Travel is more accessible to more people now than at any other time in history. Though the travel industry is growing exponentially to keep up with demand, there’s also more competition than ever. If you have a business in this field and you’re looking for a way to boost sales, save time, and stand out from the crowd, it’s time you considered a chatbot.
Why a chatbot is such an effective tool for travel businesses
A chatbot can essentially act as a virtual travel agent, offering personalized suggestions based on the user’s preferences, answering FAQs, and even accepting bookings and making reservations. If a bot ever encounters a situation, it’s not equipped to handle, it can easily pass off the inquiry to a human agent. Or you can build an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot that can handle most, if not all, questions from users.
Bots for airlines, train lines, hotels, and rental car agencies can make recommendations, show pricing, and accept bookings and payments. Travel agencies and tour companies can put together entire trip packages for a user simply by asking them a few questions about their preferences.
Plus, a chatbot can provide this helpful, personalized service on demand, 24/7. If a user is in another time zone or doing their travel booking outside business hours, they can still get information or make reservations with your business via your bot. This constant availability shows customers you have their convenience in mind—and it saves you and your team time and money, too.
What a bot can do for your travel company
Make recommendations:
If you’re a travel organizer or agency, a bot can take over a major portion of your workload. By asking simple questions in a humanlike, conversational style, your bot can figure out what the user is looking for in a trip and make helpful recommendations—just like a personal travel assistant. Based on the prospect’s preferences for budget, type of destination, etc., a bot can almost instantly return suggestions for a holiday that meets their needs. Or, for hotels, car rental agencies, cruises, or travel insurance, your bot could bring up the best matches for a particular destination with all the relevant information, making it easy for the user to view and compare pricing and details of each without visiting multiple websites or pages.
Accept bookings and payments:
A chatbot for your travel business can even be equipped to take a customer through the sales funnel and close a deal. Bots can be designed to book airline tickets, hotel rooms, rental cars, tours, and more.
Share inspiration and tips:
It’s not only travel-booking agencies or sites that can benefit from a bot. Even travel bloggers and influencers can use them to share their content in a more engaging, personalized way. For example, if a user asked for packing advice or tips on travel to Paris, the bot can easily suggest any/all blog content you have related to that subject.
Provide customer care:
Chatbots in the travel industry can be equipped to deal with all kinds of routine issues. This means that customers can get solutions to many types of problems, day or night, without having to look up a support phone number, wait on hold, or call back during business hours. For example, your chatbot could assist users in submitting a travel insurance claim, rebooking a missed flight, or changing a hotel reservation. Whatever common issues your customer support team normally deals with can likely be handled by a bot.
Build a bot for your travel business today
Now that you know how impactful chatbots in the travel industry can be, we’ve got even better news: you can build a bot yourself, today! The function of Botsup is to let business owners and marketers build chatbots easily—no special knowledge or coding skills required. So, sign up today or request a demo with our experts!