Chatbot Development Guide: A Bot Loved By Travelers

These days we literally talk with our phones to get things done. Yes, voice-based smart assistants and the mobile app Chatbots made this possible. Thanks to app Chatbots the app user experience has gone through an all-round transformation. No wonder most of the leading travel app development services now provide chatbot development for travel businesses.

By utilizing Chatbots many successful travel apps have completely changed the way they interact with customers. Many leading travel brands including hoteliers, air-service providers and other travel services are now using Chatbots. Since it has become a dominant trend for travelers to visit various travel sites before planning a trip and hitting the street or air, seamless Chatbot powered travel website experience can really be a great value addition.

Key Benefits of Travel Chatbots

Travel Chatbots continue to be popular for travelers, travel service providers and travel businesses of all categories. Here are the key benefits offered by the travel Chatbots.

• Enhanced Engagement

Since it saves a lot of time in finding information for the travelers, Chatbots end up increasing engagement and interactions for the travelers.

• Less Workload and Cost Advantage

Asking questions about the chosen airlines, hotels, food chains, a particular site or any other travel service causes a great workload on a travel website. This often requires employing extra manpower. A comprehensive FAQ ChatBot and an interactive answering tool can just reduce the workload and corresponding cost.

• Enhance Sales

Faster interaction and prompt informative answers to queries from Chatbots also help travelers booking a hotel, renting a car and paying for a ticket real quick. This ultimately results in increased sales volume and business conversion for travel websites.

• Building Community

A chatbot can also be a handy tool for developing a robust community around your travel brand by just facilitating to share travel experience and inspiration of travelers.

• Easier Customer Acquisition

Customer acquisition involves considerable cost for various industry niches. Thanks to a proactive and user-optimized chatbot the difficulties in respect of customer acquisition can be minimized. This also becomes easier because of prompt and meaningful interactions.

Finally, intelligent Chatbots can provide more appropriate and relevant recommendations to the customers and thus ultimately helps to reduce the operational cost of a travel business.

Examples of Travel Chatbots for Various Purposes

Now that the key advantages of the travel Chatbots are explained in detail, let us explain various use cases and contexts of use where travel Chatbots are really helpful.

• Travel Itinerary and Planning

Based on your preferences and your schedule a travel planner can suggest your itinerary and help you book hotels and flights accordingly.

• Flight Search

There are various travel Chatbots in the market that can provide instant help or assistance for finding a flight with a preferred budget, date and timing, location and flight class.

• Flight and Train Ticket Booking

A travel chatbot allows you to book a flight ticket or a train ticket on the go and get the best ticket deal.

• Web Check-In

Thanks to travel bots the airline passengers can also check-in online by simply messaging the details.

• Remaining Informed

Thanks to chatbot notifications, travelers can remain informed about everything regarding the service including the changes in departure timing, any issue with on-road traffic and required itinerary changes.

• Renting Cab and Cars

With a chatbot a traveler can also book a cab ride in a new city and can also hire a car for local or long-distance travel.

• Hotel Booking

With the help of travel Chatbots the travelers can book hotel stays before or arrival in a new city.

How To Build a Travel Chatbot in Simple Steps?

So, travel Chatbots really appear as something unavoidable for a modern travel website dealing with customers. Is building travel chatbot involves a lot of complexities? Well, as per the experience of other travel brands who have an impressive bot in actions, building a great travel chatbot requires only a few simple steps as mentioned below. Whether you are opting for an Android or iPhone app development company for building your chatbot solution, you need to follow the below-mentioned steps.

Know Which Chatbot Functions You Need?

First of all, decide the chatbot’s purpose and its objectives. Is the chatbot going to answer people’s queries or is it going to offer fun and entertainment in user interactions? What business process will be automated through the chatbot? How many people will use the chatbot? Are you going to integrate it with a database such as CRM or CMS?

What Chatbot Type Do You Need?

Now based upon your business objective and audience you need to choose the right type of chatbot. There are respectively Rule-Based and AI-powered Chatbots. While the first one has a limited scope of use and is only useful for answering simple questions, the AI-based one can intelligently adjust to user preferences and user interactions. Machine learning-based Chatbots is an offshoot of AI bots that are capable of learning from user interactions over time and incorporate the learning in responses.

Where You Need To Utilise Chatbots?

Now, you need to decide where you can use the chatbot. There are several chatbot options and you need to pick the one that is most effective for your audience. The most popular options include embedded chat for travel websites, a mobile app for travel, mobile carrier channels like SMS, chat messaging apps, etc. In case the chosen channel provides an open-source API, building the chatbot becomes further easier.

Select The Ideal Platform

Now, based on the chosen channel and type of chatbot, you need to choose the right platform.

For building scripted Chatbots with predetermined logic the most effective platforms include HubSpot conversations, Chatfuel and Facebook Messenger. These platforms you even can do without any dedicated developer.

For building AI and Machine Learning based Chatbots that can solve complex queries, you need to hire developers who can make the bot setting and train the bot with relevant data.  AndFor AI Chatbots most effective platforms include AWS, Wit.ai, IBM Watson Assistant, Microsoft Bot and a few others.

Add Additional Travel Features With Chatbots

Finally, when you are done with building a basic travel chatbot following the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) convention, you need to add more valuable features corresponding to your travel niche. These features should be decided upon based on your user feedback and the shortcomings you discover in user interactions with the bot.

Conclusion

Travel Chatbots have become part and parcel of travel websites and travel apps by large. But when including a chatbot in the scheme of things always make sure it satisfies the user intent and helps improving user experience.