The Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas has Rose, The Andaz Singapore has ConcierGo and Tokyo’s Otani has BeBot, with more hotels are adding a chatbot or digital concierge to their front-desk staff.
Helping improve customer stays and service, bots are the new heroes for hotels, but need to be carefully trained and managed.
When travellers are looking for a hotel, the usual rules still apply, comfy bed, decent view, good service and polite staff.
But more chains and boutique establishments are trying to reduce the workload on their human front desk staff by introducing a chatbot.
A Chat With A Rose
Having launched in 2017, Rose at The Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas is doing great service for the hotel, with plenty of stats in the linked piece about her engagement and success, helping drive revenue and customer satisfaction.
“Guests that engage with Rose spend 30% more than guests who don’t, and are 33% happier when they leave.” according to the report.
That sort of detail is just the information chatbot vendors and hotels are after when it comes to helping them decide on launching a chatbot.
But Rose isn’t standing still and is evolving more to act like a ‘hostess’ who can deliver a more personal service to guests via text messages directly. Keep an eye on Rose to see how she helps customers into the future.
Hitting Asia’s Streets With Confidence Thanks To BeBot & ConcierGO
BeBot is rapidly becoming a fixture in Tokyo’s hospitality and transit scene. The bot works in English and Chinese at Narita Airport and Tokyo Station and is now present to help customers at the Hotel New Otani Tokyo.
BeBot offers food, travel and tourism advice along with tips on Japanese culture and much more.
Consider how far we’ve come since visitors were desperately scratching around in their Rough Guide or other travel books to help them navigate the city’s formidable transport and culture.
BeBot is free to use for customers of the New Otani Hotel and other locations, currently on Facebook Messenger but coming soon to WeChat, Line and other services.
Upping the ante for concierge-type bots is the Andaz Singapore and its ConcierGO chatbot. Operating via the hotel’s Facebook messenger account, the chatbot answers queries about the hotel, it also serves as a guide that can provide curated information on local attractions, tours plus recommendations for food and events in and around the city state.
Future improvements on the cards will allow the chatbot to manage room requests through integration with the hotel’s back-end systems.
“We are creating a barrier-less environment for us to engage with guests and potential guests alike,” says Olivier Lenoir, general manager of Andaz Singapore highlight the logical drive for chatbots to be a complete part of the hospitality chain.
Airlines Keep Up The Chatbot Pace
While hotels are doing lots of work to keep their guests happy, airlines (often one of the most complained about types of service) are also looking to improve customer satisfaction.
When passengers are delayed, all the vouchers or upgrades in the world won’t help someone crying out for a little bit of practical information about when they might actually fly.
KLM’s BlueBot, Lufthansa’s Mildred and many more are now permanent points of contact for a growing number of travelers, helping people book tickets and managing their flight changes or delays.
A 2017 IATA webinar, Meet the BOTS: Re-shaping the future of air travel experience showed how airlines can use bots to help when it comes to protecting brand image and improving customer loyalty.
How they can reduce contact centre costs and drive extra revenue through cross-selling while improving that all-important customer experience were also highlights, Tim Grosser, IATA’s Head of Digital Transformation, highlighted consumer demand for AI across all industries, including aviation, expecting answers 24/7, and not just the usual “your flight is delayed” message.
AI-powered chatbots should be able to access flight and maintenance data to provide estimates of when people can fly.
Whatever the business, the high-pressure environment of hospitality and flying are providing many great examples of how chatbots can help customers, acting as a guide for other industries.
Services like SnatchBot can help any business create a powerful and smart service to offer best-in-class customer service to keep clients happy.
