Routing inbound calls for hotels and travel companies

The short answer

Calls to a hotel or travel company fall into five main types: a new booking or availability question, a group or corporate enquiry, changing or cancelling an existing booking, a request from a guest already staying, and general information (address, transfers, policies). Each type needs its own route. An AI voice agent can answer general information, collect the details of a booking enquiry and route the call to the right department.

Prices, availability confirmation, payment and cancellation terms, however, need either real-time data from the booking system or confirmation by a person. The agent should not state them as promises. This article shows the routing table and the cases that need human confirmation.

Five call types and their routes

1. 1New booking / availabilityThe agent collects dates, guest numbers, room type and budget; availability and price are confirmed by reservations or the system.
2. 2Group and corporateThe agent collects event dates, guest numbers and services, and hands over to the sales manager.
3. 3Changes and cancellationsThe agent records the booking number and request; terms and penalties are explained by a person.
4. 4In-house guest requestRoom number and request — straight to reception or the relevant service.
5. 5General informationAddress, check-in and check-out times, transfers, parking, pet policy — the agent answers fully.

Quickly working out who is calling

The key to routing is the first question: "Are you calling about a new booking, or do you have an existing one?" That splits calls into two large groups. A guest already staying often gives their room number or calls from an internal line — such calls should not reach the agent at all but go straight to reception.

What to collect in a booking enquiry

• Check-in and check-out dates — and whether the dates are flexible
• Number of adults and children, and children's ages
• Room type or special request: view, bed type, accessibility
• Approximate budget — if any
• Name, number, preferred contact channel
• Where the enquiry came from: website, advertising, recommendation

Cases that need human confirmation

• Prices and discounts — especially during peak season and campaigns
• Cancellation and refund terms
• Group bookings and corporate contracts
• Special needs: disability, medical requirements, special services for children
• Complaints and compensation
• Payment details — card data should not be given to the agent on the phone

In these cases the agent's role is to collect the information and hand it over. A wrongly quoted price or cancellation term later turns into a dispute with the guest and a negative review.

The difference for tour operators

On a call to a travel agency the customer often has not chosen a destination yet: "We'd like to go to the seaside in summer." Here the agent's job is to turn the enquiry into a brief: destination or interest, dates, number of people, budget, visa situation. The specific tour, price and visa requirements are presented by a manager — visa rules change and must be checked against official sources.

Seasons and peak hours

In travel, call volume is tied to seasons and campaigns: the day an early-booking discount is announced, the line is overloaded. At that moment the calls most often lost are new booking enquiries — the most valuable calls. If the agent answers without a queue at peak and records the enquiry, a manager can work it when the queue falls. The most important field in the record is the dates: an enquiry without dates cannot be processed.

Multilingual guests

Hotel and travel lines receive calls in many languages. Language is chosen either per number (for example, a separate line for a foreign market) or at the start of the call. Which languages are supported must be decided in advance, and each language tested separately. If a guest speaks a language the agent does not support, the call goes to a staff member who speaks it or to the general reservations line.

Illustrative example: a city hotel

Not a real customer case. An 80-room city hotel has one number, and every call lands at reception, which is simultaneously checking guests in, answering the phone and handling in-house guests' requests. Under the new rule the agent takes the call and sorts it with the first question: in-house guests to reception, group enquiries to the sales manager, new booking enquiries with a note to reservations, and general questions stay with the agent.

The booking enquiry note contains dates, guest numbers, room type and contact details; a manager works through the list in the morning. Enquiries arriving at night are no longer lost — they are on the list the next day.

What to measure

• The split by call type and the share of each type routed correctly
• The share of booking enquiries that become bookings
• Time from enquiry to the manager's call
• The number of calls reaching reception other than from in-house guests
• Handoffs by language

Common mistakes

• The agent saying "a room is available" without checking the system
• Putting an in-house guest's call into the booking flow
• Explaining cancellation terms with a vague sentence
• Not recording dates in a booking enquiry
• Asking for card details on the phone

Limits

A real-time answer on availability and price requires integration with the booking system; without it the agent takes enquiries but does not confirm them. Taking payment details by phone is subject to payment security standards and local rules. Visa and travel rules change and must be checked against official sources.

A hotel line with Vexvon

In Vexvon AI Call Center routing rules work on business hours, the dialled number and the caller's number — for example, corporate customers' numbers straight to the sales department, night calls to a night scenario. The agent extracts the enquiry fields — dates, guest numbers, room type — from the call and writes them to the customer card, answers general questions from the knowledge base, and passes a difficult call to a live member of staff. The conversation language is set in the scenario; a connection to the booking system can be set up through your own API as a tool.

Outbound follow-up is covered in hotel booking follow-up calls, and what to tell a guest waiting in the queue in call queue experience.

First step

Sort a week of calls into the five types and write down where each type goes today. Start where the type and the route do not match. More articles are in the inbound calls by industry section; to discuss routing for your hotel line, get in touch.