Hotel Chatbot: How to Answer Guest Questions From Your Website
Guests ask the same questions before and during a stay: what time is check-in, is parking available, how far is the station, are pets allowed, what is included in the room. Many ask in the evening, from another country and in another language, when reception is busy or closed. A hotel chatbot built on your own website can answer these questions at any hour, show where each answer came from and leave a message for your team when it cannot help. It does not take bookings or payments, and it should not pretend to. This guide shows how to set one up in five steps.
Step 1: List the questions guests ask before and during a stay
Open your inbox, contact form messages and notes from reception for the last few months and write down the questions you answer most. Typical ones are check-in and check-out times, directions and parking, breakfast and opening hours of the restaurant or bar, facilities, house rules, nearby sights and how to reach the hotel by public transport. Write each one in the guest's words. Sort them into questions with a stable answer, which suit a chatbot, and questions that depend on the day or the booking, which need a person.
Step 2: Put the answers on pages the chat can read
The chat can only answer from what it can read. Make sure each answer is written in plain text on a public page of your website: rooms, facilities, location and directions, policies, FAQ. You can add a PDF or Word document, such as a guest information sheet, as a file. Create your chat, enter your hotel's website address and choose the pages it should learn from. Pages behind a login cannot be read. Each answer comes with a numbered source next to the sentence, so a guest can open the page behind it, and the chat never states a price, date or policy that your pages do not state.
Step 3: Let guests ask in their own language
Your guests do not all read the language your website is written in. The chat replies in the language each guest writes in, even when your pages are only in English, and the sources it cites stay your original pages. A question in German can find your English page about parking. You keep your content in one language and do not translate every page. Test it with a question in another language you can check, and ask one that your pages do not cover: the chat should say it does not know and offer the next step you chose.
Step 4: Write exact answers and set what happens when you are closed
Some answers must never vary: check-in and check-out times, breakfast hours, cancellation wording. For these, write a saved answer. Add the question the way a guest would ask it, add up to five other ways of asking it, write the answer and choose "Reply with this answer exactly". A saved answer is live as soon as you save it. Then decide what happens when the chat cannot help. It can show a contact form, which needs an email, so you can reply when you are back. With handoff turned on, which needs a paid plan, a guest can ask for a person during the business hours you set, and your team gets the chat with a short summary. Outside those hours, or when nobody is online, the guest gets the contact form. The chat does not take reservations or payments itself, and the agent is told never to ask for card numbers; OneType does not connect to your hotel booking engine, property management or payment systems.
Step 5: Add it to your site and review what guests ask
After you go live, OneType shows your script line, which goes just before the closing body tag; the same line works anywhere you can add custom code. Open your published site in a new tab and look for the chat button in the corner. Within about a minute OneType shows "Live on" followed by your site's address, for example "Live on hotel.example.com". The chat loads only on the domains you allow. After a week, open the questions the chat could not answer: they are grouped by meaning, with a count and the most asked first. Add the missing information to a page or write a saved answer, and it is live from the next conversation.
Try it on your hotel website
Learn how the chat answers in your guests' languages: multilingual answers, see how saved answers work, or start free.