Customer service
AI booking assistant for hotels and venues
Start with an assistant that answers common booking questions from your own information: rooms or tables, prices, policies and opening hours. Connect it to your booking system in read-only mode, so it shows real availability and never invents it. Let it collect the request and pass it to a person or your booking engine to confirm. Always offer a clear way to reach a human.
Effort:
Medium
Time saved:
Roughly 30–50% of routine guest questions handled; verify in a pilot
The problem today
Guests ask the same questions on your website, email and Instagram at all hours, and many book elsewhere if nobody answers quickly. Large hotel groups and restaurant chains already run AI assistants that take booking requests around the clock. For a Greek SME the affordable version is smaller: an assistant on your site or chat that answers from your own information, checks real availability and passes the booking to your team.
How it works, in plain words
Think of a night receptionist who knows your rates and house rules, and can see the booking calendar but not change it.
What goes in: your approved answers on rooms or tables, prices, policies and opening hours, plus a read-only view of real availability from your booking engine.
What the AI does: it reads the guest's question, finds the matching approved answer, checks availability for the dates asked and collects the booking details in a fixed form.
What a person checks: staff review every collected request before it is confirmed, and take over any conversation about payments, refunds, groups, special requests or complaints.
What comes out: a quick, accurate reply for the guest and a complete booking request in your team's inbox or booking system, ready to confirm.
It does not take payments, make promises outside your policies or invent availability when the connection is down.
How it could work for businesses like yours
Illustrative examples, not client case studies.
A 20-room boutique hotel in Nafplio
Weekend questions arrive by email and Instagram while the owner is off duty, and some guests book elsewhere before anyone replies. The hotel would load its 40 most common answers in Greek and English and connect the website chat to its booking engine in read-only mode. It would track reply time and how many chat requests turn into confirmed bookings, compared with the month before.
A 6-person social media agency in Heraklion
The agency runs Instagram and Facebook pages for several tavernas and gets table requests in the comments and DMs late at night. It would set up an assistant per restaurant with that venue's own hours, menu notes and booking rules, and pass each request to the restaurant by email. A realistic first target could be answering most routine DMs within minutes while keeping complaints for the staff.
A furniture showroom with an e-shop in Larissa
Customers want to book a showroom visit with a designer, but calls go unanswered on busy Saturdays. The shop would let the assistant answer delivery and opening-hours questions and collect visit requests with preferred times. Staff would confirm each slot, and the shop would measure missed requests and no-shows over a 6-week pilot.
How to do it, step by step
List the 30–50 questions guests ask most, using recent emails, chats and phone notes. Write one short approved answer for each, in Greek and English, and name who keeps it up to date.
Decide what the assistant may do: answer questions, show availability and collect booking requests. Leave payments, refunds, group bookings, special requests and complaints to your staff.
Connect it to real availability only, through the chat feature of your booking engine or a read-only link to it. If no connection is possible, it collects dates and number of guests and says that a person will confirm. It must never guess.
Set clear handover rules. The assistant passes the conversation to staff, with a short summary, when the guest asks for a person, when the question is not in the approved answers or when the request is unusual.
Run a pilot for 4–6 weeks on one channel, such as the website chat. Read every conversation in the first week, fix wrong answers and track how many requests become confirmed bookings.
Update the answers every season, because prices, opening dates, menus and policies change. A tidy set of answers also feeds a wider knowledge-base assistant.
Tools to consider
Tidio (with its Lyro AI agent): website chat that answers from your FAQ and hands the conversation to staff in the same inbox. Caveat: it does not see live availability unless you connect it to your booking system, which may need technical help.
ManyChat: automates replies on Instagram, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, where many guests ask first. Caveat: the flows need setup and regular care, and AI replies must stay within your approved answers.
Zapier or Make: send a collected booking request to your email, booking system or a shared sheet. Caveat: each connection can stop working silently, so someone must check it every week.
Data protection and GDPR
The assistant handles names, contact details and travel dates. Guests may also mention dietary or accessibility needs, which can count as health data. Collect only what the booking needs and never ask for card details in the chat. Tell guests clearly that they are chatting with an AI assistant: the EU AI Act requires that people know when they interact with AI. Check where the chat provider stores conversations, sign a data processing agreement and decide how long chat logs are kept. Check with your DPO or legal advisor.
Mistakes to avoid
Letting the assistant quote availability or prices it cannot check in your booking system.
Hiding the way to reach a person, so guests with a problem get stuck in a loop.
Forgetting to update the answers when the season, prices or policies change.