End-to-end mobility firm DMI has partnered with AI-powered hotel distribution company Zumata to create a natural language chatbot for Facebooks Messenger app that can provide hotel recommendations and book holidays for users, all using straightforward and simple commands.

The chatbot uses IBM Watsons artificial intelligence technology to process customer hotel search requests, resulting in a new level of individualisation and personalisation for customers. Customers can ask questions related to their booking as if they were talking with a live human agent, and immediately receive highly relevant and personalised results to searches.

The chatbots ease of use will shorten research times for customers, as well as improving conversions for travel sellers while reducing their operating costs. The chatbot is part of DMIs suite of mobile-first enterprise solutions and services, which Zumata has also adopted.

“Zumatas goal is to provide our travel vendor partners with the tools they need to improve their customers experience and in turn improve their own conversions,” said Josh Ziegler, CEO of Zumata. “Whether we provide our technology via a full white-label site, a widget, or through our suite of APIs, we want to facilitate the process no matter the platform or device that their customers want to use.

“Our collaboration with DMI showcases a practical example of how our artificial intelligence-enhanced hotel offering can be easily integrated into Facebook Messenger or any other chat or messaging applications.”

“As the only hotel distribution company in the world that is using big data and IBM Watson technologies, Zumata came to us with a cutting-edge project – just the sort of thing we love,” said Jay Sunny Bajaj, founder and CEO of DMI. “Advances in technology have only recently made natural language processing-driven chatbots possible for business, so we are excited to be at the forefront of making this capability a reality for our customers.”

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