Chat Bots: how could they impact the travel industry?

Yes, a travel chatbot can effectively manage customer complaints and queries by providing timely responses, resolving common issues, and escalating complex situations to human agents when necessary. Travel chatbots have become pivotal in redefining the travel experience. They blend advanced technology with a touch of personalization to create seamless, efficient, and enjoyable travel journeys.

More experienced workers might want to start that upskilling work sooner rather than later. Researchers at the University of Oxford found that older workers may be at a higher risk from AI-related job threats because they might not be as comfortable adopting new tech as their younger colleagues. “If a company says, ‘Oh, I want someone who has five years of experience as an AI prompt engineer,’ guess what? It’s not in existence — that role only came up in the last 18 months,” he says. Shane Barker is a digital marketing consultant who specializes in influencer marketing, product launches, sales funnels, targeted traffic, and website conversions.

Five Use Cases for Travel Chatbots

In a 2017 study from 3CInteractive, 40 percent of millennials say they use a chatbot on a daily basis. As large companies like Kayak and Expedia have brought bots to apps and mobile-optimized websites, they are also integrating them on mobile messaging applications used widely by millennials, like Facebook Messenger. At its 2017 F8 conference, Facebook’s Vice President of Messaging Products, David Marcus announced that the Messenger platform now hosts over 100 thousand bots. With SendPulse, you can create chatbots for Telegram and Facebook messengers in a blink of an eye.

For example, chatbots assist potential customers by giving them multiple options to book their holidays. Once the booking is done, it starts sending out automated reminders to travelers about the booking date, time and their reservations in advance. When they arrive at the destination guest will receive a suggestion from the bots about the location, like hotels, spa treatments, transport facilities, and so on.

Travel Chatbots: What You Need to Know

To get relevant offers, travelers need to provide the bot with their requirements such as destination, date, type of accommodation, price range, and so on. If you want to develop a chatbot for your travel agency, this article is right for you. Below, we share the most successful usage of travel chatbots and a step-by-step guide on how to develop one. It speaks to the attention we’re all giving to a new generation of chatbots able to have human-like conversations. The researcher tracks the adoption of today’s most popular generative AI chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Bard, Microsoft Bing, Character.ai and Claude.ai.

Chatbots can cut down on the time, hassle and frustration that millions of customers experience every single day and simplify an overcomplicated, overburdened system. Every time you use any of the thousands of chatbot-powered services, you are looking directly at the future of the travel industry. Train employees to work alongside chatbots and support the transition to a chatbot-powered customer experience. This can include educating employees on the capabilities and limitations of chatbots as well as providing them with the necessary tools and resources to support customers using chatbots with human takeover.

Chatbot Security

Chatbots are capable of taking the consumer from the awareness stage to the conversion stage within minutes. You can also add offers, coupons and even a payment gateway in your chatbots. A research by Google shows that 69% of business travelers and 65% of holiday travelers go online for travel planning. It also says that 92% of millennials find live chat engaging and 23% of them are predicted to travel and spend $1.4 trillion by 2020. All this brings in more possibilities of conversions and revenue growth through travel chatbots. Using chatbots in travel industry can reduce operational costs related to customer support.

Your AI chatbots need to collect information and data which are relevant and need to transmit it over the internet securely. If you are going to use chatbots for customer service, then you need to absolutely make sure that it’s safe to share information with the chatbots. In recent months, a lot has happened regarding data privacy and security.

Robo-advisors and Artificial Intelligence – Comparing 5 Current Apps

In 2022, it is futuristically easy to acquire groceries, stocks, taxis and entertainment. Chaim Heber, Founder of Entri, a next-generation NLP-powered conversational platform pioneering frictionless travel and visa documentation. For example, not all visitors know about the hidden gems (and sometimes even important sights) in the places they visit. Offering a tour of Stromboli to visitors to Sicily could help them not miss a famous point of interest close to the islands. The reliability of a chatbot is directly linked to its ability to provide the correct response within a conversation.

KLM has trained chatbots to answer thousands of questions and has integrated the service into its customer relationship management tool to improve customer satisfaction. Entri.io reduces the e-visa application process from hours (or days, or weeks) to minutes by providing a chatbot-powered visa application travel documentation platform. Customers simply answer a couple of questions via WhatsApp chat and complete their visa applications within a matter of seconds. A chatbot can enhance and engage customer interactions with less human intervention. It removes the barriers to customer support that can occur when demand outpaces resources. Instead of waiting on hold, customers can get answers to their questions in real time.

That’s because you don’t have to keep on hiring new people to handle customer service. AI chatbots are virtual robots, so they never run out of energy to communicate with your customers. Hence, they can operate 24/7, follow your commands, and help you improve the customer experience. Having said that, there are some chatbot implementation problems as well, such as it’s not easy to design an effective chatbot. While chatbots have become fixtures in the online retail space to streamline customer support, they have also been widely adopted in industries such as finance, healthcare, and insurance.

By automating routine tasks and inquiries, chatbots free up human staff to focus on more complex and revenue-generating activities. Thus, you can optimize your workforce, and the need for a large customer service team can be reduced. Travel chatbots recommend hotels and flights based on availability and customer preferences. Customers can conveniently book their choices directly or request assistance from the chatbot.

The Benefits of Building Travel Chatbots

Users simply need to open Facebook Messenger and tell the bot a little bit about their travel plans. Once it has enough information, the five most popular hotel options in the chosen location will be shown. By clicking on any of the hotels suggested, the user will be re-directed to Expedia’s website where can book directly. The minute the booking is finished, the users will receive a message in Messenger with a link to the itinerary. IBM claims that 75% of customer inquiries are basic, repetitive questions that are quickly answered online. If hotels analyze guest inquiries to identify FAQs, even a rule-based chatbot can considerably assist the customer care department in this area.

• As large companies like Kayak and Expedia have brought bots to apps and mobile-optimized websites, they are also integrating them on mobile messaging applications used widely by millennials, like Facebook Messenger.
• Below, we share the most successful usage of travel chatbots and a step-by-step guide on how to develop one.
• You simply type into the chatbot what you want to change regarding your booking, and Ami will take you to the appropriate page.
• A chatbot system uses conversational artificial intelligence (AI) technology to simulate a discussion (or a chat) with a user in natural language via messaging applications, websites, mobile apps or the telephone.
• You can further develop the recommendations and even offer to send alerts.
• These opportunities will allow travel industries to engage with their customers with little risk and drive definite ROI in a small duration of time.

With less reliance on service agents and live agents, organizations are realizing significant cost savings and are becoming more efficient. Feebie, the restaurant chatbot, can be integrated into a restaurant’s booking system to help with reservations, menu requests, operating hours and other common questions. According to its data, Feebi can take care of 90% of standard restaurant customer services. No matter the industry, chatbots can provide around-the-clock service for customers and work the odd hours that humans might not be available to work. Expedia.com is an Online Travel Agency that can be used to book airline tickets, hotel reservations, car rentals, cruises and vacation packages. Although Expedia allows users to search for hotels, flights, cruises and cars, its Facebook Messenger bot, currently, only searches for hotels.

Read more about Everything you need to know about chatbots for travel industry here.