Customer Background:

Marriott International is the largest hotel chain in the world by the number of available rooms. It has 30 brands with 8,000 properties containing 1,423,044 rooms in 131 countries and territories. Of these 8,000 properties, 2,149 are operated by Marriott, and 5,493 are operated by others pursuant tofranchise agreements. Their wide range of stay options from luxury to longer stays, the architectural grandeur of properties, and experiences rooted in luxury make them a preferred choice of many across the globe.

Problem Statement:

Often potential guest calls are missed by hotel operator staff due to heavy call flow and understaffing.
These calls include new guest room bookings, restaurant queries, banquet queries, etc. Research highlights that worldwide 7 out of 10 bookings from customers visiting a hotel website on mobile devices happen via phone call.
Some statistics show that most hotels with 400+ keys on an average miss 200 calls every day, amounting to 73,000 missed calls per year, having a huge negative impact on a hotel’s business.

In a world of a plethora of available options, one cannot expect a potential guest to keep his/her patience and call again. Some might not have the luxury of spending additional time to make the call again.
On an average a guest would call a hotel maximum twice and if not attended, will start looking for alternate options in the area.
With the expansive network that Marriott International runs, this might become a major issue due to high occupancies and global presence.

It is one of the primary guest touchpoints and a lag in service would lead to revenue leak and negative word-of-mouth publicity.

Approach:

The guest’s call is received by the hotel’s APABX system which has FCS as its outer-most layer.
After analyzing the entire hotel call system, experts at BOTSHOT came up with a missed call solution that is automated and efficient.
To get the payload of missed call data, we would integrate the FCS with our bot. Thus, if the call gets missed, the FCS system sends a missed call alert to BOTSHOT.
With the help of this integration, we would be able to receive real-time missed call data.
Freddie, our AI conversational chatbot, processes and saves the data in the database, and sends the missed call template to the guest’s WhatsApp numberin real-time.
The guest can then choose if he/she wants to continue to chat with the bot and make reservations or if he/she wants to connect with the hotel staff. The chatbot proceeds as per the guest’s request.
The chatbot would provide 24*7 and multi-lingual support to the guest, making the service more accessible and inclusive.

This way the potential guest still stays in touch with the Marriott hotel or resort as well as feels acknowledged and valued.
At the same time, the hotel doesn’t lose its future guest and hence, revenue leaks and negative sentiments and reviews are avoided.

Benefits:

With BOTSHOT’s brainchild Freddie, Marriott Hotels and Resorts would be able to capture new potential guests.
By transforming missed calls into WhatsApp messages, the hotel would be able to do what it does best- make the new as well as existing guests feel seen, valued and special.

Instant chat functionality and automated bot flow would target the limited attention span of guests.
As a result, the number of abandonments would go down by 80% or more, adding to the hotel’s guest list and overall revenue.
The hotel would be able to earn $80 per missed call and add around $30k incremental revenue per annum.

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