Overview
Nine properties, most of their occupancy coming from aggregators, and 18-22% of every room night going out as commission. Their own website could not show live availability, so a guest who wanted to book direct usually gave up and went back to the OTA. Guest requests, meanwhile, arrived on five channels and belonged to nobody in particular.
The challenge
- Direct bookings under 15% of room nights.
- Rates and availability updated by hand, per channel, usually late.
- Requests coming in on phone, email, Instagram, WhatsApp and the front desk with no owner.
- No pre-arrival offer of transfers, dining or experiences.
How we approached it
Make the direct site the accurate one
A channel-manager integration keeps inventory and rates in sync, so the direct site is never stale and never undercut by an aggregator.
A concierge that can actually do things
It answers in English, Hindi and the Konkani-inflected phrasing guests actually use, and it creates real bookings and service requests rather than reciting an FAQ. Anything sensitive — a complaint, a refund — goes to the property manager with the full conversation attached.
Ask at the right moment
Transfers, dining and experiences are offered two days before arrival and on the first evening, which is where the conversions sit. We tested three other timings; these two won.
A human is always one message away
The agent says up front that a person can take over, and does so instantly when asked. Guests trusted it more, not less, for saying it.
What we built
Technology stack
Frontend
- Next.js
- React
- Tailwind CSS
Backend
- Node.js
- PostgreSQL
- Payment gateway
AI
- LLM concierge
- WhatsApp Business API
The results
direct bookings
annual OTA commission saved
guest queries resolved by the agent
average upsell per stay
"A guest got an answer at 1 a.m. about an early check-in and booked a transfer in the same conversation. We own that relationship now instead of renting it from an aggregator every season."
