From Call Center to AI: How One Boutique Hotel Freed Their Team to Focus on What Really Matters
Meet the Clients Who Inspired This Solution
When we first met Sarah and Michael (names changed for privacy), we were immediately impressed. This entrepreneurial couple had done what many dream of—they built a successful boutique hotel from the ground up, entirely on their own.
No big investors. No hotel chain backing them. Just two people with a vision, incredible work ethic, and an obsession with guest experience.
They handled everything: the build-out, the day-to-day management, the marketing, the bookings. As their hotel grew in popularity (thanks to glowing reviews and word-of-mouth), so did the volume of guest inquiries.
The Problem Every Successful Hotel Faces
Success brought a new challenge: their inbox was overflowing, and their phones wouldn’t stop ringing.
Guests had questions. Lots of questions. Some were complex and required that personal touch Sarah and Michael prided themselves on. But honestly? Most were straightforward:
- “What time is check-in?”
- “Do you allow pets?”
- “Is breakfast included?”
- “How far are you from downtown?”
These questions were coming through every channel—phone calls, website inquiries, and especially email (because let’s be real, boutique hotel guests still love email communication).
These inquiries were eating up hours every single day.
So they did what any smart business owners would do—they built a small call centre. Hired a team. Trained them on the hotel’s policies and offerings. It worked… to a point.
The call centre helped manage volume, but Sarah and Michael saw something they couldn’t ignore: their staff was spending the majority of their time answering the same questions over and over. Questions that, honestly, could be answered by the right information delivered at the right time.
Meanwhile, the things that actually made their hotel special—the proactive outreach, the personalised recommendations, the relationship-building, the thoughtful up-selling of experiences—those things weren’t happening as much as they should.
They needed their team to be less reactive and more proactive.
The Vision: Staff Who Build Relationships, Not Answer FAQs
Sarah and Michael came to us with a clear vision:
“We don’t want to replace our team with AI. We want to free them up to do what humans do best—build genuine connections with guests, anticipate needs before they’re asked, and create memorable experiences that keep people coming back.”
They wanted their staff spending time:
- Reaching out to guests before arrival with personalised recommendations
- Following up during stays to ensure everything exceeds expectations
- Building rapport that turns first-time visitors into loyal regulars
- Thoughtfully up-selling experiences (not just rooms)—like private chef dinners, guided local tours, or spa packages
- Handling the complex, nuanced situations that require empathy and judgement
The routine stuff? That could be automated.
But here’s the thing—they still wanted control. They didn’t want a bot sending emails on behalf of their hotel without human oversight. The personal touch matters too much.
What We Built: A Two-Bot System That Works With Your Team
We designed a solution that respects both efficiency and control. Instead of one bot trying to do everything, we built two specialized AI agents that work together:
Bot #1: The Email Drafting Assistant
For many boutique hotels, email is still a primary communication channel. Guests prefer it for detailed questions, booking inquiries, and pre-arrival planning.
The email bot works with your staff, not instead of them:
- AI drafts the response – When an email comes in, the bot analyses the question and drafts a complete, accurate response using your hotel’s information
- Staff reviews and edits – The draft appears for your team to review, modify, or personalise as needed
- Human sends it – Your staff member hits send when they’re satisfied
Why this matters: Your team stays in control of every communication, but they’re not starting from scratch each time. What used to take 10 minutes now takes 2. They can add personal touches, adjust tone, or include specific details the bot might not know.
It’s like having an incredibly knowledgeable assistant who does the first draft, but the final touch is always human.
Bot #2: The Website Chat Agent (Fully Automated)
This is the 24/7 agent that lives on your website, handling inquiries completely automatically. While the email bot assists your team, the website bot works independently.
Guests can:
- Ask questions and get instant answers
- Purchase up-sells with payment links
- Cancel bookings with automatic refund processing
No human needed—unless the situation calls for it.
Why Two Bots?
Because different channels have different expectations:
- Email = Guests expect thoughtful, detailed responses and don’t mind waiting a bit. Your staff wants to maintain that personal relationship.
- Website chat = Guests expect instant answers and quick transactions. They’re often browsing late at night or comparing multiple hotels.
This dual approach gives you the best of both worlds: speed where it matters, human touch where it counts.
What Powers These Bots: Your Content, Your Systems
Here’s where it gets interesting. We didn’t build these bots with generic hotel responses. We built them to learn from your existing content.
It Starts With What You Already Have
We trained both AI agents using:
- Your hotel’s website – all that carefully crafted content about your rooms, amenities, policies, and local area
- Your FAQ documents – those answers you’ve refined over years of guest interactions
- Your internal knowledge base – the tribal knowledge your team has built up
The result? AI agents that sound like your hotel, know your hotel, and represent your brand accurately.
No need to rebuild your content from scratch. We work with what you’ve already created.
Connected to Your Real Systems - Hostaway PMS & Stripe Payments
Because we integrated directly with Hostaway.com (their property management system) and Stripe (for payment processing), the bots don’t just answer questions—they have real-time access to:
- Actual room availability
- Current pricing
- Booking calendars
- Reservation details
- Payment and refund processing
This means when a guest asks “I need to cancel my reservation”. The system handles the entire process automatically.
The 80% Solution (That Changes Everything)
Here’s what we targeted: handle 80% of inquiries automatically—the routine, information-based questions that don’t require human judgement.
That leaves your team with 20% of inquiries: the complex ones, the emotional ones, the situations that benefit from human empathy and problem-solving.
But here’s the real magic: when you free your team from spending 80% of their time on routine questions, they don’t just handle the remaining 20% better. They have time to be proactive.
What These AI Agents Handle
The Everyday Questions (Your Website on Demand)
“What time is checkout?” “Where do I park?” “What’s your cancellation policy?”
Both bots pull from your website content and FAQs to give instant, accurate answers. The email bot drafts detailed responses. The website bot provides immediate answers. Same information, different formats.
Smart Cancellations with Automatic Refund Processing
Here’s a feature that Sarah and Michael didn’t know they desperately needed until they had it.
Before the bot, cancellations were a hassle:
- Guest emails or calls to cancel
- Staff looks up the booking in Hostaway
- Staff manually calculates refund based on cancellation policy
- Staff processes refund in Stripe
- Staff sends confirmation email
- Average time: 10-15 minutes per cancellation
Multiply that by dozens of cancellations per month, and it’s hours of staff time on administrative work.
Now, the website bot handles the entire booking cancellation process
Example conversation
How the Cancellation Logic Works
We built the bot to understand and enforce your specific cancellation policies automatically:
Example Policy Rules:
- More than 14 days before check-in = Full refund
- 7-14 days before check-in = Refund minus 25% fee
- Less than 7 days before check-in = Refund minus 50% fee
- Less than 48 hours or no-show = No refund
The bot:
- Retrieves the booking details from Hostaway
- Calculates the exact number of days until check-in
- Applies the appropriate policy rule
- Calculates the refund amount
- Clearly explains the policy to the guest
- Processes the refund through Stripe if approved
- Updates the booking status in Hostaway
- Sends confirmation emails automatically through Hostaway
The Stripe integration is crucial here. It actually processes the refund. No manual intervention. No room for error. No staff time required.
Why This Matters More Than You'd Think
Cancellations might seem like a small thing, but they add up fast. For Sarah and Michael’s hotel:
Before the bot:
- 20-30 cancellations per month
- 10-15 minutes per cancellation
- 5-8 hours of staff time per month
- Occasional calculation errors leading to guest disputes
- Delayed refund processing (depending on when staff were able to initiate the refund)
After the bot:
- Same 20-30 cancellations per month
- Zero staff time required
- 100% policy consistency
- Instant refund processing (even at 2 AM)
- Zero calculation errors
Sarah told us: “I didn’t realise how much time we were spending on cancellations until we stopped spending time on them. And guests actually love it—they can cancel themselves instantly instead of waiting for us to get back to them during business hours.”
Smart Up-selling (The Revenue Game-Changer)
The bots don’t just answer questions—they identify opportunities.
Website bot conversation:
- Guest: “Is early check-in available?”
- Bot: “Yes! I can arrange early check-in for you at 11 AM for $45. Would you like me to add that to your reservation?”
- Guest: “Yes please”
- Bot: Then it sends a secure payment link, processes the payment, and updates the booking automatically through Hostaway.
Consistency is key. Before the bots, whether an upsell was mentioned depended on who was working and how busy they were. Now? Every opportunity is captured, either automatically or in drafted responses.
Same thing works for:
- Late checkout
- Room upgrades
- Parking reservations
- Airport transfers
- Any premium service you offer
Knowing When to Escalate
Complex request? Upset guest? Unusual situation? The bots recognise these scenarios and either flag them for human attention (email) or seamlessly hand off to your team (website)—with full conversation history so no one has to start over.
For example, if the bot can’t find the correct answer it can suggest a handover to a human in the guests preferred channel (phone call or email), the bot will take the details and give it to a human to followup. If a guest gets a bit frustrated and asks for a human, the bot will recognise this using trigger keywords and will initiate the handover process.
The Control Centre: Analytics That Actually Matter
Here’s something most chatbot solutions don’t give you: visibility into what’s actually happening.
We built a comprehensive reporting dashboard that Sarah and Michael check every week. It shows them exactly how the bots are performing and where their team’s time is being spent.
What the Dashboard Reveals
Chat History & Transcript Library
- Every conversation is logged and searchable
- See exactly what guests are asking and how the bots respond
- Identify patterns and common issues
- Use real conversations to train your team
Question Type Analysis
- What topics come up most frequently?
- Which questions are being handled automatically vs. escalated?
- Are there gaps in the bot’s knowledge that need filling?
- Seasonal trends in guest inquiries
- How many cancellations are being processed automatically?
Why This Matters
The dashboard isn’t just vanity metrics—it’s actionable intelligence.
The question-type analysis helped them realise they were getting tons of questions about a nearby music venue. They added a partnerships page to their website with local recommendations, which reduced inquiries and provided value to guests.
The Real Impact: Time, Revenue, and Guest Experience
Time Reclaimed
Their call centre team went from spending 80% of their day answering routine questions to spending 80% of their day on high-value activities:
- Pre-arrival outreach calls to personalise stays
- Mid-stay check-ins to catch and fix issues early
- Post-stay follow-ups that drive loyalty and reviews
- Proactive up-selling of experience packages
- Building relationships with repeat guests
Hours Saved Monthly
Let’s do the math on just a few automated tasks:
- Routine email inquiries: 30 hours saved (draft review vs. writing from scratch)
- Website chat inquiries: 50+ hours saved (fully automated)
- Cancellation processing: 10 hours saved (40-50 automated per month)
- Upsell processing: 5 hours saved (automated payment links and confirmations)
That’s nearly 100 hours per month returned to Sarah and Michael’s team. That’s 2.5 full-time staff members worth of time—without hiring anyone new.
Revenue Increased
- Consistent up-selling – Every early check-in, late checkout, and upgrade opportunity is captured automatically or drafted for staff
- Higher conversion rates – Instant booking capability on the website means fewer lost opportunities
- Faster email response times – Guests get replies in hours instead of the next business day, increasing booking likelihood
- Professional cancellation experience – Fewer disputes, better guest relationships, more rebookings
Operational Efficiency
- Email responses – What took 10 minutes per email now takes 2 minutes to review and send
- Website inquiries – Handled instantly without any staff time
- Cancellations – From 15 minutes to under 2 minutes, fully automated
- Consistency – Every guest gets the same accurate information and policy application
- Scalability – They can handle 3x the inquiry volume without hiring more staff
- Accuracy – Zero calculation errors on refunds or policy application
Guest Experience Enhanced
- Instant responses – Website visitors get answers in seconds
- Accurate information – Every answer is consistent with hotel policy
- Self-service convenience – Guests can cancel and get refunded at 2 AM if they need to
- Transparent refunds – Bot clearly explains policy and refund amount before processing
- Seamless service – From inquiry to booking to modification to cancellation, everything flows
- Personal touches – Staff has time to focus on memorable experiences
- Multi-channel convenience – Guests can choose their preferred communication method
Why This Works for Boutique Hotels
Large hotel chains have entire teams and sophisticated systems. They can afford 24/7 call centres and complex tech infrastructure.
This solution is built specifically for boutique hotels that:
- Are owner-operated or have small teams
- Want to maintain a personal, high-touch brand
- Need to maximise efficiency without sacrificing quality
- Want their staff focused on guest experience, not repetitive tasks
- Value control over automated communications
- Need consistent policy enforcement (especially for refunds and cancellations)
- Use or are considering Hostaway as their PMS
- Process payments through Stripe (or similar)
- Recognise that email is still a major guest communication channel
Getting Started: Easier Than You Think
Because we use your existing website content and FAQ documents, implementation is straightforward:
- Content Audit – We review your website and internal documents
- Policy Mapping – We document your cancellation policies, refund rules, and business logic
- Training – We train both AI agents on your specific hotel information
- Hostaway Integration – We connect to your PMS for real-time data
- Stripe Integration – We set up secure payment and refund processing
- Customization – We fine-tune the personality and responses to match your brand
- Email Workflow Setup – We integrate the drafting bot into your existing email system
- Dashboard Configuration – We set up your reporting and analytics
- Testing – We make sure everything works perfectly (we test cancellation scenarios extensively)
- Training Your Team – We show your staff how to work with both bots
- Launch – Your AI agents go live, and your team gets freed up
Most hotels are up and running within weeks, not months.
The Bottom Line
Sarah and Michael didn’t build a successful boutique hotel by doing things the way big chains do them. They built it by being scrappy, resourceful, and obsessed with guest experience.
- These AI agents aren’t about replacing that personal touch—they’re about scaling it. They’re about making sure the routine stuff happens flawlessly so your team can focus on the things that make your hotel special.
- The email drafting bot gives your team superpowers without taking away control.
- The website chat bot captures opportunities 24/7 that you’d otherwise miss—and handles complex processes like cancellations with refunds automatically.
- The analytics dashboard gives you insights to continuously improve.
And your team? They get to do the work they actually care about—building relationships and creating unforgettable guest experiences.
If you’re currently buried in repetitive inquiries, if your team spends hours processing cancellations and refunds, if you don’t have time to be proactive, if you’re missing revenue opportunities because you can’t respond instantly to every guest, or if you’re still writing every email response from scratch… This could change everything.
Ready to Free Up Your Team?
We’d love to show you exactly how this would work for your hotel. Every property is unique, and we customize the AI agents to match your specific needs, brand voice, cancellation policies, and goals.
Let’s talk about getting your team out of the reactive cycle and into the proactive, relationship-building role they should be in.
We’ll walk you through:
- How both bots would handle your most common inquiries
- The Hostaway and Stripe integrations
- How cancellation and refund automation would work with your specific policies
- The reporting dashboard and what insights you’d gain
- Implementation timeline and training process
- ROI projections specific to your property