How Chatbots Can Increase More Revenue for Travel Business?

In the race of giving the best customer experience, companies have started experiments with chatbots.

Did you notice a chat window popping on your screen when you visit any of the travel websites saying, “Hi, how can I help you? Virtually offering help.

In this digital era, chatbots are one of the most common AI-based applications, have become the chief guest of the technology world and why not, chatbots are the best engagement software after all.

Chatbots are an asset to the travel business. Chatbots for travel business work 24/7. Chatbots answer all your questions frequently without any time bar.

The concept of Chatbot started when Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook said that “people will be able to talk to Messenger bots like they talk to their friends”.

What is Chatbot?

In layman, a language chatbot is known as a chatterbox. This software is designed for the immediate conversation with the human via natural language or through a voice message. Chatbots are the future of Customer Experience.

How does Chatbot work?

Chatbots work with specific keywords. It scans your keywords and responds with the same matching keywords from the database.

Basically, chatbots are classified into two types:

• Scripted Bot: This bot is pre-defined with a conversational flow.
• AI-based: This includes AI algorithms, queries and making a pattern to respond back to the user.

As per the research of Aspect Consumer Experience Index 44% of companies prefer to use a chatbot for the customer service interactions via text, chat, & messaging.

Statista research shows that the chatbot market is predicted to reach 994 million U.S. dollars in 2024.

Growing Chatbots for Travel Business:

There are numerous chatbot development companies that can help you to build the best chatbot for your travel business. Companies like Expedia, Skyscanner, Booking.com, etc. have already started experimenting with the new Facebook Messenger Bots to assist their visitors in search of flights at a reasonable price.

The bot messenger app users just have to select the date & time for their destination. Then the app will show you different options to choose from without leaving the messenger app. With the help of bot messenger, users can select hotels and confirm their bookings.

Impact of Chatbots in the Travel Industry:

The technology is immensely developing and has furnished unmatched experience for business owners and customers. There is one universal fact that the businesses which provide excellent service are the ones who will lead the market and chatbots.

We all know how important Chatbots are for businesses. Chatbots are getting massive responses from different industries. (Chatbots are helpful during the conversation with the customers. It also helps to answer customers' FAQs professionally which results in an increase in customer experience as they no longer need to stand in a queue for one single question. Users can easily get all the answers from AI-based chatbots.

Chatbots are helpful in lead generation. In the past lead generation was done through email marketing.

Nowadays the well-established automation features are available in the market so email is not a great choice. AI-based Chatbot is the savior in this kind of situation.

Benefits of Chatbots for Travel Business:

1. 24*7 Customer Support

Businesses are built on challenges, and the top noche challenge for the travel industry is 24*7 availability of customer support. For travel have been developed. AI chatbots developed for hotels, airlines, restaurants and car rental services that works 24*7.

2. Direct Bookings

Direct bookings are preferred due to the lower customer acquisition cost, which has been rising for several years. Direct bookings are encouraged to reduce commissions paid to third parties and to build a strong relation with guests. And the research shows that the efforts have begun to pay off, as 80 million transactions are from 18,000 hotels' databases.

3. Reduce Manual Work

When a traveler is interested in a specific destination, he/she is more likely to ask tons of questions before finalizing the trip. Just imagine! If your customer service team spends 2 hours answering the same questions then the productivity of the work will go down, however it can be increased by developing an AI-based chatbot.

4. Scale-up - Sales

The travel industry has to bring new things to the market. As there is tough competition, customers will attract to the new and trending services. “Time is money”, no one has time to wait by looking forward to that a messenger travel chatbot is developed.

That gives the facility of hotel booking, rental car bookings and ticket bookings which gives them a pleasant experience.

5. Creating a Community

Creating a community is of utmost priority. Chatbot helps in creating a community for your travel company by sharing their travel experience and inspiration.

To bring off this, you can collaborate with influencers, travel bloggers, post their articles and videos in your social media channels and suggest this content to travelers via chatbot.

6. Customer Feedback

Travel is a service-based industry. Therefore it is important to know that the travel industry relies on customer feedback. An AI-based chatbot is the biggest advantage in the follow-up process. The technology allows this process to take from various places like email, mobile apps, Facebook messenger and WhatsApp. However, chatbots collect the feedback data to make a follow-up communication as personalized as possible.

Cost of Developing Chatbots for the Travel Industry:

We have mentioned the benefits, the impact of a chatbot, how a chatbot works, what it means and so on. The only thing left is the cost of developing a chatbot.

To develop a chatbot you will need to hire an expert called a chatbot developer. Before you hire an expert, decide from which country you want an expert because the hourly rate of chatbot developers varies from one country to another.

Front-end developer hourly rate across the countries are:

• USA starting from: $90/hour
• Western Europe: $60/hour
• Eastern Europe: $40/hour

Back-end developer hourly rate across countries are:

• USA starting from: $120/hour
• Western Europe: $80/hour
• Eastern Europe: $50/hour

The cost includes the overall design, development and integration part for the chatbot development app.

Wrapping up:

Beyond chatbots it is all about artificial intelligence. If you are looking to add a chatbot to your marketing automation tool or want to develop chatbot development, then connect with our developing experts.