HotelPlanner has announced what it says is “a world first that will change how customers find and book their hotels.” HotelPlanner.ai is the first end-to-end AI hotel booking assistant with access to book over one million-plus properties worldwide.
Fluent in 15 languages, the AI Assistant will take a call, respond to customer requirements, check the availability and price of suitable rooms, explain the unique nature of the room type, booking terms, and respond to detailed questions about each hotel before processing a credit card booking. Then the guest will receive confirmation by text and/or email. The AI Assistant can book prepaid rooms for the best savings or a pay-at-hotel rate.
“We launched our Gig economy call centre during Covid. It’s been incredibly successful with over 7,000 active salespeople but the number of available agents limited our growth. We used data from over 8,000,000 reservation calls to train AI Voice assistants to not only look after our customers’ many queries but sell rooms in a streamlined, enjoyable and efficient experience that has never been seen before,” says Tim Hentschel, Co-CEO, HotelPlanner.
With access to HotelPlanner’s inventory of over a million properties the company’s AI Assistants are already engaging customers in English (in multiple variants), Hindi, Mandarin, French, German, Spanish and Portuguese. Greek, Turkish and many more languages will be coming soon.
The Assistant can deal with complex queries such as, “Hi James, I’m looking for a family friendly hotel, within a four-hour flight of West Palm Beach, Fla. I live on the beach, so I don’t want a beach resort, and I want it to be four or five stars and have an indoor pool.”
Feedback from users has been overwhelmingly positive, says the company, with plenty of praise for the technology for its efficiency and ease of use.
Customers can always ask to talk to a human agent, but such is the quality of the service that this is a very rare occurrence, it adds.
Below is an actual transcript from a customer at the end of a booking process:
Customer: Will you be there when I check in?
AI Assistant James: I appreciate you asking, I apologize for the confusion, Derek. I should have been clearer. I’m a virtual assistant.
Customer: And I want to know your name so I can leave a… Oh, sXXXt! Okay. I was gonna give a great review for you.
AI Assistant James: Really appreciate your kind intention, Derek!
Other customers have enjoyed buying their hotel rooms from Santa in the North Pole, a Donnie in DC, a Bodie in California, and a Sofia in Roma.
“We are incredibly excited to lead the charge in integrating AI into the travel booking experience,” said John Prince, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of HotelPlanner. “HotelPlanner.AI not only simplifies the booking but as our AI Assistants continue to learn they will only get better. Now our human call centre team can look after customers with the more complicated and higher value bookings.”
HotelPlanner.AI is now live, and travellers can begin exploring the future of booking with AI Assistant today.
If this article was shared with you by a friend or colleague, you may enjoy receiving your own copy of Travel Industry Today with the latest travel news and reviews each weekday morning. It’s absolutely free – just CLICK HERE.