What's hot in the travel and tourism industry?
Chatbots; travel chatbots!
But Travel chatbots + ChatGPT is the hottest!
Chatbots are a new-age interface that can help you interact with your customers. But with ChatGPT’s remarkable human-like and personalized interactions, it sets the bar high for delivering lightning-fast responses and providing customers with the utmost information.
Embrace the sizzling power of ChatGPT and elevate your customer experiences to unprecedented levels in the dynamic world of travel.
Get ready for the ultimate travel revolution!
What are travel chatbots?
Travel chatbots are AI-powered virtual assistants designed to assist travellers throughout their journey. These chatbots engage in human-like conversations and offer personalized assistance. Integrated into websites, mobile apps, and messaging platforms, travel chatbots enable users to interact through text-based conversations.
They cater by including trip planning, booking assistance, customer support, recommendations, and more. With real-time information and instant responses, travel chatbots enhance customer service, streamline processes, and provide round-the-clock support, resulting in a more seamless and interactive travel experience that improves overall customer satisfaction in the travel and tourism industry.
Travel agencies: Here’s what’s in for you!
Imagine you're a travel agency constantly bombarded with customer requests day and night. While it's your duty to assist them, the repetitive and time-consuming tasks can be overwhelming.
Here's a game-changing solution: enter the world of travel chatbots!
With chatbots, you can build an assistant in a matter of minutes. Once trained and deployed on your website, they take charge of automating repetitive tasks and handling customer interactions. But what exactly can these virtual travel agents do for the travel industry? Let's explore their remarkable functions:
Travel Planning:
Your chatbot becomes a virtual travel agent, expertly curating personalized trips for your customers based on their preferences and requirements.
FAQ Generation:
Chatbots effortlessly collect relevant information through frequently asked questions (FAQs) and provide prompt answers to customer queries, saving both time and effort.
Live Chat and Agent Assignments:
The chatbot's live chat feature ensures seamless customer support. Whenever a complex query arises, the chatbot automatically assigns a representative to engage with the customer in real-time.
Availability of Hotels and Flights:
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.
Personalized Recommendations:
Harnessing the power of data, your travel chatbot along with the power of generative AI becomes an expert recommender, suggesting flights, hotels, places to visit, things to do, and even acting as a virtual tour guide.
Effortless Refunds and Cancellations:
Say goodbye to complicated refund and cancellation processes. The chatbot streamlines these procedures, allowing customers to cancel and request refunds directly. Payments can also be conveniently managed through the chatbot.
Trip Information:
Your chatbot keeps users informed about their journey details, including check-ins, flight status updates, and much more, ensuring a hassle-free travel experience.
As a Travel Agency, why would you need one?
- Time and Cost Efficiency: By automating repetitive tasks and handling customer interactions, a travel chatbot can save you time and reduce operational costs. Chatbots can be quickly built and deployed, requiring minimal maintenance once implemented.
- Travel Planning: A chatbot can act as a virtual travel agent, assisting customers in planning their trips based on their preferences and requirements. It can provide personalized recommendations for destinations, attractions, accommodations, and activities, enhancing the customer experience.
- FAQs and Customer Queries: Chatbots excel at collecting and providing information through frequently asked questions (FAQs). They can efficiently handle customer queries by retrieving relevant answers instantly, ensuring consistent and accurate responses.
- Live Chat and Agent Assignment: When complex queries arise, live chat functionality allows customers to communicate with your representatives. The chatbot can automatically assign a suitable travel agent to assist the customer, ensuring prompt and efficient resolution of their concerns.
- Availability and Booking: Travel chatbots can access real-time information on hotel and flight availability. They can recommend options to customers based on their preferences, and customers can even book flights or accommodations directly through the chatbot interface.
Why travel bots?
24/7 Availability: Travel bots are always accessible, providing assistance and information around the clock. This is especially helpful for travelers who may have urgent inquiries or need support outside of regular business hours.
Instantaneous Responses: Travel bots offer quick and immediate responses to user queries, saving time and providing instant information on flights, accommodations, attractions, and other travel-related topics. No more waiting on hold or delayed email responses.
Personalized Recommendations: Travel bots can provide personalized recommendations based on user preferences and past interactions. By analyzing data, such as travel history, interests, and budget, bots can suggest tailored travel itineraries, hotel options, tourist attractions, restaurants, and more, making the travel planning process easier and more customized.
Real-Time Updates: Travel bots keep travelers informed with real-time updates on important travel information such as flight delays, gate changes, weather conditions, and travel advisories. This ensures that travelers are always up to date and can make necessary adjustments to their plans promptly.
Cost Savings: By implementing travel bots, travel companies can reduce costs by minimizing the need for extensive customer service teams. Bots can handle repetitive inquiries, frequently asked questions, and basic tasks, allowing human agents to focus on more complex customer needs. This ultimately leads to more efficient operations and potential cost savings for both travelers and travel companies.
These benefits resonate with many travelers as they address common pain points such as accessibility, time-saving, personalized experiences, staying informed, and cost efficiency. Travel bots provide practical solutions to enhance the overall travel experience for both travelers and travel companies alike.
Applications of travel chatbots
Just like us, every bot is different and has its own way of working and organizing. So here’s a list of a few bot types you can choose from according to your business needs and customer demands.
Booking assistance:
Travel chatbots excel in providing quick and efficient booking assistance. They can search for flights, hotels, car rentals, and other travel services, providing real-time information on availability, prices, and options. By simplifying the booking process, chatbots save users time and effort.
Itinerary planning:
Travel chatbots can help users create personalized itineraries based on their preferences. By considering factors such as interests, budget, and available time, chatbots suggest popular attractions, restaurants, and activities at the travel destination. This feature enhances the travel experience by providing tailored recommendations.
Customer support:
Travel chatbots serve as virtual customer support agents, available 24/7 to handle inquiries and provide assistance. They can address common questions, resolve issues related to bookings or travel information, and offer support throughout the travel journey. This application ensures travelers have access to immediate assistance whenever they need it.
Why choose Engati for travel?
Support channels and analytics:
Engati offers a range of support channels, including live chat, and provides rich analytics for monitoring performance. These features cater to the specific needs of the travel industry and enhance the customer experience.
Natural Language Understanding and Contextual Conversation:
Engati's advanced features enable your travel chatbot to interact efficiently with customers. The chatbot understands natural language and maintains contextual conversations, making it easier for customers to communicate. Over time, the chatbot stores and analyzes data, allowing for personalized recommendations based on customer preferences.
Customer satisfaction and trust:
Engati helps you make customers feel valued and special. By reducing response time and providing prompt solutions, you can earn their trust and loyalty. Resolving booking difficulties or other issues quickly will leave a positive impression and encourage repeat business.
User-friendly platform:
Engati provides an intuitive platform that is easy to use, even for those without programming knowledge. In-house experts are available to guide you through the platform and showcase how Engati can offer unique solutions for your travel business. Additionally, you can build your own travel chatbot for free within just 10 minutes. Customization options are also available for a nominal charge.
eSenseGPT:
Provide details on various procedures, policies, etc. Answer user queries extensively using Engati’s eSenseGPT integration and the data available on your website or in your documents. You can input your data into eSenseGPT by sharing a link to your website or Google Doc, or by uploading a PDF document. Using Engati’s eSenseGPT integration, user queries can be resolved within seconds, providing prompt responses.
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By choosing Engati, you can leverage its comprehensive features, personalized interactions, and user-friendly platform to enhance your travel business and set yourself apart in the industry.
What can Engati's travel chatbot do?
Pre-Booking
Book tickets on the go
- Enable users to conveniently book tickets using WhatsApp as a communication channel.
- Once a successful payment and booking are made, automatically generate and send a receipt to the user.
Simplify ticket cancellation process
- Engati's JSON API functionality, enable users to effortlessly cancel tickets and obtain refunds.
- Ensure users stay informed by sending them a notification on WhatsApp confirming the successful cancellation and refund.
Provide real-time flight updates
- After a user has booked a ticket, empower them to conveniently monitor the real-time position of their mode of transport.
- Offer step-by-step onboarding instructions ensuring users receive relevant details at each step.
Post-Booking
Notify users on latest offers
- Using Engati’s Broadcast feature send a notification on the user’s registered WhatsApp number for latest offers and updates.
- This can be a valuable tool for increasing upselling opportunities and enhancing the sales process.
Nurture customer relationships
- Provide your customers with reward points for each booking they make, encouraging their continued loyalty and engagement.
- This will benefit in keeping the customers engaged and motivated to continue booking through your agency.
Connect to an agent in case of complex queries- 24/7 Customer support
- Customers have the flexibility to engage with an agent and seek assistance for any kind of inquiry.
- In case of a complex query, customers have the option to directly request a video call with the bot to address their needs.
Travel chatbot success stories
TBO Holidays
TBO Holidays, a B2B portal that helps travel agencies across the globe wanted to enhance customer service efficiency. Their current system, that relied heavily on email did not work for them. High volumes of incoming emails created bottlenecks that hindered agent productivity.
Engati’s conversational modeler helped TBO Holidays create interactive dialog flows that helps users find answers to their questions in a matter of seconds, with the chatbot handling 1.5x more users than an agent.
TBO Holidays integrates Engati into their system to automate queries around bookings, cancellations, plans, etc., handling 90.4% of questions and handling more requests to further increase customer engagement.
iVenture Card
iVenture Card, a renowned travel experiences provider, sought to optimize customer service efficiency. Partnering with Engati, a cutting-edge conversational AI platform, they implemented an interactive chatbot that handles 1.5 times more users than human agents.
Engati's integration automated queries on bookings, cancellations, and travel plans, addressing 90.4% of customer questions. This solution significantly improved response times, reduced agent workload, and boosted customer engagement.
iVenture Card's adoption of Engati revolutionized their support operations, ensuring travellers receive prompt assistance and enhancing overall satisfaction. Their partnership solidifies iVenture Card's position as a leader in the travel industry.
How to develop a travel chatbot in 5 easy steps?
Gone are the days when travelers had to visit an agent or click through several websites to book and plan their vacation. Travel chatbots have successfully replaced all the manual interactions and can take commands from the user to complete any given task! From flight bookings to recommendations for hotels to places to visit! Travel chatbots can do it all!
Now, you’d be wondering “travel chatbots do seem promising, but making one is going to cost a lot of money, time, and resources”. Building bots is no more a hard task that requires a lot of coding and programming. With technical advancements you can make full-fledged chatbots in 10 minutes!
Now let me demonstrate how to get started with Engati, a chatbot building platform, and build or try a template of travel bots for your travel business.
First, create an account by registering for free at Engati.
As soon as you create your account, you’ll find yourself on this landing page where you can get started with building a bot immediately.
Click on Create Bot, give your bot a name click on ‘build from template’ to select from our various, multi-functional bot templates
Click on Create and you have your bot ready! Yes, it’s that simple! You can also customize the conversational flow, create paths, add FAQs, train your bot and add broadcast, Live chat, and multilingual features. Edit, create flows, analyze, and more!
Head to the Deployment section to deploy your bot on 12+ channels or even choose to integrate between CRMs, Ticketing and Payment tools also the JSON API or Zapier that lets hundreds of more integrations possible.
Integrate and deploy!
And you’re done! Enjoy your newly made bot and reap its maximum benefits!
Things to consider when building a travel chatbot:
Set the right expectations: Clearly define what the chatbot can and cannot do to avoid frustrating users. This should be communicated to both the development team and the users of the chatbot.
Cater to the context: Leverage past interactions and user data to personalize the conversation and provide relevant recommendations. For example, an airline chatbot can anticipate a traveler's needs based on their past flights and offer tailored services like business class upgrades or suggestions for local amenities.
Handover to a human: While chatbots aim to automate customer conversations, there will be queries that exceed their capabilities. Ensure a smooth transition to a human agent who can assist users with complex inquiries. Avoid forcing users to switch channels for assistance.
Measure bot performance: Regularly analyze and measure the chatbot's conversations to optimize its performance. This includes monitoring user satisfaction, identifying areas for improvement, and making necessary adjustments to enhance the chatbot's effectiveness.
Try the plug & play bot for Travel and Hospitality yourself, Scan the QR code here:
Schedule your personalized travel chatbot demo now!
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