Importance of Chatbots for Travel & Tourism industry

Digitization is consistently impacting global industries and their business operations. At the same time, it has greatly influenced the travel and tourism industry to transform its current strategies and explore new business opportunities by embracing technological advancements.

Travel and tourism chatbots are a technological development that is offering quality services to meet customer needs and helping companies stay on top of rising customer expectations. 

Travel bookings, payments, check-in, and check-out have become effortless due to automation and modern digital practices. Traditional modes of travel are now somewhat disappearing or rather transitioning to provide a unique customer experience throughout their journey from initial hotel reservations to flights back home. 

Customers, everywhere are looking for a smooth experience regardless of where they traveled from. They are positively reacting to newer technologies such as Artificial Intelligence to make lives easier and more fluid. Moreover, smartphones have become comfort blankets for people all around the globe.

21% of US travelers book their travel with a smartphone with a 60% rise expected by 2021. They can not only book cheap flights with just a swipe but also compare pricing and access customer reviews for better service. Therefore, this digital era has redefined the travel industry with the inception of these digital conversational bots.

How Chatbot Development is Helping the Travel Industry?

A chatbot is not just any technology. It is a customer-centric approach to communication that uses the applications of AI, ML, and deep learning to build a connection between the company and its customers.

According to travel statistics, in 2020, 148.3 million travel bookings are made online every year. It is evident that people rely on their smart devices for reservations through travel applications and websites.

Travel and tourism chatbots are only redefining and simplifying these experiences by making everything accessible together in one place. Now the myth that the evolution of travel chatbots will replace human support agents, is near to impossible unless they develop human problem-solving skills or empathy.

But they are specially programmed or trained to provide more efficient interaction and personalized suggestions to customers without delays.

AI-based travel and tourism chatbot can answer customer inquiries, make bookings, and suggest nearby eateries or subways - basically acting as a virtual private travel agent but friendlier. Expedia bot for Facebook messenger is one of the many travel chatbot examples. It allows travelers to quickly search for hotels and make bookings.

Round-the-Clock Customer Service

One of the many challenges that every business faces including the tourism industry is meeting and exceeding customer expectations in terms of customer service. One of the key advantages of deploying a chatbot for tourism is round-the-clock availability for support. Unlike support staff, AI-driven chatbots are available at all hours with consistent responses.

Unavailability of human agents and waiting time around peak periods is inevitable which may limit their abilities to provide prompt customer support. Whereas chatbots are not limited by time or physical space.  This is helpful because the constant availability to customers for convenience builds trust and lasting relationships.

Multilingual Chatbots

Tourism is a global industry. People can book from anywhere in the world irrespective of the language they speak. Studies show that 55% of buyers prefer to only make purchases in their mother tongue. Language difficulties may make it more difficult for you to approach clients abroad.

A multilingual chatbot in the travel industry can interact with customers in their local language. Chatbots can be trained on rapid language detection and translation, to provide more personalized experiences to accommodate travelers throughout their journey. This brings a noticeable advantage to travel agencies and accommodation service providers.

Chatbot Integration with Platforms

If we look at the technological aspect of it, travel chatbots can be easily integrated with any platform, customers do not have to rely on third-party or excessive apps to find what they are looking for.

For example, a customer can directly search for queries through your website for identifying the best places, recommendations, and bookings without having to open an additional app.

Moreover integrating chatbots with social platforms will also offer the easiest way to interact with both current and future customers.

Personalized Recommendations

Websites don’t address customer needs in real time. If a visitor is unable to find the information they are looking for instantly, they will get frustrated, leave it and move on to the next. Almost 50% of all travel apps are deleted a month after they are downloaded.

Travel and tourism chatbots can be trained on past customer interactions, they can use customer insights to provide tailored recommendations ranging from recommending a place to stay to promotions and discounts. This greatly helps with customer retention. Humans and AI are working together to offer a proactive customer experience in order to retain them.

Over time, these chatbots become smarter and help tourism to further improve their services. 

Gathering Customer Feedback

Just like human customer support, chatbots also record customer communication, which allows travel companies to gather information relevant to clients.

These insights further help them to refine their services and marketing campaigns based on trending customer preferences. Moreover, travel chatbots can help with collecting customer feedback through automated reminders to upgrade the travel experience.

The Future of Tourism Chatbots

Chatbot development will continue to improve customer service and cost-effectiveness for not only hotels but airlines and online travel agencies as well. Technology has changed our lives for the better.

Travel agencies today can provide personalized responses to customers through chatbots which as a result has increased customer satisfaction. We can see a remarkable shift from text-based to voice-enabled chatbots in order to stay at the top of this competitive world.

According to studies, 47% of people are already using voice search functionalities on their devices at least once a day. Therefore voice recognition in AI-driven chatbots will continue to improve customer engagement to the best of its ability.

Developing a Travel and Tourism Chatbot for your Agency 

The travel industry is always facing challenges when it comes to engaging with customers and selling across borders. The involvement of third parties makes the process even more cumbersome. These complexities ask for better solutions therefore, streamlined and simplified processes through smart ideas offer a tangible solution.

The reason why chatbots are a perfect travel companion, offering a seamless experience to travelers through relevant and personalized information.

Travel and tourism chatbots are bringing in remarkable innovation and change. Conventional ways of running businesses are now modernized. Chatbots are increasingly becoming popular for company process automation.

More and more businesses in the tourism industry are developing chatbots to offer better services. A lot of companies in industries are looking for reliable chatbot developers and finding a reputable and best chatbot app development company can be challenging.  

Invozone is one of the leading IT companies in Canada with remarkable experience in this field. If you would like assistance with your chatbot development needs for your industry, feel free to contact our team.

Key Takeaways

• Delivering better customer service and support to customers during cross-border travel
• Providing the spot solution to customer queries, recommendations, and important alerts
• The cost-effective and resource-saving solution as activities are automated
• Higher revenue and customer retention rates
• Gives useful insights into the purchase history and orders of customers for greater personalization
• Helps travel companies to have a competitive advantage over the competition

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