AI in hospitality is mostly about conversations. Guests ask the same questions before they book, before they arrive, and during their stay, and they ask at all hours and in many languages. A hotel chatbot or restaurant chatbot answers those questions instantly, takes or changes the reservation behind them, suggests an upgrade at the right moment, and passes anything unusual to your staff.
Guests are open to it. In research from Oracle Hospitality and Skift, published in 2022 and based on a survey of more than 5,000 consumers, 77% of travelers said they were interested in using automated messaging or chatbots for customer service requests at hotels.
This guide covers where AI actually pays off for hotels and restaurants, and compares the best hotel chatbots and guest messaging tools, including Bund AI, with honest notes on who each one is for.
Quick picks
- Canary Technologies: best for hotel groups and brands that want AI messaging, web chat, and voice inside a full guest management platform.
- HiJiffy: best for hotels that want multi-channel AI guest messaging with published pricing.
- Asksuite: best for hotels focused on driving direct bookings through chat and WhatsApp.
- Quinta (formerly Quicktext), Velma: best for hotels that want a booking-focused chatbot plus hotel data distribution.
- Akia: best for hotels and vacation rentals that want AI messaging tied closely to their PMS.
- SevenRooms: best for restaurant groups that want AI phone answering for reservations inside a restaurant CRM.
- Bund AI: best for independent hotels, B&Bs, restaurants, and tour operators that want a low-cost AI agent for web chat and email that answers questions, handles reservations, and captures group inquiries.
Where AI helps most in hospitality
Pre-booking questions
Is breakfast included, is there parking, can I bring my dog, how far is it from the airport. These questions decide whether someone books with you or with the property that answered first. An AI chatbot that answers from your real policies turns a late-night browsing session into a booking instead of a missed opportunity.
Direct bookings and reservations
The best hotel chatbots do more than answer. They check availability, quote rates, and hand the guest to your booking engine, or create the reservation directly. For restaurants, this means taking a table booking, changing the party size, or cancelling within your policy without a phone call.
Pre-arrival guest messaging
Arrival time, early check-in, airport transfers, directions, and what to expect on arrival. Hotel guest messaging before the stay cuts front desk calls and sets up a smoother check-in.
Upsells
Room upgrades, late checkout, spa appointments, dinner reservations, and packages. AI can suggest the right add-on when the guest is already asking a related question, rather than sending a generic offer email.
In-stay requests
Extra towels, a broken light, a restaurant recommendation. AI can answer the simple ones and create a request for housekeeping or maintenance for the rest.
Group and event inquiries
Weddings, corporate blocks, and large dinners need a custom quote. A chatbot can collect the dates, headcount, and budget, then hand a complete inquiry to your sales team instead of a blank email.
Reviews and post-stay follow-up
After checkout, AI can ask for feedback and help your team respond to reviews. If you want a quick way to draft thoughtful replies, try our free review response generator.
How we chose
We looked at hotel chatbots and guest messaging tools with a real AI conversational product and checked each one against its own website: what it does, which channels it covers, who it is for, and whether pricing is public. Pricing is as of September 2026. Automation rates quoted by vendors are their own marketing claims and are labeled as such. We also included one restaurant-focused option and Bund AI, our own product, with its limitations stated plainly.
The best hotel and restaurant chatbots
Canary Technologies
- Best for: hotel groups, brands, and independent hotels that want one guest management platform.
- Key features: AI Guest Messaging across SMS, WhatsApp, OTA messages, email, and other channels in one inbox, AI Webchat for the hotel website, and AI Voice for phone calls. It supports 100+ languages, turns messages into service tickets, and suggests upsells. Canary says its AI Webchat answers around 90% of guest questions automatically (vendor claim).
- Pricing: quote-based. Canary sells bundles, with AI Webchat included in its top bundle.
- Limitations: built for lodging, not restaurants, and you need the higher bundle for website chat.
HiJiffy
- Best for: hotels that want multi-channel AI guest communications with transparent starting prices.
- Key features: an AI engine that answers FAQs and helps with bookings across web chat, WhatsApp, email, SMS, social media, and OTA messaging, plus an in-stay digital concierge, campaigns, and handoff to staff with suggested replies. HiJiffy says it handles up to 90% of conversations automatically (vendor claim).
- Pricing: HiJiffy lists monthly plans starting at $109 (Basic, website only), $179 (Pro, all channels), and $359 (Premium, adds the digital concierge and campaigns), plus setup fees. Prices rise with room count, and Enterprise is custom.
- Limitations: the entry plan covers only your website, and setup fees apply per group of properties.
Asksuite
- Best for: hotels whose main goal is more direct bookings.
- Key features: an AI reservation assistant that gives real-time quotes and qualifies leads across web chat, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and email, plus an agent copilot for staff and automated flows for confirmations, check-in, and abandoned booking recovery. Asksuite cites 400+ booking engine connections and 50+ languages.
- Pricing: not published. Custom quote.
- Limitations: quote-based and hotel-only.
Quinta (formerly Quicktext), Velma
- Best for: hotels and groups that want a booking-focused chatbot plus structured hotel data.
- Key features: Velma, an AI chatbot for questions before, during, and after a stay, built on thousands of structured data points per hotel, with lead capture, booking support, and escalation to staff. It works across live chat, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, and WeChat in 38 languages, and Quinta cites 100+ booking engine and 50+ PMS integrations. Quicktext rebranded as Quinta, so you may see both names.
- Pricing: Quinta lists its data services from $599 per month per hotel. Chatbot pricing is not broken out, so see vendor site.
- Limitations: hotel-only, and the recent rebrand means product names and packaging may still be shifting.
Akia
- Best for: hotels and vacation rental operators that want AI messaging that knows each guest's reservation.
- Key features: a guest messaging agent over SMS, web chat, and email that uses reservation data, AI voice that can take payments, mobile check-in and guidebooks without an app download, upsells, and service recovery. Akia lists integrations with 50+ PMS platforms, including Oracle Opera, Mews, Cloudbeds, and Apaleo.
- Pricing: not published. Akia shows Basic, Pro, and Max plans with pricing through sales, and AI Voice is on Max.
- Limitations: quote-based, and much of its value depends on a PMS connection.
SevenRooms (restaurants)
- Best for: restaurant groups already using or considering SevenRooms for reservations and CRM.
- Key features: Voice AI that answers calls 24/7, books, changes, and cancels reservations, answers FAQs like hours and parking, and recognizes returning guests, all inside the SevenRooms platform.
- Pricing: quote-based. Voice AI is a paid add-on.
- Limitations: this is a phone product, not a web chat bot, and it works only inside SevenRooms. If you want a restaurant chatbot on your website, you will need another tool.
Bund AI
- Best for: independent hotels, B&Bs, restaurants, tour operators, and small hospitality groups that want an AI agent on their website and email at a low monthly cost.
- Key features: answers questions from your own content (policies, amenities, menus, parking, pets), and its hospitality tool pack can make, change, and cancel reservations within your change and cancellation windows and confirm booking details. It captures group and event inquiries as leads with the details already gathered, and hands special requests to your staff with the full conversation. The same agent works in a website chat widget and a real email inbox with shared memory, replies in 40+ languages, and runs 24/7. Reservation actions connect to your systems through custom HTTP actions, and appointment-style bookings can run through Google Calendar, Cal.com, or Calendly.
- Pricing: Basic is $0.99 per month (50 AI replies), Starter $49, Growth $99, and Scale $199 per month, with Enterprise on request. See the pricing page.
- Limitations: Bund AI does not cover phone calls, SMS, WhatsApp, or OTA messaging, and it does not advertise native PMS or booking engine integrations the way hotel-specific platforms do. If you run a large hotel that needs deep PMS-driven messaging across every guest channel, a hotel-specific platform will fit better.
You can see the full hospitality setup on our AI customer service for hospitality page, and how it takes real actions on the self-service actions page.
Hotel chatbot vs. restaurant chatbot: what's different?
Hotels deal with longer customer journeys. A hotel chatbot needs to handle pre-booking questions, rates and availability, pre-arrival logistics, in-stay requests, and post-stay follow-up, often across WhatsApp, SMS, and OTA messaging as well as the website. That is why hotel-specific platforms invest so heavily in PMS integrations.
Restaurants have shorter, more repetitive conversations: opening hours, menus, dietary options, parking, table bookings, and private dining. Much of that volume still arrives by phone, which is why tools like SevenRooms focus on voice. For restaurants that get meaningful traffic through their website, a general AI agent that answers from the menu and policies, takes reservations, and captures private dining inquiries can cover the rest at a much lower cost.
How to choose AI for your hotel or restaurant
Start with your channels. List where guest questions actually arrive: website, email, phone, WhatsApp, SMS, or OTA inboxes. Pick a tool that covers the channels carrying the most volume.
Check your systems. If you want the AI to see reservations, it needs to connect to your PMS, booking engine, or reservation system. Ask which integrations are native and which need custom work.
Decide what the AI may do on its own. Answering questions is low risk. Changing or cancelling reservations should respect your policies, and anything involving refunds or exceptions should go to a person. For more on this balance, see our guide on when AI should hand off to a human.
Price the real plan. Many hotel platforms price by property or room count, add setup fees, or put web chat and voice in higher tiers. Compare the plan you would actually need.
Test on real questions. Give each shortlisted tool your actual FAQs and a handful of tricky guest messages from last month. Watch how it answers and how it hands off. Always-on coverage matters most when your team is off shift, which is why 24/7 customer support is one of the clearest wins for hospitality.
Frequently asked questions
How is AI used in hospitality?
The most common uses are answering guest questions before booking, helping with direct bookings and reservations, pre-arrival and in-stay guest messaging, suggesting upsells, handling service requests, and following up after the stay. Many hotels also use AI voice for phone calls and AI assistants to help staff reply faster.
What is the best hotel chatbot?
It depends on your size and channels. Canary Technologies suits hotel groups that want a full guest management platform. HiJiffy offers multi-channel AI messaging with published starting prices. Asksuite focuses on direct bookings. Akia suits PMS-connected messaging. Bund AI suits independent properties that want a low-cost web chat and email agent.
Can a restaurant chatbot take reservations?
Yes, if it is connected to your reservation system. SevenRooms offers AI phone answering that books, changes, and cancels reservations inside its platform. A web chat agent like Bund AI can take and change reservations through the systems you connect and capture private dining inquiries.
Will AI replace hotel front desk staff?
No. AI handles the repetitive questions and simple requests so staff can focus on guests in front of them and on situations that need judgment. The best setups hand complex or sensitive requests to a person with the full conversation attached.
What does hotel guest messaging software cost?
Pricing varies widely. HiJiffy lists plans starting at $109 per month plus setup fees, while Canary, Asksuite, and Akia are quote-based. Bund AI starts at $0.99 per month, with paid plans from $49 per month.