Yes,” says the chatbot. “A babysitter can be booked with prior notice. We also organize group activities for children aged 7 and below; would you like to check them out?”

Similarly, Mark has an early flight to catch and wants to make sure he’s booking a room at a hotel that serves breakfast before 7:00 am. He can just check with the hotel's chatbot.

Mark: “What are your breakfast timings?”

Chatbot: “We serve breakfast from 6:30hrs to 10:30hrs on weekdays, and 7:00hrs to 11:30hrs on weekends.”

In addition to these, existing guests can also summon the hotel’s chatbot for simple questions like:

“What’s my Wi-Fi password?”

“What are the pool timings?”

“How can I book an in-room massage?”

The chatbot can give them the answers, or connect them with a staff member if needed.

2. A concierge in the hotel chatbot window:

Heading to the reception for every little query is no longer something that hotel guests need to do. With chatbot development for hotel websites, guests can place their requests, ask their questions, or lodge their complaints in the chat window itself. We’re referring to everything from fixing a problem with the room’s TV, to ordering extra water bottles, to finding out about places to visit around the hotel. Getting all this through online chat is even easier than calling the hotel reception, not only because it’s instant, but also because chat histories can be saved for future reference.

So when Claire, a guest in one of the rooms needs a ride to her conference venue the next day, she books a taxi through the chat window. And if she wants the taxi rescheduled a few hours later, she can do it quickly, without explaining the whole situation to a new staff member. “I’d like my taxi rescheduled to 2:00 pm tomorrow,” is all she’d need to type.

3. Chatbot helping with tour promotions and bookings:

Hotels usually have tie-ups with tour booking and car rental services in the city, and promote them to guests by handing out fliers or offering discounted packages when they book their rooms. When they create a hotel chatbot for their websites, promoting these tours and activities can actually become easier. Let’s look at a sample interaction between a hotel guest and the chatbot to understand this.

Chatbot: “To confirm, you’d like 1 deluxe double room for 2 adults, from [date 1] to [date 2].”

Guest: “Correct.”

Chatbot: “Great, I’ll go ahead and book that for you. Would you like to rent a car for the duration of your stay? It costs just an extra [dollar amount] per day for our guests. You can check out the details here.”

The guest receives a link to the car rental service website, where they can check out all the available options and pricing. They can see that the hotel deal gets them a decent discount, which can prompt them to book the service right then and there.

The same logic applies to sightseeing services in the city as well. The best chatbots for hotel websites even pitch attractive discounts on these to existing hotel guests, so if they happen to have a few hours to spare on a given day, they can book the service instantly through the chat window.

4. Free city guides chatbots for travelers:

While building chatbots for their websites, hotels can program them to offer basic guidance on their city’s tourist sites and activities as well. This way, hotel guests can talk to the hotel's chatbot when they have a question about the visiting hours of a specific destination, or wish to find out about the attractions near the hotel. They don’t need to switch to a different app or service when all they need to know is something like:

“What are the nearest sightseeing destinations?”

“What’s the history of the Old Church?”

“Where can I find an ATM?”

In the light of the above, online chatbots are quickly becoming indispensable for modern hotels. To learn more about how chatbot development powers the tourism industry, or for specific questions about building chatbots for your website, get in touch with us.