Hotelplan Suisse is using artificial intelligence to make the valuable expertise of its employees and various internal and external travel information sources available throughout the company. The chatbot, which is based on generative AI, can answer customer inquiries even more quickly and efficiently and put together tailor-made travel plans.

Is Marathonas beach in Greece suitable for swimming? What is the maximum amount of cash you can bring to Egypt? Hotelplan Suisse has developed an innovative solution to answer such specific questions about various travel destinations more quickly and thus provide more efficient advice: a knowledge management system based on generative AI (artificial intelligence). The chatbot makes it possible to make better use of the wealth of knowledge of the roughly 550 employees.

More time for individual travel advice
With the new technology, Hotelplan Suisse travel agents can access all internal knowledge as well as external, structured and unstructured data. The information is obtained from more than ten internal and external sources, including the company’s own websites, global entry restrictions, weather data and other data sources and is constantly updated. In addition, knowledge management is also continuously enriched with employees’ travel experiences. This enables employees in the 82 branches throughout Switzerland and in Tour Operating to share their knowledge with each other efficiently and quickly and thus share relevant information with customers even faster. Employees can enter questions directly into the chatbot and therefore provide customers with precise and detailed travel expertise in real time. This means that travel experts have more time for complicated inquiries that require their valuable expertise.

Security precautions for high-quality information
Hotelplan Suisse worked with Google Cloud and Datatonic, one of the leading consultancies for cloud data and AI, to develop the AI-powered chatbot. To ensure the high quality of the information, usage guidelines have been introduced and various security precautions have been taken. This includes, for example, protective measures against undesirable behaviour such as incorrect answers, harmful content or the mixing of languages. The chatbot is currently being tested by the sales team before it is gradually rolled out across the entire company. To ensure uncomplicated integration and use of the chatbot, it will be made available as a browser extension in future. This way, the chatbot will be visible to every team member at all times and ready for use to process customer inquiries.

More efficient advice process
Nicole Pfammatter, CEO of Hotelplan Suisse, explains that the advice process can be made more efficient through knowledge management: “Previously, our travel agents had to rely on the expertise of other team members for inquiries about destinations that were outside their area of expertise or even ask the partner companies of the respective destination directly. This could sometimes lead to delays in the advice process. With our new knowledge management system, most questions can now be answered internally in an efficient and quick manner. This also allows us to counteract any bottlenecks in the booking process.”