Updated on February 5, 2025

Image promoting WhatsApp Chatbots for the Travel and Hospitality industry, featuring a phone displaying a WhatsApp conversation with travel-related imagery in the background.

2024 marked a return to form for the travel and hospitality industry, with the pandemic blues finally easing away. The sector showed 4% y-o-y growth by June 2024, and the number of international tourists had almost reached pre-pandemic levels.

This return in consumption and overall growth is a respite for the sector. A sector that geopolitical issues, a global pandemic, and a worsening economy have bashed. 

Another silver lining is the technology that powers travel. Travel bookings have become more manageable with new LLM models, AI-driven search, and more. 

Image displaying Glenn Fogel's (Booking.com CEO) perspective on AI agents, highlighting the absence of hold times and consistent positive attitude.
Glenn Fogel on AI’s consistent politeness in customer interactions.

Don’t believe us? Here’s what the Booking.com CEO,  Glenn Fogel, said on The Verge’s Decoder podcast, “One of the wonders of doing an AI agent is that there’ll be no hold time — you’ll go right to the machine. That’ll be a great thing. And, by the way, the AI agent is never going to get angry with the customer. Sometimes, customers get really angry, justifiably sometimes, and they may say things that would upset the agent, and the agent may then yell back if it’s a human. The machine’s never going to yell back, it’s always going to be nice, and it’s never going to come with a bad attitude because it had a fight with its spouse in the morning.”

This article will discuss the benefits of these AI agents to the travel and hospitality industry. And why WhatsApp chatbots might be the key to unlocking these benefits at scale; we’re going to cover:

1. Why Should Travel & Hospitality Companies Use a WhatsApp Chatbot?

2. What are the Benefits of an WhatsApp Chatbot?

3. How are Hospitality and Travel Companies Using AI WhatsApp Chatbots?

4. What are the Challenges While Setting Up WhatsApp Chatbot?

Why Should Travel & Hospitality Companies Use a WhatsApp Chatbot?

Image showing key WhatsApp statistics, including global user base, daily logins, average time spent, and the impact of business chats on transactions.
WhatsApp usage stats: Billions of users, daily logins, and business impact.

Whatsapp is the largest social messaging app globally, with a projected user base of 3.2 billion in 2025. It’s available across 180 countries and is versatile enough to work on most smartphones. 

This is why AI Whatsapp chatbots offer travel and hospitality companies a remarkable opportunity. It lets them connect and personalize their messaging for a broad group of people who check WhatsApp daily. 

CTA Learn how WhatsApp chatbots transform travel and hospitality services.

So, hospitality and travel companies can use WhatsApp chatbot to keep in constant touch with their customers. They can provide customer service and deal with different problems during travel procedures. 

There are a few reasons why WhatsApp is so important:

  • 66% of WhatsApp users have transacted after interacting with a business there. 
  • 83% of users log into the platform daily. 
  • The average user of WhatsApp uses the platform for 34 minutes every day. 

When one platform commands this much attention from the user, it only makes business sense to be present on the platform. Plus, it’s important to remember that the hospitality industry lives and dies by customer experience, and having near-constant contact with customers means they have much more detailed information about their behaviors and preferences. 

But let’s be fair. Human agents can’t connect individually with the 1000s of customers of an airline daily. Neither can a hotel receptionist be expected to keep up with the itineraries of the hundreds of guests at a hotel. 

This is precisely where AI can come and fill in the gap. Let’s discuss how Whatsapp chatbots help these businesses.

What are the Benefits of an WhatsApp Chatbot?

Deloitte recently surveyed hospitality executives about their opinions on Generative AI. According to the report, 

  • 52% of leaders see generative AI impacting customer support.
  • 44% see it as a part of automating guest communications
Visual representation of GenAI adoption in the hospitality industry, highlighting its perceived importance for support and communication.
GenAI’s growing role in hospitality: Driving customer support and guest communication.

Hospitality and travel are both customer experience industries. With customer service at the forefront of such sectors, constant communication and service are expected. 

We have already talked about how the relative omnipresence of WhatsApp makes it one of the key channels to establish these lines of communication. Now, let’s discuss the benefits of an AI chatbot to the channel. 

24/7 Availability

Think of an airline like Southwest. With international routes, connecting flights, and different timings, their customer base will function 24/7.

In this case, if something goes wrong during a red-eye flight and immediate customer support is needed for the 600-700 people on the flight, who is responsible? The ground team is limited by necessity, and the online team will have rotating shifts.

In this case, AI chatbots can take care of refunds, cancellations, rescheduling, and other accommodations by using connections. It can also answer questions and be empathetic to customers while maintaining empathy. 

There’s a reason why round-the-clock availability has been the winning feature in AI chatbots. It works, and it is helpful in emergencies and problems. Remember, most customers will ask basic L1 questions about food and stay, for which AI can always be sufficient. 

Booking and Reservation Management

In his interview, Glenn Fogel also pointed out that AI managed reservations at several restaurants listed on OpenTable. He said, “OpenTable right now is working with an AI company and its restaurant partners, and if you want to make a change to your reservation if it’s one of these restaurants that is signed up for this, you can do it just like that with a human-like voice talking to you. “I need to add a person to this reservation,” or “I need to cancel this reservation,” that’s then freeing up the duties and responsibilities of the host if you’d called the restaurant and wanted to tell them to change it. Instead of talking to a human, the machine, the generative AI, is doing it for them.”

AI can be paired with your ERP using APIs and can be used to manage schedules, reservations, and bookings. And as Fogel points out, it frees up the on-ground staff to handle more critical problems. So, your staff can now deal with critical areas that require more human intervention, and AI can take care of the fundamental procedural changes. 

Personalized Recommendations

Travel planning has always been one of the worst parts of planning trips. Balancing hotel occupancy with plane ticket prices and other factors makes it difficult to plan any travel. 

WhatsApp AI chatbots can help with this process, too. The various chatbots launched by Expedia, Booking, and Google are the shining example of this process

While actual results from these planners have been middling (a recent localized AI app ultimately failed to generate plans according to specifications), the data available on travel and hospitality makes it an exciting use case. 

Personalized AI concierges on WhatsApp that will manage your itinerary and make minor adjustments will help many people make quick decisions. It will also help businesses sell more boutique experiences to their customers at scale. 

Multilingual Support

Language learning is one of the best parts of a travel experience. But it’s also a very painful process when you need help. 

If someone from America gets lost in the Bali traffic and can’t find a way back to their hotel, WhatsApp chatbots might be the best way to help. Similarly, with many customer service interactions at hotels where cultural context and multilingualism are essential, WhatsApp AI chatbots can help. It can provide quick, context-relevant answers in the tourist’s native language and help them navigate different problems. 

Proactive Communication

Every Whatsapp user tends to check the app at least once daily, so it’s an excellent place for proactive communication. Customers can learn about delays in cleaning, booking delays, or travel updates. 

This reduces the effort on the part of the front desk and also ensures that a customer’s privacy isn’t disturbed by repetitive phone calls. Also, with updated notifications, customers can plan their vacation days more efficiently. 

As you can see, Whatsapp Chabot, which uses generative AI, can benefit the travel and hospitality industry. Following this theme, let’s examine how it works in real life.

How are Hospitality and Travel Companies Using AI WhatsApp Chatbots?

For this section, let’s look at two large companies, one from the travel industry and one from hospitality. Both companies have implemented chatbots for messaging apps and received stellar results. 

End-to-End Airline Booking on WhatsApp Chatbot from Indigo

Image displaying IndiGo's announcement of 6Eskai, an AI chat assistant designed to enhance customer experience, with a quote from Summi Sharma.
IndiGo launches 6Eskai, an AI-driven chat assistant for seamless passenger support.

Indigo (an airline based out of India) started offering an end-to-end booking experience on WhatsApp using their chatbot 6Eskai. 

Within a month, they reduced the workload on their customer service team by 75%. 

According to Summi Sharma, the Senior Vice President of Customer Experience at Indigo, “, “We are thrilled to introduce 6Eskai, our AI-driven chat assistant, as part of our ongoing commitment to enhancing customer experience. This innovative tool will offer seamless support to our passengers, providing quick and personalized assistance for their travel needs, reflecting IndiGo’s dedication to technological advancements and customer-centric services.”

AI Chatbots for Customer Service for Aloft Hotels by Marriott

Image displaying data on chatbot interactions: usage rate, assistance with hotel services, and support for rewards programs.
Guest chatbot interactions: High usage for service-related inquiries and rewards assistance.

Marriott International launched ChatBotlr to provide customer service to their guests at Aloft hotels. This was meant to be a concierge service for those who booked with Marriott. The chatbot provided customer service assistance and also helped customers navigate reward points. Within a few months, 

1. 66% of Marriott customers had interacted with ChatBotlr

2. 44% of the users received stay-related customer service

3. 53% of the users received rewards-related customer service

The customer experience specialists who work with Aloft hotels also said that the chatbot helped their guests connect with service even when they were not on the property. It improved the overall CSAT and helped reduce the hotel staff workload. 

These results show the efficacy of these generative AI Whatsapp chatbots in real life. However, Whatsapp chatbots face some challenges during setup; let’s discuss these problems in the next section. 

CTA Learn how WhatsApp chatbots transform travel and hospitality services.

What are the Challenges While Setting Up WhatsApp Chatbot?

Some specific problems are evident in any AI chatbot implementation you do. These are:

1. Data-Security Related Problems – One of the key concerns around AI has been the possible use of customer data to train further AI models. To prevent this, enterprise businesses should trust verified vendors with certifications like SOC2 and GDPR that help customer data stay safe.

2. Lack of Empathy from Chatbots – Glenn Fogel says that chatbots never get angry at customers. Conversely, it’s never happy or sad. Chatbots can appear unempathetic to customers. To solve this, it’s essential to use a “human in the loop system.” Use an AI vendor that can easily hand over a conversation from the AI chatbot to human agents. 

3. Connection with Other Systems – Enterprise travel and hospitality software has been stable for years. It’s essential that your new AI implementation can talk with these systems seamlessly. We always recommend visiting a vendor that integrates natively with your legacy systems.

4. Downtime and Server Maintenance – If the Cloudflare fiasco from 2024 is anything to go by, tech downtimes can be destructive for businesses. It’s essential to choose vendors with a reputation for maintaining their server uptime and a good history of upholding their SLAs. This won’t translate to future performance but should help you establish long-term trust and reduce the possible damage to your systems. 

 While AI models do have unique problems, there have been many methodologies that reduce this risk. The issues we outlined above can be mitigated by choosing the right vendor for your WhatsApp AI chatbots. 

Here’s a quick video about WhatsApp chatbots for business.

Finishing Thoughts

WhatsApp chatbots powered by AI transform customer service in the travel and hospitality industry. 

With 24/7 availability, multilingual capabilities, and the ability to handle everything from bookings to personalized recommendations, these chatbots are helping businesses scale their customer service while reducing operational costs. As shown by success stories from Indigo Airlines and Marriott’s Aloft Hotels, the technology has already started proving itself in real-world applications.

Ready to enhance your travel or hospitality business with AI-powered WhatsApp customer service? Kommunicate offers enterprise-grade WhatsApp chatbot solutions with seamless integration, robust security, and human handoff capabilities. Talk to us to see how we can help you deliver exceptional customer experiences at scale.

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