Product
AI concierge for hotels: a digital concierge guests will use
A digital concierge, often sold as an AI concierge, is what a hotel guest uses during the stay to ask for towels, order breakfast to the room or book a transfer without phoning the desk. For most independent hotels, the version that works is a QR code in the room that opens a web page in the guest’s language and sends each request to staff with the time it came in. That is how iButler, our own product, works.
It is twenty to eleven and the guest in room 12 wants another pillow. At an independent hotel the desk may not be staffed at that hour, and a host with three apartments has no desk at all. The guest phones, nobody picks up, and the request either waits until morning or ends up on a note the next shift never reads.
What a digital concierge does during the stay
A hotel guest app, a digital concierge and an AI concierge are sold as different products. During the stay they all have the same job: take what the guest wants, get it to the right person and keep a record. Nearly everything a guest asks for falls into four groups.
Under all four sits the job an owner cares about most, which is keeping requests alive between shifts. A request made at 23:00 has to still exist at 07:00, with the time it arrived and whether anyone dealt with it.
The AI belongs somewhere else. During the stay most of what a guest wants is a request, and picking towels from a list is quicker than explaining towels to a chat window. AI earns its place in the conversations around the stay, before the booking and in the booking-site inbox, both covered below.
Why guests do not download hotel apps
The obvious way to build a hotel guest app is as an app, and most guests never install one. In a J.D. Power hotel guest satisfaction study reported by Marketing Dive in 2017, only 19% of all guests had downloaded a hotel app, against 70% of rewards members. Among guests who did have the hotel’s app on their phone, 38% never used it during their stay.
Those figures come from chains with loyalty programmes, where an app has a reason to stay on the phone between trips. An independent hotel or a set of apartments has no programme to hang an app on, and a guest staying three nights will not search a store, create an account and grant permissions to order a coffee. We made the full case in the hotel app nobody was ever going to download.
Why a QR code that opens a web page works
The phone already has the scanner. On an iPhone, the built-in Camera app reads a QR code and shows a link to tap. On Android, Google Lens in Chrome does the same: the guest positions the code in the box and taps the link that pops up. They land on a web page in the browser they already use, with nothing to install and no account to create.
A web page is also one build for every phone. Google’s web.dev describes progressive web apps as web apps that reach any user on any device with a single codebase, so nobody maintains a separate iPhone version and Android version. When the hotel changes a price or adds a service, it changes it in one place, and the next guest who scans sees the new version.
How iButler works
iButler is the digital concierge for hotels that we built, and it is live at ibutler.app. It works in four steps.
- 1The guest scans the code in the roomIt opens the hotel’s branded ordering portal. There is no app to install and no account to create.
- 2They order in their own languageFrom a menu the hotel wrote once.
- 3Staff get it as it happensEvery request is logged, timestamped and pushed to staff, who work it through to done. It reaches the owner’s dashboard and phone at the same moment.
- 4The owner sees the dayRevenue and peak hours, live. Peak hours tell an owner when someone needs to be on shift.
Setup is the part owners expect to be hard. A hotel goes from nothing to a branded, multi-language portal in under ten minutes, with no app store submission and no integration project. How the product was designed and built is in the iButler case study.
A digital concierge, a hotel chatbot and Hotel AI do different jobs
“AI concierge” gets used for all three, and they cover different moments. Choosing the wrong one means paying for a conversation where a menu would do, or the other way round.
- Before the booking, a chatbot. Someone asks about dates, parking or pets on WhatsApp or the website, and the chatbot answers from what the property gave it, in the guest’s language. How that works for properties is in chatbots for hotels and apartments.
- In the booking-site inbox, Hotel AI. Messages from Booking.com, Airbnb, Expedia and direct email land in the property’s own reservations mailbox. Hotel AI answers them in the right thread and never quotes a price or a vacancy. It collects the dates and hands off to staff.
- During the stay, iButler. The guest already has the room. They need a menu and a way to reach staff, and a chat adds nothing to that.
Printed card, hotel app, QR web concierge or WhatsApp
The QR web concierge column describes the category, not only iButler.
| Printed card | Hotel app | QR web concierge | Chat on WhatsApp | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What the guest installs | Nothing | A store download, often with an account | ✓ Nothing: the phone camera opens a web page | Nothing, if the guest already uses WhatsApp |
| Languages | As many as fit on the card | The ones it was built with | ✓ Several, from one menu the hotel writes once | Whatever the person replying can write |
| What staff see | Nothing until the guest phones | Depends on what it connects to | ✓ Each request logged with a time and sent to staff | A message in a thread, with nothing tracking whether it was done |
| Updates | Reprint every card | Content can change at once, the app itself only through store releases | ✓ Change it once, live from the next scan | Nothing to update, and no menu to show |
| Right when | A few rooms and few requests | A chain whose loyalty members keep the app | Guests stay a few nights and ask for things | The guest needs a person, not an order |
WhatsApp is the right channel for anything that needs a person, such as a complaint or a change to the booking. It is a poor place to take orders, because nothing in a chat thread tracks whether the towels arrived.
What to check before choosing one
- It opens without an install or an account. If the first screen asks for a download or a sign-up, you have lost the guests who were never going to install an app.
- It speaks your guests’ languages. Look at where last season’s guests came from and check that those languages are covered, beyond English.
- You can change the menu yourself. A new price or a new service should not need a call to the supplier.
- Every request reaches a person, with a time on it. Ask where an order lands, who gets notified, and whether a request made at 23:00 is still there at 07:00.
- It is sized for your property. Much guest software is priced and scoped for five-star chains. A twelve-room hotel should not need an integration project to start.
What we build around it
iButler covers the stay. When a property also wants the conversation side, a chatbot that answers enquiries before the booking or Hotel AI on the booking-site inbox, we build it as one of our AI systems. AI systems start from 2,000 euros. Scope, price and payment terms are agreed in writing before work starts, and you own what is delivered.
Questions hotels ask
Do guests have to download an app?
No. With iButler they scan the QR code in the room and the hotel’s portal opens in the browser. There is no app to install and no account to create.
Is iButler an AI chatbot?
No. It is an ordering portal built on a menu, and each request goes to staff. The conversations before the booking and in the booking-site inbox are handled by a chatbot and by Hotel AI.
Which languages can guests order in?
Their own. The portal is multi-language, and guests order from a menu the hotel wrote once.
Does it replace reception?
No. It makes sure a request reaches someone: logged, timestamped and pushed to staff as it happens, then worked through to done.
Do we need to connect it to our booking system first?
No. A hotel goes from nothing to a branded, multi-language portal in under ten minutes, with no integration project.
