Easy Yet Untapped Revenue Channel for Hotels Worldwide

sasha uritsky

Jan 10, 2016

There are many travelers looking for hotels and places to stay on social web. Every day.

Take Twitter, for example:

Or this:

People are genuinely looking for help. Surprisingly though only few are getting it. According to nmodes data less than 12% of Twitter travel requests are being answered. The rest - lost opportunities for hotels and businesses in the hospitality industry.

And how big is this opportunity anyway?

nmodes Twitter data shows that every 15 min somebody expresses intent of going to, or visiting New York. Most of these travelers need a place to stay there.

Every 33 min - intent of traveling to London.

Every 54 min - intent of traveling to Paris.

We started Twitter recommendation service @nmodesHelps and were encouranged by the results. 72% of those that received our travel recommendations reacted by thanking us and expressing their gratitude. This reinforced our assumption that people seek travel advice on Twitter, accept it as an instant value, and are prepared to act upon it.

The hotels that are ready to move fast to monetize this opportunity will benefit the most.

Interested in reading more? Check out our other blogs:

CHATBOT PLATFORMS. How to choose the right one?

Chatbot platforms are essential tools if you need to build and run a chatbot.
There are many available on the market, big and small, popular and not so much.

Here are some useful thoughts that should help you navigate the complex world of chatbots and conversational AI solutions.

All chatbot platforms can be split into two categories: those that let you create chatbots without any programming, and those that require programming. Now, the idea that you don’t need to possess technical knowledge to build a chatbot seems appealing but the reality is not so rosy. In fact, I have yet to see a professional chatbot created without coding.
Chatbots rely on sophisticated algorithms and advanced knowledge of linguistics. These technologies are so complex that at the moment there are no plug-and-play solutions available. The companies like Chatfuel, Manychat, Flow XO and many others are attempting to fill that void and offer chatbot platforms that are simple in use. The best way to make the chatbot creation simpler is by dropping the need to code them. However this simplicity comes at a price: chatbots made without coding are limited, rigid and in general, primitive.
So to summarize: if you want to impress your girlfriend use Chatfuel. If you need a professional chatbot that delivers on your business goals and provides customer satisfaction use advanced chatbot platforms with programming capabilities.

One of the main, if not the main, tasks of the chatbot platforms is to connect your chatbot to the user interfaces. There are many ways for your chatbot to interface with the world: on Facebook messenger, on the website, on the mobile app, via SMS, on Twitter , on Skype, on Slack, on Telegram, and more. A good chatbot platform should seamlessly connect the chatbot to most of these channels. Chatbot platforms do not make your chatbot smarter. For this you need AI Engines (brief disucssion on AI Engines: http://nmodes.com/entry/2018/03/29/what-are-ai-engines-and-how-choose-one/).

For best results create your chatbot on a chatbot platform, then connect it to AI engine.

One of the top chatbot platforms on the market is Microsoft Bot Framework. It is robust, powerful, with a wide variety of useful functionality built-in. Another good chatbot platform is DialogFlow. DialogFlow has a slightly different architecture in the sense that it is a chatbot platform and an AI Engine all in one interface.

Chatbot platforms can be used to create conversation flow for your chatbot. There are several schools of thought here: some prefer to delegate conversation flow to AI engines. Chatfuel and other tools with the emphasis on simplicity (build your chatbot in minutes, no coding necessary) offer easy graphical interfaces for conversation flow creation. And there is always a reliable option to create conversation flow in an old-fashioned way, programmatically.

Which option to choose? Depends on your chatbot requirements and the business needs the chatbot is expected to address.And if you have questions feel free to ask: http://http://nmodes.com/contact-us/

How nmodes Intent API Improves Social Intelligence

Social media generates a vast amount of data. There are 500 million daily messages on Twitter alone. Still more data on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and other social networks. Some of this data is useful to businesses, in fact, it is extremely useful.

A business can use social data to generate actionable insights about customers, competitors and their company strategy. Social information empowers departments and teams, and when used correctly, creates a strong sustainable bond between businesses and their customers.

nmodes Intent API helps businesses to execute their social strategy efficiently. Here are the major elements of social strategy Intent API contributes to:

1. Listening. Intent API finds customer intent with any level of granularity. You might want to know who is looking to buy shoes in general, or looking to buy flip-flops in particular, or interested in buying only Nike footware, or interested in buying sneakers in New York region.

2. Sales and marketing. Intent API understands what stage in the purchase process your customer is in. Intent API tells if a customer is ready to buy, or is in the awareness stage, or considering the purchase but not ready yet, and so on.

3. Social intelligence. Intent API delivers meaningful intents and behavioral information on a large scale and for all verticals. Any insights and topics, as long as somebody is conversing on this topic, are available.

4. Teams and projects. Intent API channels information to the relevant departments within the company. Sales prospects should go to sales department, complaints to customer service, brand conversations to the marketers, and technical issues to tech support.