Chatbots, a technological advance in the hospitality’s customer relationship

In the age of digital marketing, chatbots have been used for quite a while now. For any company willing to put the means and time to set it up they could represent quite the competive advantage. Especially in the hotel industry.

What is a chatbots ?

A chatbot, also called �conversational agent� is an intelligent software robot, which can answer simple request from live clients.

Chatbots are divided in two categories:

-Those �scripted�, meaning they are using a system that offers them the possibility to choose among different questions or answers.

-Those having an Artificial Intelligence, able to learn and adapt to specific requests from a customer. However, this Artificial Intelligence is limited to the what has been built in or what they learn from replying to previous request.

Without needing any human help, those chatbots are a great tool to ensure a privileged relationship with your travellers.

What can hoteliers gain from that ?

As we have stated in this article, the customer loyalty is a major point in a hotel profitability.

Having a Chatbot on your website can help you answer basic customer request, without being connected at all time. Of course it will never be able to answers some very specific questions. Nonetheless, as we all know, most of the customers questions are usually very similar.

It�s a great time saver for both the hotels and the clients and usually leads to an increased conversion rates on the hotel�s website.

Future for chatbots ?

Although conversational agents have been on the market for a few years, the first versions were not really functional.

Yet, the progression of these intelligent robots is dazzling. To the extent that 80% of the companies are using or plan to use it by 2020, according to a study from Business Insider Intelligence.

Building up customer loyalty is a necessity. For a hotel establishment, using chatbots allows to boost the relationship with your guest, leading to a direct increase of loyalty.

Those Intelligent software seems to be on track to become an essential tool for hotels in the coming years.