AI consulting · Hospitality
AI consulting for hotels, restaurants and leisure venues
Native helps hotels, restaurants and leisure venues put AI agents on the phone line, the booking inbox and the guest questions that pull staff away from the floor. At Topgolf Oberhausen, a voice agent took the venue from answering about 40% of inbound calls to answering all of them. A first agent is usually live within weeks.
Featuring insights fromShaun Devan · Founder & CEOUpdated · 4 min read
Where AI has an impact in hospitality
Voice reception
Every call answered in natural speech, at any hour and at any volume, with no hold queue.
Reservations and changes
Availability checked and booking requests captured or changed, with the record kept for staff.
Guest questions
Hours, prices, parking, accessibility and policies answered from the venue's own information.
Group and event inquiries
Party size, date, budget and needs taken on the first call and sent to the events team.
Multilingual guest service
Guests helped in their own language, which matters for venues and hotels with international visitors.
Review responses
Replies to online reviews drafted in the venue's voice for a manager to approve.
Pre-arrival messages
Confirmations, directions and upsell offers sent ahead of each visit or stay.
Knowledge upkeep
Menus, prices and event listings refreshed from the website every night, so answers never go stale.
Why the phone is where hospitality loses guests
Guests call at the busiest moments: a Friday evening, a holiday weekend, the hour before a big event. Those are exactly the moments when nobody on the team has a free hand, so the phone rings out and the caller books somewhere else. Every unanswered call is a booking or an event inquiry that never reaches you.
Most of those calls ask the same things: opening hours, availability, prices, parking, group packages, a change to a reservation. The answers already exist on your website and in your policies. An agent that knows them can pick up every call at once and send the rest to a person with the details already taken.
What the agent handles, and what stays with your team
| Guest request | Agent | Your team |
|---|---|---|
| Hours, prices, directions and policies | Answers from the venue's own information | Keeps the source content current |
| Availability and booking questions | Tells booking intent apart from a general question and handles it | Sees every call on record |
| Group events and private hire | Takes the details and passes them on | Quotes and confirms |
| Complaints and anything unusual | Transfers with the context attached | Resolves it |
Answers that stay true to your venue
A guest-facing agent is only as good as what it knows. At Topgolf Oberhausen, the venue's facts, policies, pricing, hours and events sit in a knowledge store that the agent reads on every call. Each night the venue's website and documents are pulled in again, and new content is written before old rows are removed, so the agent never answers from an empty store.
The same design fits a hotel front desk, a restaurant group's reservation line or a fitness club. The crawl target, the knowledge base and the booking integration change. The pattern of grounded answers, a nightly refresh and a clean handoff to a person does not.
What an AI engagement in hospitality looks like
We start by listening. In the first two weeks we sort a sample of your real calls and messages by what guests asked, when they called and what happened next, and that tells us which requests an agent can settle and which need your team.
The voice agent goes live first, often within a few weeks, with every call logged so your managers can hear what guests are asking for. Reservations email, chat and review responses tend to follow. The agents run in your accounts, and your team is trained to update what they know.
How to measure the impact
- Share of inbound calls answered, at peak and off peak
- Share of calls resolved with no staff involved
- Calls handled per day and average call length
- Staff time returned to guests on the floor
- Event and group inquiries captured from calls that used to ring out
Case study · Topgolf Oberhausen
Topgolf Oberhausen answered every inbound call, up from about 40%.
Native helped the venue put an AI voice receptionist on its phone line. It picked up every call, handled 5,000+ a month, and needed no extra staff.
Frequently asked questions
Can AI answer the phone for a restaurant or hotel?
Yes. A voice agent can answer every call, handle the common questions and booking requests, and transfer anything complex to a person with the context attached. At Topgolf Oberhausen about 75% of calls were fully resolved with no human involved.
How does AI improve guest experience?
Mostly by making sure guests reach someone. Calls that used to ring out get answered at once, and staff who were tied to the phone can stay with the guests in front of them.
Will an AI receptionist give guests wrong information?
It answers from your venue's own content, refreshed every night, rather than from general knowledge. Anything it cannot answer goes to a member of staff, and every call is logged so managers can check what was said.
Does an AI voice agent replace front-of-house staff?
No. At Topgolf Oberhausen no additional staff were hired, and the team could stay with guests in the venue instead of juggling the phones.
How long does it take to put an AI receptionist live?
Usually a few weeks from kickoff, including the knowledge base, the handoff to staff and a period of reviewing real calls before it takes the whole line.
