Conversational AI in Travel & Hospitality

The travel industry is facing a customer service revolution. Travelers today want to pick up their phone and call your number, expecting instant support, 24/7 availability, and a seamless booking experience. The good news is that these same consumers are okay with you using AI to interact with them. In fact, 76.9% of consumers prefer hotels with some kind of automated customer service or AI chatbots.

This demand, coupled with the need for businesses to reduce operational costs, makes conversational AI a game-changer for hotels and travel agencies in 2025. 

Conversational AI agents can seamlessly pick up calls and intelligently interact with customers, understanding the conversation and answering questions contextually. These AI agents can also book reservations and perform other basic admin tasks like reschedule reservations.

In this blog, we’ll explore how conversational AI is changing the travel and hospitality industry, its use cases, and how to choose the right tool to implement in your business.

How Conversational AI Works in Travel & Hospitality

Conversational AI refers to chatbots or AI agents that can talk and chat with customers intelligently, meaning their responses aren’t pre-recorded. These AI agents adjust their responses in real-time based on what the customer needs, even understanding if the customer is frustrated or not. 

To do all of this complicated computation, AI agents use technologies like:

• Natural Language Processing (NLP): It breaks down sentences into words and phrases, then figures out their meaning using context. For example, NLP lets AI agents understand if a customer is frustrated, allowing it to reply to the customer with more care and sensitivity for a better experience.
• Machine Learning (ML): The system continuously improves its responses by learning from past interactions. This translates to AI agents that become intimately familiar with your hotel, its surrounding area, and its unique offerings, enabling them to deliver better answers and more personalized service.
• Real-Time Data Processing: One of the most valuable aspects of conversational AI is its ability to access and process real-time data. AI can provide instant updates on travel disruptions, flight changes, itinerary adjustments, and even potential layovers. 
• Knowledge Base Integration: You provide the AI with a knowledge base specific to your business. This includes your prices, answers to frequently asked questions, details about your hotel or services, etc. The AI then uses this information to answer customer inquiries accurately. 

Because travel and hospitality is an industry where customers send their personal IDs and credit or debit card details, data privacy is paramount. Reputable AI agent providers like Synthflow comply with relevant regulations like GDPR, the toughest privacy and security law in the world.

Applications of Conversational AI in Travel & Hospitality

With market projections of conversational AI for travel and hospitality reaching up to $1.2 billion by 2026 and a 60% annual growth in AI adoption expected from 2023 to 2033, now is the time to examine how this technology can benefit your business.

Booking and Reservations

Travelers face dozens of issues when booking accommodation. They need to find hotels that fit their budget, navigate through complex booking systems and websites, and wait several minutes on hold for customer service to pick up. Or worse, wait until the next day to call customer service during operating hours. About 52% of travelers abandon their online reservations after any of these bad user experiences.

For hotel and travel businesses, that’s money out the door. To solve this, businesses must show up to customers 24/7 while keeping operational costs low.

AI agents are the perfect solution. They’re available around the clock and can instantly answer customer inquiries, even if they have specific questions about looking for a room with a view, a problem with a non-stop flight, or an issue with a specific tour package. By integrating with real-time inventory systems, AI can provide up-to-the-minute information on availability and pricing for your customers.

Personalized Travel Recommendations

Sifting through countless websites and comparing prices is time-consuming and frustrating. Travel agencies aren’t better either, often offering generic packages that lead to boring experiences. With more than 86% of travelers looking for a personalized, individual travel experience, generic travel packages lead to disappointed travelers and lost repeat customers.

Conversational AI agents can create personalized travel recommendations by talking to travelers. By asking targeted questions, AI agents can understand the traveler’s preferences, travel history, and budget. From there, the AI can generate tailored recommendations, from suggesting restaurants all the way to curating a personalized tour. For example, a traveler mentioning a love for hiking will receive recommendations for trails, rentals, and guides.

If you’re worried about how travelers will feel about being greeted with AI, here’s a report from SiteMinder — out of 12,000 respondents, 78% of travelers say they are open to using AI in planning, booking, and during their hotel stays in 2025.

Real-Time Travel Updates

Travel disruptions are inevitable. Flight delays and cancellations can quickly derail a trip. That’s why keeping travelers continuously informed is crucial for minimizing frustration.

If the AI system detects flight changes or other issues, they can notify travelers via their preferred channels (push notifications, SMS, or email). For major disruptions, AI voice agents can make outbound calls, saving travel agencies and hotels significant time and effort.

Timely updates also drastically reduce customer frustration. Travelers appreciate being kept in the loop. Even with bad news like cancellations, proactive communication helps. Conversational AI can turn a potentially negative experience into a positive one, even salvaging a 0-star review into a 5-star review, by being helpful and responsive. 

24/7 Customer Support

According to HubSpot, 90% of customers expect an immediate response to a customer support inquiry. In the report, “immediate” means 10 minutes or less. If you want to compete with other 24/7 businesses, the traditional way requires hiring and managing staff, training them, and then investing in the infrastructure or technology, like laptops.

Conversational AI is a more affordable, plug-and-play solution. Unlike human agents, AI agents can handle multiple calls concurrently, so one AI agent can take care of 10+ calls at once without putting your customers on hold. These AI agents can also figure out if the problem they’re dealing with needs human intervention. They can either route the call to your receptionist or create a ticket so a human agent can attend to that customer on the next working day.

Language Translation

Language barriers are a significant obstacle for both travelers and travel businesses. In 2024 alone, 1.4 billion tourists flew internationally from a different country. That’s 1.4 billion chances of misunderstandings, miscommunications, and a frustrating travel experience.

Conversational AI agents can understand and respond in multiple languages. For example, Synthflow’s AI agents can understand and speak English, Portuguese, Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Dutch, with more language support coming soon. This capability at scale is entirely new for the travel and hospitality industry, and it opens up small businesses to a wider, international audience.

Imagine a traveler from Germany booking a hotel in Spain. The AI agent can seamlessly translate the conversation, ensuring clear communication and a smooth booking process. 

Smart Hotel Features

AI-driven enhancements don't need to be revolutionary to be impactful. A Hotel Tech Report survey of 400 hotel guests found that 58% of said guests had improved booking and stay experiences thanks to simple AI conveniences.

Imagine arriving at your hotel and instantly getting answers to questions like check-in/check-out times, Wi-Fi passwords, breakfast buffet hours, or local restaurant recommendations, all through a quick interaction with an AI-powered chatbot or voice agent. No more waiting in line at the front desk or flipping through outdated hotel brochures. 

These small, AI-driven conveniences contribute to happier guests, which in turn leads to return customers and word-of-mouth marketing for your hotel.

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Benefits of Conversational AI in Travel & Hospitality

AI agents can be the difference between breaking even or profiting this year if you're a struggling hotel or travel agency. Aside from being cheaper than hiring and managing a customer support team, the operational improvements of conversational AI are bound to increase your sales ROI.

Here’s a more detailed breakdown of the 3 main benefits of conversational AI in travel & hospitality.

Cost Efficiency

Conversational AI saves you money in two ways. It reduces the overhead costs of having a customer support team and automates routine tasks like booking reservations. By handling common inquiries and basic transactions, AI frees up human agents for more complex issues, optimizing staffing and reducing operational overhead. That’s immediate savings going into your pocket.

Enhanced Customer Experience

Conversational AI gives customers personalized interactions without staff training or increased operational costs. That means your agency or hotel can deliver a better customer experience than your competitors, raising customer satisfaction and helping you attract repeat customers. 

In other words, it’s just another way your business can serve your customers better.

Staying Ahead of the Competition

Embracing AI and adopting the technology positions hotels and travel agencies as innovators. This sets these businesses apart and attracts modern travelers who are looking for AI-powered features. And with 65% of travelers wanting tech in their hotels to be cooler than tech in their homes, AI-powered customer support easily counts as cooler tech.

AI gives you a competitive advantage by allowing businesses to offer competitive pricing while providing superior services, attracting a larger market and increasing the business’ position in the industry.

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Challenges of Implementing Conversational AI in Travel & Hospitality

Conversational AI can be challenging to implement, especially for businesses using legacy systems that aren’t compatible with the AI platforms. Plus, over-reliance on AI can also cause businesses to lose touch with customers. These are just a few of the challenges of implementing AI in travel and hospitality businesses.

Data Privacy and Security

Protecting sensitive customer data is a business's first priority and concern when adopting conversational AI. It doesn’t help that a good chunk of consumers are worried about their data, specifically 82% of boomers who are concerned about the security and privacy of their data in the hands of AI tools.

That’s why the best conversational AI platforms follow regulations like GDPR, ensuring responsible data handling and transparency. 

Maintaining Human Connection

Balancing automation with human interaction is key, but it can be difficult to find the balance when you’re saving on operational costs. While AI can handle many tasks, the human touch is still vital, especially for complex or emotionally charged situations. 

Finding the right blend of AI and human support is crucial for delivering exceptional customer service. To overcome this, let your human staff deal with guests in real life while your AI agents handle incoming calls. That way, your human staff aren’t bogged down by 2 different tasks.

System Reliability

AI systems must be dependable, especially during peak travel seasons or unexpected disruptions. Ensuring system stability and preventing outages is critical for maintaining smooth operations and avoiding customer frustration.

To avoid this problem, you need a tool that can scale up with you during peak season, like a payment plan that gets you more bandwidth for a reasonable price increase. The same tool should also be easy to scale down when the off-season comes, ensuring your conversational AI system is reliable throughout the year and cost-effective. 

Why Choose Synthflow AI for Travel & Hospitality Solutions

Synthflow’s no-code, drag-and-drop interface allows agency and hotel owners to set up AI voice agents in minutes without needing any technical knowledge or coding ability. It can seamlessly handle a large volume of calls across all timelines and languages. 

Features:

• Multi-language — supports 7 languages.
• Scalable pricing and infrastructure — higher tiers can handle 25, 50, and 100 concurrent calls for the peak season.
• Human transfer — AI agents can intelligently transfer calls to an active human. agent if they assess that the customer needs more specialized help.
• CRM Integration — seamlessly connects to your CRM to manage client bookings.
• Advanced AI speech — Synthflow AI agents sound convincingly human.

Synthflow’s features are highly advanced, yet starting and implementing the platform to your current systems is easy. Synthflow’s AI agents are well-suited for travel agencies and hotels looking to seamlessly automate customer support, booking, and reservation operations.

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Try a free demo and see how you reduce the overhead costs of your traditional customer support team with AI voice agents. Sign up here.

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