Why did 5-star Hotel Marignan Champs-Elysées, Paris, decide to upgrade from manual chat to chatbot?
Chat and chatbots have become very popular on hotel websites. This is because they are an excellent way to offer guidance to hesitant customers that might otherwise not complete their booking.
Hotel Marignan Champs Elysées, Paris, is a 5-star boutique hotel that has been using chatbots for two years now. In fact, their Reservation & Revenue Manager recently decided to upgrade their solution to an AI-powered chatbot for hotels.
From day 1, Marignan Champs Elysées realized that the highest ADR bookings came through the chat on their website. After some time, they realized that they were still missing some business at night and on weekends. Like most high ADR hotels in Paris, the bulk of their customers live in different time zones. They couldn’t benefit from the chat service that was available at the Marignan during French business hours only. Implementing a chatbot for luxury hotels was a way to remedy that situation and maximize direct sales 24/7.
Marketing is evolving for everybody, budget and luxury hotels alike. Customers expect more and more instant and personalized service. You need to find a way to provide it even before the customer buys – it is a sales tool. Contrary to humans, chatbots always answer instantly and in the customer’s language, enabling service 24/7.
I like the fact that in case of the absence of an available human being, we’re still able to provide reactive service, said Gabriella from Marignan Champs Elysées.
The experience we have with quite a few luxury properties is that customers are totally fine interacting with a chatbot. What matters to them is that they are getting what they need with minimum effort.
Sometimes the chatbot gets it wrong and passes a request along with the customers’ details (name, email address, mobile number, etc.) to a human being. It is perfectly fine as long as the sales department of the hotel follows up on the customer’s request the next morning.
At the Marignan Champs Elysées, the chatbot acts as a customer magnet. On top of answering customers’ questions and helping them through the direct booking funnel, it tags high potential customers that need urgent follow-up. If you’re going to spend between 1000€ and 2000€ in a hotel stay, you’re probably not going to make your decision in a heartbeat. So, in a luxury context, the first contact and qualification can happen through a chatbot. Then, there can be a human follow-up to make sure that all the interesting business goes to the hotel. So far, this strategy has been paying off handsomely for the Marignan Champs Elysées and other 5-star hotels.
The original article can be viewed here: https://www.quicktext.im/chatbot-for-luxury-hotels/
About the authors
Quicktext helps hotels increase their direct bookings and improve customer satisfaction. It works by centralizing the instant messaging channels that hotels and guests use to communicate (Live chat, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, SMS etc…). All frequent interactions such as book a room or what is the time of check-in are handled by a chatbot called Zalia. However, Zalia is now pushing the limits of AI development to offer automated conversation in multiple languages.
If you’d like to know more about hotel chatbots and direct bookings, please visit Quicktext’s website or or feel welcome to connect with Benjamin Devisme – Co-Founder & Evangelist of Quicktext, an AI solution helping hotels increase sales while improving guest experience through Zalia, a 24/7 AI-powered chatbot.
