Case Study - Hotel Bookings

Problem

Hotels are faced with a huge amount of administrative work as more and more hotel bookings happen via Online Travel Agents such as Bookings.com. Emails come in from a variety of sources with bookings, updates, virtual credit card details, and cancellations.

Processing these bookings and adding them to the Hotel's Property Management System is laborious and repetitive work. Human error means bookings, cancellations and changes are not always made correctly which results in a loss of revenue as cards are not charged correctly.

The Hotel Group we are working with has seen its call centre swell to 80 staff, many of whom are simply dealing with the administrative tasks created by the bookings from Online Travel Agents.

The management team felt that this work was not fulfilling. It was unnecessary and costly to process manually. Worse still, human error in processing these tasks meant that reception staff, at check in and check out, needed to deal with multiple issues on the spot, causing frustration for both staff and customers.

Solution – Phase 1:

We suggested the following approach.

IntelliAgent monitors the email inbox 24x7 and processes all bookings, updates and cancellations. It reads card images and enters or updates virtual credit card details, leads to zero human error, and all bookings made correctly.

Solution – Phase 2:

Further areas identified where automation could bring significant benefits

IntelliAgent used to handle direct customer bookings, amendments and cancellations via phone, live web chat and email created using to provide 24x7 booking capability via any channel.

Other areas for automation also identified including invoice processing for corporate customers, card processing for other bookings so that all cards processed on time and all invoices sent on time with no human error leading to significant reduction in credit control issues and vastly improved cash collection.


Challenges

State of Automation

Manual

Manual

Manual

Manual

Issues

Room inventory not up to date

Huge administrative load from Online Travel Agency Bookings

Human error leads to cash flow issues

High Churn of staff due to repetitive nature of work / low job satisfaction

Problems at check in / check out due to incorrect booking details

Phase 1

State of Automation

Automated

Manual

Manual

Manual

Benefits

Zero Human error, all cards processed correctly

60% reduction in cost in booking processing

Improved cash flow as payments are processed promptly and correctly

Room inventory always correct and up to date

Reduction in problems at check in and check out

Phase 2

State of Automation

Automated

Automated

Automated

Automated

Benefits

Further 60% cost reduction in customer service, and invoicing processing

Invoices processed automatically,with zero human error

Bookings handled 24x7







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