Best travel chatbots

In the world of travel, timing is everything. From making it to the airport on time to leaving the hotel before checkout, many travelers focus their energy on doing things quickly and efficiently—they want their customer support experience to be the same. According to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2023, 72 percent of customers desire fast service.

Travel chatbots can help businesses in the travel industry meet this expectation, and consumers are ready for it. Our research found that 73 percent expect more interactions with artificial intelligence (AI) in their daily lives and believe it will improve customer service quality.

Follow along to learn about travel chatbots, their benefits, and the best options for your business.

More in this guide:

• What are travel chatbots?
• Benefits of using travel chatbots
• 7 best travel chatbots
• How to build a travel chatbot
• Use cases for travel chatbots
• Deploy a travel chatbot with Zendesk

Travel chatbots are chatbots that provide effective, 24/7 support to travelers by leveraging AI technology. Like other types of chatbots, travel chatbots engage in text-based chats with customers to offer quick resolutions, from personalized travel recommendations to real-time trip updates around the clock.

In addition to helping travelers, travel bots can assist live support agents by answering common customer questions and collecting key information for agents upfront to help improve agent productivity.

Implementing a chatbot for travel can benefit your business and improve your customer experience (CX). Read on to learn more about the advantages of using travel chatbots.

Save time and reduce costs

Travel chatbots are your first line of support when answering your customers' common questions. By automatically helping multiple travelers simultaneously and deflecting tickets, chatbots for customer service free up your agents to focus on the complex travel issues that require a human touch. This can boost agent productivity, increase resolution time, and allow you to serve more customers without hiring additional support agents.

Offer fast, 24/7 support

Unlike your support agents, travel chatbots never have to sleep, enabling your business to deliver quick, 24/7 support. This allows your customers to get help independently at whatever time works best for them. In the world of travel, this could be the difference between botched travel plans and memories that will last a lifetime.

How they did it: Accor Plus, one of the world’s largest hospitality networks, used Zendesk to implement a travel chatbot and offer 24/7 support, improving resolution time by 220 percent.

Drive conversions with personalized messaging

Travel chatbots can also drive conversions by sending prospective travelers proactive messages, personalized suggestions, and relevant offerings based on previous interactions. This means bots can also automate upselling and cross-selling activities, further increasing sales.

For example, a chatbot at a travel agency may reach out to a customer with a promotional discount for a car rental service after solving an issue related to a hotel reservation. This can streamline the booking experience for the customer while also benefiting your bottom line.

How they did it: Accor Plus leveraged customer data gathered in Zendesk to deliver personalized support and drive a 20 percent increase in revenue.

Provide multilingual support

As a travel company, you likely serve customers from all over the world. Providing support in your customers' native languages can help improve their experience, as 71 percent believe it’s “very” or “extremely” important that companies offer support in their native language.

Travel chatbots can help you deliver multilingual customer support by automatically translating conversations and transferring travelers to human agents who speak the same language.

Now that you understand the benefits of AI chatbots, let’s take a look at seven of the best options for 2024.

1. Zendesk

Zendesk is a complete customer service solution with AI technology built on billions of real-life customer service interactions. You can deploy AI-powered chatbots in a few clicks and begin offloading repetitive tasks using cutting-edge technology like generative AI. These chatbots come pre-trained on billions of data points so they immediately understand the intent, sentiment, and language of each customer request. As a result, they can send accurate responses and provide a great overall experience.

Our AI-powered chatbots can help your business provide fast, 24/7 support to answer questions without agent intervention. Chatbots can also collect key customer information upfront, freeing your agents to tackle complex issues. Additionally, Zendesk includes live chat and self-service options, all within a unified Agent Workspace. This allows your team to deliver omnichannel customer service without jumping between apps or dashboards.

Finally, Zendesk works out of the box, enabling you to provide AI-enriched customer service without needing to hire an army of developers. This lowers your total cost of ownership (TCO) and speeds up your time to value (TTV).

Features:

• AI-powered chatbots
• AI-powered knowledge management
• Intelligent routing
• Reporting and analytics
• Intent and sentiment analysis
• Generative AI for agents, knowledge, and bots
• Macro suggestions for admins
• Intelligence panel for agents

Pricing:

• Suite Team: $55 per agent/month
• Suite Growth: $89 per agent/month
• Suite Professional: $115 per agent/month
• Suite Enterprise: Contact Zendesk
• Suite Enterprise Plus: Contact Zendesk
• Advanced AI (add-on): $50 per agent/month
  *Plans are billed annually.

Free trial:

14 days

2. Botsonic

Botsonic offers custom ChatGPT-powered chatbots that use your company’s data to address customer queries. With Botsonic, you use a drag-and-drop interface to set up a chatbot that answers traveler questions—no coding is required.

Additionally, you can customize your chatbot, including its name, color scheme, logo, contact information, and tagline. Botsonic also includes built-in safeguards to eliminate off-topic questions or answers that could misinform your customers.

Features:

• Embeddable chatbot widget
• GPT-4 technology
• Chatbot customization
• Drag-and-drop interface

Pricing:

• Free: $0 per month (1 user seat)
• Starter: $40.83 per month (3 user seats)
• Business: Contact Botsonic
  *Plans are billed annually.

Free trial:

Unavailable

3. Yellow.ai

Yellow.ai is a conversational AI platform that enables users to build bots with a drag-and-drop interface and over 150 pre-built templates. Users can also deploy chat and voice bots across multiple languages and communication channels, including email, SMS, and Messenger.

The platform supports automated workflows and responses, and it offers chat suggestions powered by generative AI. Additionally, Yellow.ai users can manage chat, email, and voice conversations with travelers in one inbox.

Features:

• Generative AI-powered inbox
• Pre-built customer journey templates
• Voice bots
• Automated workflows

Pricing:

• Free: $0 per month (1 bot + limited features)
• Enterprise: Contact Yellow.ai

Free trial:

21 days

Learn about Yellow.ai for Zendesk.

4. Flow XO

Flow XO is an AI chatbot platform that lets businesses create code-free chatbots. With Flow XO, users can configure their chatbot to collect information (such as a traveler’s email address), greet visitors, and answer simple questions.

Flow XO chatbots can also be programmed to send links to web pages, blog posts, or videos to support their responses. Customers can make payments directly within the chatbot conversation, too.

Features:

• Accept payments via chatbot
• Live chat
• Customizable greetings
• 100+ integrations

Pricing:

• Free: $0 per month (5 bots)
• Standard: Starting at $25 per month (15 bots)

Free trial:

Unavailable

5. Verloop.io

Verloop.io is an AI-powered customer service platform with chatbot functionality. Users can customize their chatbot to help travelers and provide support in more than 20 international languages.

The platform features voice support and live chat. Verloop.io also supports multiple communication channels, including WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram. With Verloop.io, AI chatbots can provide personalized travel recommendations and assist in booking and cancellation requests.

Features:

• Live chat
• Voice support
• Reporting and analytics
• Bot builder

Pricing:

• Contact Verloop.io

Free trial:

14 days

Learn about Verloop.io for Zendesk.

6. Freshchat

Freshchat is live chat software that features email, voice, and AI chatbot support. Businesses can use Freshchat to deploy AI chatbots on their website, app, or other messaging channels like WhatsApp, LINE, Apple Messages for Business, and Messenger.

The software also includes analytics that provide insights into traveler behavior and support agent performance. But keep in mind that users aren’t able to build custom metrics, so teams must manually add data when exporting reports.

Features:

• Real-time dashboard
• Voice support
• Targeted messages
• Multilingual chatbots

Pricing:

• Free: $0 per month (up to 10 agents)
• Growth: $19 per agent/month
• Pro: $49 per agent/month
• Enterprise: $79 per agent/month
  *Plans are billed annually.

Free trial:

14 days

Learn about Freshchat for Zendesk.

7. Engati

Engati is a chatbot and live chat platform that enables users to deploy no-code chatbots. With Engati, users can set up a chatbot that allows travelers to book flights, hotels, and tours without human intervention.

Support teams can configure their chatbots using a drag-and-drop builder and set them up to interact with customers on the company’s website, Messenger, and Telegram. Engati also offers multilingual chatbots in over 50 languages.

Features:

• Live chat
• Multilingual chatbots
• Universal inbox
• Drag-and-drop bot builder

Pricing:

• Contact Engati

Free trial:

7 days

Now that you know about travel chatbots, their benefits, and some popular chatbot options, let’s walk through how you can build one.

1. Determine what channels to deploy your bot on: Whether on your website, Facebook, or other messaging channels, you must figure out where your travel chatbot is needed most. You can do this by determining where your customers already reach out with common questions. That way, you can deploy your travel chatbot on the most popular channels.
   
2. Choose the right bot partner based on your resources and budget: Your budget and resources are other important considerations when building a travel chatbot. You’ll want to pick one that can be deployed easily and quickly. With Zendesk, for example, you can implement a travel chatbot across your customers’ favorite channels without coding skills using our bot builder—saving you time and money. Other chatbot options may require extra time and developer resources to configure, increasing your TCO and TTV.
   
3. Choose a bot persona that matches your brand: When hiring a support agent, you likely want to hire someone who fits your business well. The same goes for your travel chatbot. For instance, if your business is known for its professional nature, you'll want your chatbot persona to match. That way, you ensure your customers enjoy a consistent service experience, whether they’re interacting with your AI travel bot or live agents.
   
4. Use data to determine what to automate: Next, you’ll want to review your support data to see what you can automate. For example, if your customers often ask how to get money back from hotel bookings, you should create an automated response that enables your travel chatbot to answer the question without agent intervention.
   
5. Integrate your bot with key systems: To help improve both your customer and employee experience, you’ll want to integrate your travel chatbot with your other business systems, such as customer service, live chat, and ticketing software. This helps ensure conversations stay connected so travelers receive the support they need faster.

By following these five steps, you can start transforming your customer experience with another support option that your busy travelers can use whenever they need it.

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You can think of a travel chatbot as a versatile AI travel agent on call 24/7. Much like a real-life travel assistant, a travel chatbot has many uses. Follow along to learn about popular use cases for travel chatbots.

Offering personalized travel recommendations

Whether it’s a relaxing beach getaway or a road trip touring your favorite national parks, a travel or tourism chatbot can provide personalized travel recommendations. This may include things to do, places to stay, and transportation options based on travel needs and preferences.

Solving customer issues

No matter how hard people try to get through their travels without a hitch, some issues are unavoidable. Fortunately, travel chatbots can provide an easily accessible avenue of support for weary travelers to get the help they need and improve their travel experience.

For example, Baleària, a maritime transportation company, used Zendesk to implement a travel chatbot to answer common customer questions and reached a 96 percent customer satisfaction (CSAT) score.

Soliciting post-travel feedback

Collecting feedback is a great way to ensure you’re meeting customer needs. With a travel chatbot, you can do just that. You can program your chatbot to ask for customer feedback, such as a review or rating, at the end of an interaction. This allows businesses to gain valuable insights into what they’re doing well and where they can improve.

Delivering real-time travel updates

Be it inclement weather or an overbooked flight, certain situations can derail travel plans. Travel chatbots can help keep travelers informed by delivering real-time updates like flight status and reservation changes that may impact their trip. Without these updates, your travelers could learn about changes too late, making for a stressful and frustrating journey.