Avvio has launched a conversational and transactional social media chatbot which integrates with its AI-driven booking engine, Allora.

The bot has been developed in partnership with Dublin-based Webio and the first hotel to go live is The Kingsley in Cork, Ireland. The property is part of the Fota Collection. The bot, which has been named “Dorothy”, will be rolled out across Fota’s other hotels.

Avvio’s AI-driven booking engine Allora was launched late last year and uses proprietary machine learning algorithms to optimise conversion rates from visits to brand dotcoms. It also aggregates all data collected from the 40 or so hotels which are currently using Allora to create a network intelligence model.

The bot, which will operate on The Kingsley’s Facebook Messenger channel, can be configured to work on other messaging platforms. It accesses the individual hotel content held within Allora, so it can answer queries related to the hotels operations, in a customer service context.

But, importantly, it can also transact, connecting to the rates and availability held within Allora and using Webio’s integration with Stripe to take the payment.

In effect, the bot allows a hotel to offer visitors to its Facebook page a search, shop and booking experience using Facebook Messenger without the guest necessarily having to visit the web site.

Frank Reeves, Avvio CEO, added that another benefit of using Facebook Messenger is that it also allows groups to interact with and book rooms through the bot.

He added that the development roadmap is heading towards using Facebook profiles to personalize the conversation between the bot, the user and the hotel.

“It’s clear from all the research that there is a global trend towards the use of messaging platforms, not only for conversations but also transactions, and by linking up with Webio we are giving hotels a chance to be part of that ecosystem in a way that drives direct bookings.”

See also:

Video: the impact of AI on improving hotel conversion rates (Jan18)