What are the different types of hotel chatbots?

When we speak about the hotel chatbot, we seem to think of an unvarying product, however, chatbots are very versatile. There are different types of hotel chatbots on the market, designed to fit different types of organizations and needs. So, when choosing a hotel chatbot, it is important to think about the structure of your organization and the goals you want to achieve.  

Why Do I Need to Consider a Hotel Chatbot?

The guest journey is driven by the need for information: from information about pets to cancellation policies, breakfast hours, or how to get from the airport to the hotel. Many guests, however, face the same questions, and hotel operations don’t have the resources available to provide timely or even correct answers.  

A hotel chatbot can automate the response to 80% of your incoming communication 24/7 and in multiple languages, alleviating your staff of often repetitive tasks, so they can focus on more important actions.  

What Are The Different Types of Hotel Chatbots?  

There are different types of hotel chatbots on the market, and they all work differently and are designed with different aims. The first distinction we need to make is between an AI-powered or a rule-based chatbot:

• Rule-based chatbot: this chatbot type uses a tree-like flow to help guests, which means that the chatbot will ask the guest follow-up questions to get to the correct answer. The structures and answers are all pre-defined so that you are in control of the conversation.  
• A.I.-powered chatbot: this chatbot is powered by Natural Language Processing (NLP) and will try to understand what it is that the guest wants (i.e., the intent). The more it interacts with guests, the better it will become at understanding the intent, and the better it will become at responding.  
• Hybrid-model: there are also chatbots that have the characteristics of both models. This means that the chatbot will ask follow-up questions to the guest, but will use A.I. to understand the intent of the guest to skip redundant questions.

Is There Any Type of Hotel chatbots I Should Avoid?

When having benchmarked the pros and cons of the different types of hotel chatbot, and you are ready to choose a hotel chatbot, it is important to avoid chatbots that:

1. Are not flexible: Businesses are growing and changing rapidly, and a hotel chatbot needs to be able to adapt to the needs and goals of your company, whether your business needs a full-time chatbot or a chatbot outside of office hours, or even just an AI-powered response suggestions for your agents.  

2. Are not operational efficient: Hotel chatbots are not just a marketing tool, to drive website conversion, but are also key for operational efficiency. Guests on-site will want to message you and will have requests for you, your chatbot should be ready to deal with these requests efficiently, routing them to the correct team member for quick follow-up.

3. Are not hospitality-specialized: a chatbot for e-commerce will need different answers and follow-up flows than a chatbot specialized for hospitality. Hotels deal with very specific questions, and a well-trained hotel chatbot will be able to deal with all relevant questions, while a more generic chatbot will miss many of these industry-specific questions.  

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