Seattle Ballooning - An AI Chatbot Hospitality Case Study

Seattle Ballooning is a top rated balloon trip tour company and considered an innovator in the hospitality business.

They came to us because they wanted to provide an AI chatbot as an extra service to their clients. The idea was that by leveraging AI, they could increase engagement. By increasing engagement, they would increase conversions. The goal of the project was for the AI chatbot to work as a funnel for onboarding website visitors to book their balloon trips.

About Seattle Ballooning

Seattle Ballooning is already one of the top most rated tour companies in the world. Once you meet Eliav, the reasons for that becomes obvious. Eliav is obsessed with quality, and always willing to go the extra mile. A friendly face with deep knowledge and a passion for what he does. We wanted the AI chatbot to reflect this passion, and we think we succeeded with it.

Below you can see an example question we asked it during the QA phase of the project illustrating how we could implement Eliav's passion into the chatbot.

We showed our platform to Eliav, and he asked all the right control questions, and later included the rest of his team into the project. We demonstrated how our chatbot works, how it can display images, what research says about the importance of displaying images, and what types of integrations we could offer. A couple of hours later we started working on their MVP.

DIY solutions

One thing that was arguably different with Seattle Ballooning was that they have huge technical knowledge. Most clients we work with aren't that savvy when it comes to technology, so we typically end up doing most of the work ourselves. This is also a large part of our service, which we're proud of ourselves, because it allows people without knowledge to gain access to super high quality AI.

However, Eliav and his team are highly technically skilled, and Eliav have years of experience with both AI and chatbots, so Eliav wanted for his team to do the heavy lifting, while we for the most parts supported them whenever they got stuck.

Obviously, having internal "ownership" of the process further increased quality, due to Eliav and his team having years of experience in the domain, resulting in edge questions becoming better. For instance, I had no idea that hot air ballooning is the safest form of air travel before I started QA testing the chatbot myself. These are nuances that increases quality in the end product.

We gave his team some initial training, and they started ingesting the model with data. It's still work in progress, and we're not entirely finished yet - But the AI chatbot have already been implemented on their site. The idea being that we're to monitor it over time, to sanity check its responses, and such slowly over time increase quality. You can try it out below.

• Seattle Ballooning's AI Chatbot

Images

You might argue that 50% of the value of going ballooning is because you end up with amazing images you can use to remember your travel in the future. Having an AI chatbot capable of displaying such images is probably crucial for the conversion rate. In fact, anything related to the hospitality business is probably strongly influenced by guests taking photos and selfies. It was therefor important that the AI chatbot could display images. Below is an example of the AI chatbot displaying images from a balloon trip.

If you're interested in research related to this, and how we implemented it in our technology, you can find a related article below.

• Read more about how our AI chatbot can display images here

Empathy

One thing we're particularly proud of at AINIRO.IO is our ability to make our AI chatbots reflect moods. We can make our chatbots behave like empathic foster parents, support technicians, Snoop Dogg for that matter - Or as was the case for Seattle Ballooning, make them behave like super service-minded and empathic helpers.

Below is how it responded to a sad query I tested it on, which was as follows; "My mom is terminally ill with cancer, and I want to give her a special gift for her last birthday"

I'm truly sorry to hear about your mom's illness. For such a meaningful occasion, a hot air balloon ride could be a serene and uplifting experience for her, creating a lasting memory for both of you. However, it's essential to consider her comfort and medical needs.

If she is well enough for the adventure and has clearance from her medical team, you can book a private hot air balloon flight for a more intimate and comfortable experience. Alternatively, a gift certificate for Seattle Ballooning could be a thoughtful gift, allowing her to choose a day that she feels up to it.

For a more low-key but equally special gift, perhaps a beautiful dinner, personalized jewelry, or a collection of heartfelt messages from friends and family could also be wonderful. The most important thing is to spend quality time together and create moments of joy and comfort for your mom.

If you need any assistance or have specific requests to accommodate her needs, please don't hesitate to reach out to us directly at 206-747-5802. Our thoughts are with you and your family during this challenging time. 🎈❤

As you can see in the above answer, it's not overly trying to sell its own services, but backs up a little bit, and provides alternatives in case a balloon trip is not medically safe. This is of course the empathic thing to do, and avoids bad karma reflecting back on Seattle Ballooning. While at the same time, it's got just strong enough belief in its own services and capacities to create lasting memories to suggest it as an alternative, but only if it's medically safe. This balance act of course is something we have spent a lot of time trying to get right with our technology, and have taken us literally thousands of hours.

In fact, about 6 months ago there was a research study about the LLM model we're using in our AI chatbots concluding with that our technology is capable of displaying roughly 35% more empathy than a general physician and health care professional. For a hospitality AI chatbot this might not be that important, but having a service minded AI, capable of handling everything, is for obvious reasons very important in the hospitality business. I will assume most hospitality workers will be able to tell you why better than me.

Conclusion

If you're in the hospitality business, technology is probably not something you're highly experienced with. However, if you're looking for an AI chatbot, you will still need to ask yourself a couple of fundamentally important questions, such as for instance.

• Do I need an AI chatbot that displays images?
• Do I want the AI chatbot to be empathic and compassionate?
• What is the purpose of my AI chatbot?
• Do I want it to generate leads?
• Do I want it to book meetings?
• Do I want it to provide additional information about my location?
• How technologically savvy are my team?
• Can my team handle it themselves?
• Do I need a highly experienced team to help me implement my AI chatbot?

This is why when we take on a new project, we're always starting out with 100 questions. These questions might seem irrelevant to you initially, but once you get feedback from your users you will understand why. To illustrate the difference I'll let the AI chatbot itself have the last word. Here's a question we found in its log where a user asked it the following; "I am getting engaged. What is the best flight? Sunrise or sunset"

If you want to try Seattle Ballooning's AI chatbot, you can visit their site below.

• Seattle Ballooning