Travelling is one of the biggest joys of life. You get to visit different paces, and get acquainted with different people, their culture, traditions and cuisines. However, how joyous a trip to a different location may be, planning a trip is an entirely different ball game. Travel industry has been working travelling as hassle-free as possible, but there’s still a long way to go.
Every part of a journey demands thorough planning, involving a lot of calls, emails, reservations, bookings, and communication with numerous travel agencies, airline and hotel staff, tour operators etc.
All these can be pretty overwhelming for travelers, as well as for employees of the travel industry.
Could chatbots be the solution for travelers?
‘Chatbot’ has become a buzzword across many industries, and there is no reason why travel industry should be an exception to it. In fact, travel industry has been one of the early adopters of digital revolution with online travel agents, online flight bookings, web check-ins etc. becoming a norm in the industry. The increasingly ubiquitous use of travel chatbots is the latest pointer towards the travel industry’s zeal for adopting technology to make travelling stress-free for travelers.
the travel industry’s adoption of chatbots is gaining a lot of goodwill for the industry with close to 60% of Millennials preferring businesses that extensively use chatbots to help customers with their queries and concerns. Millennials possess huge purchasing power exceeding $200 billion, and as such it makes a lot of sense for businesses operating in the travel industry to pay attention to the needs and requirements of these millennials.
Experts opine that AI-powered chatbots can accomplish a lot, and make life incredibly easy for customers and travel service providers alike.
Here we list few important benefits of chat bots, and how conversational AI is transforming travel industry for the better. We shall also see how a good travel software development company van help organizations leverage the power of bots to gain competitive advantage in the market.
Chatbots are great time and effort saver
The majority of questions that travel agencies or airline/hotel staff encounter on regular basis are routine queries and FAQ’s. Entrusting human customer-care representatives to handle such repetitive queries is a wastage of resources, and an inefficient way of doing things. There’s absolutely no reason why businesses operating in travel and tourism industry need to cope with such inefficiencies when the same task can efficiently be carried out by bots.
Chatbots can easily resolve these routine queries. This in turn allow employees to perform some other tasks that require human intervention. Moreover, getting relief from carrying out repetitive, bland tasks that can be easily performed by bots often proves to be a great motivating factor for employees. This in turn can go a long way in augmenting their productivity and efficiency.
For example, Goibibo’s chatbot Gia has cut down the need for human intervention by one-fourth in the ticket-handling, seat-selection, and post-booking queries. In fact, Goibibo uses a metric called ‘Human Interactions Saved’ (messages handled by bots) to determine Gia’s efficiency.
Increased efficiency and swift response times help both customers as well as travel service providers.
Enhanced customer engagement & better personalization
Travel chatbots are available on 24×7 basis throughout the year to handle customer queries. Availability around the clock to resolve customers’’ queries and concerns goes a long way in enhancing travelling experience, especially during travel as travelers travel across time-zones.
Apart from constant ability, chatbots also bring an added level of personalization to help travelers enjoy their travelling.
NLP (natural language processing) enables chatbots to answer queries that may not fall within the realms of simple and routine queries. The ability to answer somewhat vague queries further reinforces the credibility of the chatbot as a ‘personal helper’. The heightened level of interactivity flexibility serves as a great booster for customer engagement by making travel hassle-free and convenient.
Chatbots make financial sense
As mentioned above, millennials, probably the most important target consumer group for the travel industry, have given a huge thumbs-up to the usage of bots. Millennials have a lot of spending power, and as such it makes a lot of business sense for companies to invest in conversational AI solutions. This should not come as a surprise as a well-designed travel chatbot can facilitate a customer’s journey from awareness to conversion within a very short span of time, in the process giving a strong momentum to revenue generation.
Conclusion
Chatbots are fast becoming an integral part of travel and tourism industry for the simple reason that they boost customer satisfaction. Satisfied customers quickly become loyal customers. A top-rated AI development company can design intelligent bots powered by AI that can do a handsome job of generating engagement with your brand
