How Hotel Gran Bilbao and Hotel Ciudad de Burgos boosted their online check-ins by 200% and automatized 90% of online guest queries.

GUEST EXPERIENCE

This case study explores how Hotel Gran Bilbao and Hotel Ciudad de Burgos successfully integrated HiJiffy’s Guest Communications Hub throughout their customer's entire journey. From pre-booking to arrival and all the way to departure, these hotels achieved fantastic results. Their strategy effectively combined a focus on exceptional guest experience with openness and confidence in embracing automation powered by conversational AI.

Why it matters: Discover how Hotel Gran Bilbao and Hotel Ciudad de Burgos implemented HiJiffy's conversational AI at their properties, resulting in successful automated WhatsApp initiatives that elevated the rate of online check-ins and enhanced the effectiveness of check-out campaigns and automated responses to guest inquiries.

HiJiffy’s Guest Communications Hub, is a specialized conversational AI tailored for the hotel industry that centralizes and streamlines incoming inquiries from various channels into a single, unified inbox. This innovative system enables hoteliers to automate their communication workflows and processes, thereby enhancing revenue generation and elevating the overall guest experience. A Spanish hospitality group which includes Hotel Gran Bilbao and Hotel Ciudad de Burgos, has skilfully integrated this solution throughout the complete guest journey, covering every phase from pre-booking to arrival, the duration of the stay, and even through to departure. The adoption of this technology is showcased in two distinct properties: one located in the Basque Country with 202 rooms, and another in Burgos featuring 126 rooms. Furthermore, Hotel Gran Bilbao and Hotel Ciudad de Burgos benefit from seamless integration of HiJiffy’s solution with other hotel management systems they utilize. This includes a booking engine, a Property Management System (PMS), and services facilitating both contactless check-in and check-out. This comprehensive approach ensures a smooth, efficient, and modernized experience for guests at every touchpoint.

Top 3 Core Objectives: The Gran Bilbao and Ciudad de Burgos hotels aimed to implement a centralized solution to automate guest communications, focusing on enhancing web chat interactions, increasing direct bookings, streamlining online check-ins and check-outs, managing large-scale WhatsApp messaging and automatizing guest conversations on their website.

Boost online check-ins: Hotel Gran Bilbao, experiencing only a 20% rate of online check-ins, sought to streamline this process through the use of WhatsApp messages. This strategy was aimed at easing the workload at reception while simultaneously improving the guest experience.
Implement Web chat automation.: They required a system to automate responses to frequent inquiries on their websites, freeing staff from repetitive tasks and enhancing guest service. This was to be achieved without compromising customer service quality and maintaining high guest satisfaction.
Increase Direct Bookings: They were looking for a platform that would complement their existing strategies to boost direct web bookings, aiming to circumvent the high commissions charged by online travel agencies (OTAs). This effort was focused on enhancing their already substantial rate of direct reservations.

Innovators Mentioned

Hotel Gran Bilbao and Hotel Ciudad de Burgos

HiJiffy

Raúl Amestoy

Marketing & Sales Director

Hotel Gran Bilbao and Hotel Ciudad de Burgos

Judit Segura

Communications Manager

Hotel Gran Bilbao and Hotel Ciudad de Burgos

"Hijiffy has allowed us to digitalise and automate different processes in our hotels, allowing our team to focus on what adds value to the customer experience and letting Hijiffy manage those automatic processes that do not provide value. Thanks to the chatbot, we can automatically attend to user queries on our website, with a 90% rate of automation and satisfaction, helping to decongest our telephone call reception. Communication via WhatsApp, together with the integration with our PMS, has allowed us to reach online check-in rates of 60%, allowing us to eliminate reception queues. HiJiffy stands out for its ability to integrate in a flexible way with other systems, such as booking engines or PMS, which is essential for automation not only for the customer, but also to affect our internal processes effectively. And finally, its extranet allows for a detailed control of the results both at the level of the hotel chain or group, and at the level of an independent property."

Raúl Amestoy

Marketing & Sales Director

👍 Marketing & Sales Director Raúl Amestoy said that HiJiffy's platform enhances our hotel operations by automating processes, improving customer experience, and integrating seamlessly with other systems.:

"Hijiffy has allowed us to digitalise and automate different processes in our hotels, allowing our team to focus on what adds value to the customer experience and letting Hijiffy manage those automatic processes that do not provide value. Thanks to the chatbot, we can automatically attend to user queries on our website, with a 90% rate of automation and satisfaction, helping to decongest our telephone call reception. Communication via WhatsApp, together with the integration with our PMS, has allowed us to reach online check-in rates of 60%, allowing us to eliminate reception queues. HiJiffy stands out for its ability to integrate in a flexible way with other systems, such as booking engines or PMS, which is essential for automation not only for the customer, but also to affect our internal processes effectively. And finally, its extranet allows for a detailed control of the results both at the level of the hotel chain or group, and at the level of an independent property."

⚖️ The selection process: During their research process, Judit Segura evaluated HiJiffy's product differentiators, customer support, and holistic value as a strategic partner and ultimately decided that HiJiffy was the best fit solution:

Communications Manager Judit Segura said, about their decision: "HiJiffy has been both for Hotel Gran Bilbao and Hotel Ciudad de Burgos the boost we needed to help us achieve our online check in goals and process automation goals. Thanks to its "In-Stay" module, we can communicate with our customers via WhatsApp in the least intrusive and most convenient way possible for them, making their stay also have a positive online experience. The chatbot on our websites has also helped us to free up the reception areas of both establishments: when it comes to making a reservation, most customers always have the same doubts, which can be solved by a bot to an extremely high percentage. This means that the hotel staff have to spend less time on the phone or answering emails and can dedicate more time to the guests staying with us."

📈 The results: Hotel Gran Bilbao and Hotel Ciudad de Burgos both achieved impressive results in their online check-in rate, web chat automation and an increase in direct reservations.

Hotel Gran Bilbao and Hotel Ciudad de Burgos significantly enhanced their guest check-in process, recording a more than 200% increase in online check-ins. This remarkable achievement was made possible through the integration of HiJiffy's technology with their existing booking engine, Mirai, and Property Management System, Class One. The technology streamlined operations and vastly improved efficiency. At Hotel Gran Bilbao, the online check-in rate jumped from 20% to over 60% after HiJiffy's implementation. This dramatic increase was due in large part to an 81% open rate for WhatsApp messages, far exceeding the effectiveness of traditional email campaigns. The result was a substantial reduction in queues and a smoother guest arrival experience. In contrast, Hotel Ciudad de Burgos, which typically serves an older demographic more inclined to offline bookings, also saw a 200% increase in online check-ins, achieving an 84% open rate for WhatsApp messages. These technological advancements at both hotels significantly reduced queues at the front desk, allowing reception staff to focus more on providing personalised care to guests. This shift in focus brought dual benefits: improved customer care for the guests and a reduction in repetitive tasks for the staff. Overall, the implementation of HiJiffy's technology enhanced the efficiency of hotel operations and elevated the overall hotel experience for guests and employees alike.
Web Chat automation hit a 90% rate with an 83% average CSAT score. With over 45,000 conversations resolved at Hotel Gran Bilbao and more than 13,000 at Hotel Ciudad de Burgos, 9 out of 10 guests have received automated responses, without having needed for any member of the reception or reservations team to spend time responding to these potential customers. This result is even more impressive considering that the average Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) score across both hotels is 83%. This implies that the two hotels’ staff can spend more time performing tasks that have a bigger added value than answering repetitive questions such as cross-selling, upselling and helping guests staying at the hotels.
5% of all website bookings come from HiJiffy’s chatbot. But the overall impact on direct website reservations is higher. In addition to achieving a remarkable percentage of direct bookings through the chatbot (5%), alongside other platforms, HiJiffy has managed to impact the online direct bookings of Hotel Gran Bilbao, assisting in increasing them from 15% to 25% of the hotel's total online direct bookings. Once again, this impressive accomplishment was made possible by seamlessly integrating HiJiffy's technology with their current booking engine, Mirai, and their PMS, Class One. This integration effectively streamlined their operations and significantly enhanced overall efficiency, as well as providing a great booking experience for the guest on their websites.