Recovering 84,000 PLN from abandoned hotel reservations
The hotel was losing guests at the stage of choosing a date. We implemented a chatbot that answers questions about breakfast and parking in 2 minutes, saving reservations.
The hotel was losing real money because no one replied to emails at 10:00 PM. We implemented a robot that closes the sale while the reception deals with guests on site. It simply works and earns for itself every month.
The challenge
In May 2023, we analyzed inquiry logs at Hotel Poznański Blask. As many as 114 specific questions about parking, extra beds, and breakfast menus went unanswered for longer than 4 hours. Customers, instead of waiting, ran to the competition on Booking.com, which cost the hotel a high commission.
Reception was overloaded with phone calls about directions, meaning they had no time to reply to sales emails. The hotel was losing an average of 2,150 PLN in potential revenue every weekend just because the inquiry handling process was too slow. Only numbers count, and they were ruthless.
Our approach
The Impuls Poznań Consulting team spent 3 days directly at the reception in June 2023. We watched exactly what people asked and where the system jammed. We selected 14 most common topics that blocked room reservation.
We gave up on writing long instructions. Instead, we prepared short, specific response paths for the bot. We focused on making sure the customer got an answer in less than 30 seconds, even at 3 AM. There was no fluff, just a technical link between the bot and the hotel's reservation system.
The solution
We set up an intelligent bot on the website and on the Facebook profile. The bot checks room availability in real time and knows answers to technical questions about bed dimensions or sauna opening hours. If a customer asks about arriving with a dog, the bot sends the price list and regulations in 4 seconds.
Additionally, we implemented a rescue mechanism. When a customer interrupts the reservation process at the last stage, the robot sends them a one-time 5% discount code valid for 15 minutes. This solution allowed closing the gap in night sales without hiring an additional employee for the night shift.
Results
During the three months of the summer season, the hotel earned 84,320 PLN more from direct reservations. The cost of handling simple inquiries dropped by 62%, which unburdened the reception staff.
Timeline
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June 2023Audit of 1,500 archived inquiries and bottleneck analysis.
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July 2023Bot configuration and integration with the reservation engine.
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August 2023Live tests and optimization of closing sales scripts.
"Previously, we were losing customers because the reception couldn't keep up with replying. We checked this on hard data, and the chatbot paid for its annual cost in the first week of July."