Why Grand Cosmopolitan Hotel DUBAI is using Hotelway Hospitality Chatbot?
The hotel chatbot was built and put online on the Grand Cosmopolitan’s webpage in mid-October 2020. Main work was done by Hotelway-team, the whole process demanded only 8 hours from Grand Cosmopolitan team.
“The setup process was really easy”
- Hotelway team gathered the basic information from the hotel website and other online sources.
- Grand Cosmopolitan’s team checked and filled in some additional information.
- Chatbot was installed to the hotel webpage as a software as a service – easy and quick implementation.
- Chatbot ready! High success rate from the beginning has been 84% correct answers without human intervention (generally 65% is considered good in the serviceindustry).
Learnings so far
All hotels are unique in what interests their guests the most! At Grand Cosmo the In-house activities (such as dining and spa) have been more popular, than for example arrival assistance.
Almost 2/3 of the guests in the chat have already been in the hotel. This is a high number compared to many other hotels and it is thanks to the active promoting of the chat via QR-codes, displayed in the hotel premises.
To our surprise, covid-19 related questions have been rare. The only implications are interest in the cancellation policy and the demand for in-room breakfast.
The one, single most asked topic, has been the room prices & availability where accurate answers and direct bookings have been enabled with the Amadeus GDS -integration.
Since October, the chatbot has saved 140 h staff’s working time!
More than 1.000 questions have been answered by the chatbot since October that would in average have taken 7,5min/question from the human staff so in total 139 h staff working time has been saved. Even if a question is easy it interrupts from other work and demands following actions. A hotel chatbot can answer simultaneously several questions – it never gets interrupted!
The biggest benefit has, however, been the sales it has generated!
By far the most profitable feature has been the room reservations; there have even been some room service orders and spa treatment bookings.
Sell campaigns and offers
The guests are always interested in campaigns, offers and other current events. Together with Grand Cosmopolitan we have now created a section called “Offers”, a kind of campaign tool in the chatbot to give information for the guests and actively sell the packages. This is an opportunity to the Grand Cosmopolitan’s marketing department to take an active role to fill in and update the information to utilize different campaigns and offers the hotel has.
Next steps in our co-operation secure holistic guest communication
The chat can be integrated and promoted in every channel. Each email signature the hotel employee uses, can contain a link (and a short promotion) to the chat; the same goes with every social media post & profile, and even contact information on a hotel webpage. The chat can even be integrated to Facebook Messenger so that the chatbot will reply immediately into guest’s Messenger inbox. Another add-on could be a WhatsApp feature where the chatbot can be integrated as well.