AI for hotels and restaurants: answer guests day and night

How can hotels and restaurants use AI?

Hotels and restaurants use AI to answer the questions guests ask every day: check-in times, parking, menus, pets and directions. In Aivah, an AI employee answers on your website and phone line, day and night. It takes booking requests for your team to confirm, and leaves allergies and complaints to your staff.

Picture The Saltmarsh Hotel, a fictional 30-room hotel with a busy bistro. At 2am, a guest abroad asks how to get there from the airport. At 7.30pm, the phone rings mid-service with a request for a table for eight.

• It answers from your guest guide, menus, room details and house rules.
• It takes booking requests. Your team checks availability and confirms.
• It makes no promises about allergies. Guests confirm with your staff.
• On the phone, it answers incoming calls from short instructions you write, called the call prompt.
• Website chat starts on Hobby, at $10 a month. Phone answering starts on Starter, at $99.

Which guest questions can it answer?

Think about a guest’s questions in the order they come. Most are about facts you already have written down.

• Before booking: rooms and what’s included, menus and prices, pets, children, access and parking.
• Booking requests: dates, times, number of guests, a name and a phone number.
• Before arrival: check-in and check-out times, early arrival, luggage and directions.
• On the day: kitchen hours, house rules, the nearest station and things to do nearby.
• Groups and events: your spaces, how many people they hold, your packages and how to ask for a date.

Which questions should go to your team?

Complaints, lost property, refunds, deposits and changes to an existing booking always need a person. Tell your AI employee to take the guest’s details. Your team follows up from Insights, where every chat and call is saved.

Write who handles what into its instructions. For example: bookings go to the front desk, complaints to the duty manager, and lost property to housekeeping. Add an out-of-hours number for anything that can’t wait.

Should it answer on the phone or the website?

Both, but each channel works from different material. On your website, it answers from the documents you upload. On the phone, it answers from the call prompt: a short set of instructions for your number.

So keep the call prompt to what callers want fast: hours, address, parking and how booking requests work. Put the long detail, like room descriptions and your guest guide, in its documents for the website.

If you add a lead form, it appears before the chat starts. Keep it short, such as a name and a phone number. Details from the form land in Insights → Leads, and you can export them as a CSV file.

How should it handle allergy questions?

Allergies are where a wrong answer can hurt someone. Give your AI employee your written dietary notes. Then tell it to ask every guest with an allergy to speak to your staff.

That follows official advice. For food that isn’t prepacked, the UK Food Standards Agency says “written allergen information, supported by a conversation, works best for consumers”. In the US, the FDA names nine major food allergens, including sesame.

So make sure your written notes cover all nine, dish by dish. Your AI employee can point guests to them. The conversation that keeps guests safe happens with your team, on the phone or at the table.

A good line: “I can’t promise anything about allergies. Please tell the team when they call you, and your server on the day.”

How do you set it up before the next rush?

You can set it up in an afternoon. Work through these steps in order.

• Hire an AI employee from the Front desk template, or describe the job yourself.
• Upload your guest guide, menus, room details and house rules.
• Add the chat bubble to your website, with a short lead form.
• Connect your phone line through Twilio, the phone service that passes calls to Aivah.
• Write a call prompt with your hours, address, parking and booking-request rules.
• Test it with ten real questions from last week, including an allergy and a complaint.
• Each morning, open Insights and call back yesterday’s booking requests.

Can it help with weddings, events and groups?

Event enquiries take time to answer well. Your AI employee can answer questions about your spaces and packages, and take an enquiry with the date and numbers.

It can also join a Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Zoom or Webex call with your events manager. It joins with its face and voice once the host lets it in. Your manager leads, and it answers questions about your packages.

Or turn your events brochure into a presentation planners can stop and question. Give it a face from the character library, or make one from a photo you have the rights to.

What are the limits for hotels and restaurants?

Plan around these before your first busy weekend. Each one has a simple workaround.

• It can’t see live availability or rates, hold a room or table, or take a deposit. Your team confirms.
• There’s no built-in link to booking or reservation systems. Requests wait in Insights.
• It can’t transfer a call to your front desk. It takes a message instead.
• It never makes promises about allergies. Your staff do that.
• It answers only from what you give it. Update menus, hours and prices each season.
• Unhappy guests need a manager. Tell it to take their details so a manager can call back.

Questions hotels and restaurants ask

Where should you start?

Start free and give your AI employee your guest guide and menus. Ask it last week’s questions before your guests do. Add your phone line from Starter once the answers are right.