Travel & accommodation is a highly customer-facing industry. At the same time, the volume of travelers is big and traveler expectations are bigger. As many as 100,000 flights take off every day, carrying about 6 million passengers. In short, it’s not a mean task to serve a satisfactory customer experience in an industry as dynamic as travel.  Therefore, in the travel industry, there was always a pressing need for automation in customer service. Conversational AI chatbots are greatly serving the travel industry in automating customer service functions. 

 Here, in this article, we will discuss how the whole technology of conversational AI and the bots running on it work. Also, explore emerging and popular use cases of technology in the travel industry for chatbots. 

How does a conversational AI chatbot work? 

Think of a conversational AI chatbot as a computer program that can have conversations with human beings. It is usually programmed to answer questions, but it can also be programmed to carry out tasks. 

The purpose of a conversational AI chatbot is to simulate human-to-human interaction as closely as possible in order to provide the most efficient and effective customer service. It reduces the burden on human customer support executives, they can direct their energies to questions that are more critical and necessarily require human intervention. 

The travel businesses are now increasingly employing conversational AI chatbots and voice bots to address customers’ queries. Many are calling them “Robo Travel Advisors.” They are helping customers through their journey and becoming end-to-end assistants. 

Top benefits of using AI travel chatbots 

Like other travel businesses, conversational AI chatbots can also provide impetus to your customer service efforts. Still, have doubts? Let us declutter them by exploring the top benefits of implementing AI chatbots in travel. 

Reservation Assistance  

When customers initiate a booking and shop around options, they tend to develop doubts in their minds. So, the whole journey from interest to finally making a booking decision at many junctures mandates them to interact with either a customer support executive or write to your travel portal. That’s when the function of AI chatbots comes, you know your offerings, and you know the possible apprehensions of travelers. You can train your chatbot with the required information and have your AI chatbot work as an efficient reservation assistant. 

Booking Manager 

The conversational AI chatbots today can communicate and respond to travelers with all the necessary information in a similar tone using natural language processing.  

Moreover, chatbots can make real-time booking modifications, like rescheduling, canceling, or processing refund requests. Also, keep customers updated in scenarios like flight delays due to sudden weather changes, last-minute booking modification requests, and all other dynamic travel requests. So, your AI chatbot can work as a booking manager and deliver quality customer experience across customer touchpoints. 

Round-the-clock engagement and personalization 

Travel is a dynamic industry. Customers often need instant help, even if they are in different time zones. AI chatbots can be available 24*7 *365 days a year. 

Constant availability of customer support enhances the customer experience. As per a Deloitte survey, 92% of the brands see customer experience as a differentiator. 

Also, the conversation AI chatbot can offer personalized recommendations while helping the customers, creating additional revenue opportunities for your travel business. 

Data and feedback mechanism 

AI chatbots also offer a great degree of convenience to customers; they can easily track the communication and access the data they have shared in the chat, especially in cases that require continuous follow-ups.  

Also, this data is nothing less than a treasure if you look at it in a business sense. You can use the data to create a concrete feedback mechanism. And conduct market research on how your products and services are performing largely. Also, based on conversations, you can offer personalized offerings to your customers. 

Resolving vague questions  

Customers do not always ask straight, corrigible questions. With the help of NLP (natural language processing), AI chatbots can make sense of vague queries like “beach la party” or “music live hotel.” The bot identifies the triggered words and searches for the customer’s query to display the best answer. 

Recommended: Five Ways To Measure The Effectiveness Of Hotel Chatbot

Conclusion! 

The conversational AI chatbots enhance the overall customer experience. And in an industry like travel, the volume of routine queries is larger than unique ones. At times travelers just want to know luggage requirements or room policies.   

Therefore, AI Chatbots can be a sustainable, affordable ally to your customer service efforts. You can have a leaner customer service staff that caters to queries requiring human involvement.