We know there’s a lot of buzz around Artificial Intelligence (AI), and you may not think there’s anything in it for you. But did you know that there are tools that can be beneficial for you as a tour operator?
From more efficient customer interactions to smarter business insights, AI might be the trusty business tool you didn’t know you needed.
In this post, you’ll learn about several tour booking automation use cases and how you can leverage this technology to save time and streamline tedious tasks.
- What is process automation?
- Why tour businesses need process automation?
- 6 tour booking automation use cases
- How to automate your booking processes with Xola
What is process automation?
Process automation in the tour industry involves using automated travel software to handle routine and repetitive administrative tasks within business operations, eliminating the need for manual intervention.
By integrating software systems, algorithms, and specialized tools, process automation enhances the efficiency and accuracy of booking systems, customer management, and itinerary planning. This technological approach helps tour operators streamline operations, reduce operational costs, and minimize the potential for errors in scheduling and customer service.
This is crucial for managing large volumes of bookings, optimizing tour schedules, handling customer requests, and improving overall business performance.
Why tour businesses need process automation?
For tour businesses, automating routine processes not only streamlines operations but also allows them to allocate more resources towards growth and providing exceptional customer service.
Here are several compelling reasons why tour businesses benefit from implementing process automation solutions:
- Enhanced efficiency. Automation speeds up booking processes and reduces manual entry errors.
Increased accuracy. Automated booking systems minimize human error in bookings and financial transactions. - Improved customer service. Automation provides faster response times and 24/7 booking capabilities, enhancing customer satisfaction.
- Scalability. automated processes make it easier to manage increased volumes of bookings without a proportional increase in overhead.
- Data insights. Automation tools collect and analyze data from all of your previous bookings, which you can use for building custom reports. This can help with better decision-making and tailored marketing strategies.
- Cost reduction. By reducing the need for manual labor in routine tasks, automation cuts operational costs and improves profitability.
6 tour booking automation use cases
Here are some use cases that you can use to drive growth and streamline business operations in your business.
1. General assistant/smart virtual assistant
Intelligent Virtual Assistants (VAs) are the backbone of automated customer interactions. They can handle routine inquiries, provide personalized recommendations, and streamline communication between tour operators and guests.
Operators often use AI-powered VAs to manage online bookings, trip details, and customer follow-ups, freeing up staff for more critical tasks.
Source: Actabl
One example is “Alice” by YOTEL, an AI-powered concierge that facilitates internal staff communication as well as guest-to-staff communication.
On the guest front, Alice handles special requests and tracks luggage, among other things. Before launching ALICE, staff used hotel or personal phones for communication with guests. Now, Alice also provides a channel for staff to text guests after check-in, allowing them to provide a more personalized guest experience.
2. Social media content creation
ChatGPT, a highly advanced AI chatbot that has a human-like way of communicating, can be used to facilitate your social media strategy:
- Caption writing: Tell ChatGPT some relevant details about your post — like what services you offer and who the post is intended for — and it will generate several captions for you to choose from.
- Strategy advice: Use ChatGPT to help you form a marketing plan for your Instagram profile. For example, your prompt could read: Can you create a three-month social media strategy for my zip line company on Instagram?
- Content ideas: We know that brainstorming content ideas can take a lot of time and effort. If you feed the chatbot details about your business, activities, and target audience, it can help you generate a content calendar, topics for posts, ideas for graphics, and more.
- Repurposing content: Do you have a blog on your website? If so, you can repurpose that content into social media posts. And ChatGPT can help: Simply prompt it to write a short Instagram post that gives a synopsis of the blog [insert the blog copy].
Here’s an example prompt a zipline operator might use to generate an Instagram caption for a new course:
“Can you create an Instagram caption for my zip line company that announced a new course in my park? The highlight of this course is that it happens at night!”
As you can see in the photo above, ChatGPT provides a caption complete with emojis and hashtags ready to be posted on Instagram.
3. Travel planning/booking
If you’re a trip operator, you may find AI helpful in building and pricing new trip itineraries. Big Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) players like Expedia and Kayak are exploring new ways to leverage AI technology to streamline their online booking services.
Both have launched plugins that can be integrated with the chatbot to give it additional functionality.
Source: PhocusWire
Expedia, for instance, plans to use ChatGPT technology to provide travelers with hyper-personalized search results. When a traveler asks the chatbot about the top hotels for a particular destination, the suggestions would automatically be added to their Expedia trip board. Then, travelers wouldn’t have to spend so much time looking through hundreds of hotel options.
Meanwhile, Kayak’s plugin will provide customers with personalized recommendations based on their queries. For example, a user can ask, “Where can I fly to from Chicago for under $500?” and receive relevant destination ideas with ticket prices.
4. Customer service/FAQ chatbot
AI-powered chatbots can handle routine customer inquiries, such as checking availability, providing information about tour packages, or answering frequently asked questions. Expedia’s chatbots, for example, have supported 29 million virtual conversations in recent years, saving over 8 million hours of agent time and helping travelers resolve issues faster with self-service.
Chatbots can interact with your customers in real-time, 24/7, which reduces the burden on you and your staff. The more your customers interact with the bot, the better you’ll understand their doubts, preferences, and concerns. Based on those interactions, you can create a comprehensive FAQ database and train your chatbot to provide customers with the right answers.
Another use case worth mentioning is translation service. A chatbot can be programmed to support multiple languages, allowing you to communicate with a diverse customer base without the need for multilingual agents. This could be a great benefit for operators that want to attract international customers.
5. Data/Analytics/Business Intelligence
Tour operators can leverage BI dashboards to track key performance indicators (KPIs) and insights in real time.
AI can automate the collection of data from various sources, including your booking systems, customer feedback, social media, and website interactions.
ChatGPT has a new code interpreter feature that facilitates this. You do need a ChatGPT plus account to access this functionality. Once you upgrade your account, all you need to do is click on settings and turn on the toggle button for “Code Interpreter.”
Then, you can feed the chatbot raw data — such as your customer feedback — and as it to interpret the information for you. With this new functionality, ChatGPT can even create interactive graphs to better represent the data.
When your data is preprocessed through an AI system, it reduces the manual effort and potential errors involved in assessing it.
AI-powered algorithms can also analyze historical data and customer behavior to make predictions about future trends, booking patterns, and customer preferences. This helps tour operators anticipate demand and tailor their offerings accordingly.
6. Sentiment analysis
Sentiment analysis is the process of better understanding customer opinions, emotions, and preferences by analyzing their interactions online.
Let’s say you want to measure the sentiment on a satisfaction survey you sent out after an event. You would copy your survey responses and drop them into ChatGPT, asking the chatbot to do a sentiment analysis for you. You can ask follow-up questions for more in-depth insights, as well as advice on what to try next.
Much like paid sentiment analysis tools, ChatGPT will automatically extract sentiments from your customers’ interactions — and identify specific aspects of tours or services that customers feel strongly about.
How to automate your booking processes with Xola
Xola is an all-in-one online booking solution tailored for tours and activities operators. and activities. Xola has many built-in automation features that allow you to streamline various aspects of your operations:
- Sales. Turn your website into a 24/7 online reservationist and automate your booking process. This allows potential customers to make reservations anytime, reducing manual efforts and increasing efficiency.
- Booking Management. Keep track of all your listings, bookings, schedules, equipment, and customer communication using Xola’s centralized booking system. This helps streamline operations, manage customer information, and improve customer satisfaction while preventing double booking.
- Distribution. Extend your reach by listing your tours on over 100 sales channels, including all of the major online travel agencies (OTAs). This broadens your market exposure and enhances booking opportunities without extra legwork.
- Analytics. Analyze sales and growth trends with Xola’s comprehensive analytics features and financial reports.These insights assist in making informed decisions to optimize your services and boost growth.
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The travel industry has experienced improved efficiency and innovation. The examples we have discussed demonstrate how AI can simplify operations for many daily tasks, improve customer experiences, and help take your travel business to the next level.
