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How chatbots are helping close bookings

A few months ago, Google unveiled Duplex, a new “conversational assistant” powered by artificial intelligence. Duplex’s main functions are to make reservations and appointments, since we are clearly too busy (or too lazy) to do it on our own. Instead of asking Siri or Alexa to call the hair salon, Duplex can speak with the receptionist on your behalf. It even mimics the way we humans say “umm” and “mmm-hmm.”

While ethical and legal aspects still need to be sorted out (should stores be told they are talking to a computer? Can Duplex be allowed to record the call?), the product is a clear indicator that computers will do more of our mundane tasks in the future. Duplex’s emergence also speaks to the great strides made with artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP).

Messaging is becoming more acceptable, easier and familiar, and apps like Facebook Messenger, Slack, WeChat and WhatsApp have more than 5 billion monthly users worldwide, according to July 2017 research from HubSpot. Mercure Hotels’ Bot, via Facebook Messenger, offers guests insights on the local area, as does Hotel Indigo’s Neighborhood Host (currently only available in Asia), while Aloft Hotel’s ChatBotlr texting service handles service requests for guests. Even online travel agencies like Booking.com use chatbots to answer guests’ post-booking questions. Yet chatbots can also generate new sales leads, particularly with group sales.

How to do it

Here’s what a potential hotel sales chatbot could look like for group or corporate bookings:

A hotel can create its own chatbot on its website, or utilize one through an app like Messenger or Slack. The chatbots pop up and engage with visitors to the website or the Facebook page. Utilizing NLP and a “nurturing sequence” (marketing-speak for slowly getting to know and win over a potential client), the chatbot can qualify the lead based on parameters set by the sales team. Once it’s clear the lead is legit, the chatbot can hand over the interaction to a person for a live chat.

All the while, the chatbot is collecting information (names, emails, company size, budgets, etc.) and saving it for integration into a CRM database. Sales teams can monitor the effectiveness of a chatbot, much like they would an email campaign, and tweak the nurturing sequence and the appearance of the chat box depending on the results they seek. And like all AI, the sales chatbots would get smarter the more they are used.

Email marketing and social media?targeting is still the norm among hotel sales teams, but the efficiency of chatbots is attractive. Keriann Martin, senior marketing manager at Hotel del Coronado near San Diego and a member of the HSMAI Marketing Roundtable, says chatbots help hotels save on labor, especially at the start of the buying process, since many call centers are swamped by common questions.

“Chatbots can help potential guests find information to aid in a purchase decision, improve guest satisfaction by providing assistance quickly and improve efficiency by reducing the need for a live person,” Martin explains.

Sébastien Felix, founder of Influencer Society, a digital marketing agency in Paris, discovered that chatbots also have a better open rate than traditional email marketing. “Email marketing offers usually have an average email opening between 20% and 40%,” he says. “Where chatbots, for now, offer around 80% average openings, from what we’ve seen so far.”

Still, hotels aren’t entirely sold on the idea of using them to find new business. Martin says chatbots must reduce?friction and frustration during the?planning and buying process.

“We have tested a chatbot to find potential customers who were in the planning phase, but it was not successful,” she says. “People are more likely to trust real humans — recommendations from friends or online reviews from real travelers — when deciding where to book their next trip.”

Dave Spector, partner at Tambourine, an ecommerce company for hotels and resorts, and also a member of HSMAI’s Marketing Advisory Board, has a harsher view.

“Chatbots, like AI, virtual reality and Google Glasses, are yet another shiny object that the vast majority of hoteliers should avoid until they have maximized their fundamental digital marketing,” Spector cautions. “Optimizing direct website conversion rates, safeguarding rate parity and launching coordinated promos across all digital channels should still dominate a hotel marketer’s time, attention and budget.”

Felix, who is bullish on the use of chatbots to generate sales leads, says the hotel industry needs to integrate chatbots with other tech solutions like the PMS and booking engines. “If you are an independent hotel and you want a chatbot to provide dynamic price and rooms availability to your guest, then you need a system that is connecting to your availability system, and this is usually where things get tricky.”

But as more than 85% of smartphone users have a messaging app on their phones, Felix believes this is where the future of hotel marketing lies.

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