What a digital concierge is

A digital concierge is an assistant that answers the guests of an accommodation business in place of the printed guide in the room and the questions at the desk. The guest writes to it in their own language, it answers in that same language with that property's information, and when a request needs a person it sends it to the team that handles it. You can also call it a virtual concierge or a virtual assistant.

What sets it apart from a printed guide is that you can question it. What sets it apart from the front desk is that it does not close.

What the guest finds

A QR code in the room or in their inbox. It can be printed on a card and left on the bedside table, or on a plate by the door. They scan it and a web page opens in the phone's browser, already in the right language and with the room number set. There is nothing to install, and nobody asks them for an email address or to sign up.

From there a guest can do a number of things:

• ask for what they need, from the breakfast times to how the heating works, and get that property's answer, with the right times and the right names
• browse the services the property sells, from the transfer to the late check-out, and book one
• follow the status of a request, which changes from received to in progress to done

This is the part the trade calls guest experience, and in practice it comes down to one thing: the guest gets an answer at the moment the question occurred to them, which is usually eleven at night.

What reaches the people working

On the other side there is a dashboard. Requests land on a board in columns, split by status, already carrying the room number, the language and the time. Whoever works in the kitchen sees theirs, whoever is at the desk sees the others.

The part people underrate is the history. After a month you know which questions come back every day, in which language they arrive and what time they cluster around, and above all you can see the questions the assistant could not answer. Those are the gaps in the property's own guide, and it is the first time anybody has seen them written down.

How it differs from a chatbot

A chatbot answers and stops there. A digital concierge sees things through: it books the transfer, sends the late check-out request to the right team, and moves the status along under the guest's eyes.

The other difference is the source. The answers come from the content the property loaded, which the artificial intelligence uses to build the sentence but not to invent the substance. When a question falls outside that content, a system built properly says so and hands over. A system built badly guesses a plausible breakfast time, and you find out from a review.

When it is not worth it

If your guests ask few questions and ask them in person without it weighing on you, a digital concierge only adds one more thing to look after. It earns its place when the same questions come back every day, when they arrive out of hours, or when they arrive in a language you do not speak. And also when you want to give guests more, by offering extra services or arrangements with nearby businesses.

And it is worth checking before you sign. The frequently asked questions gather the doubts that reach us most often, and the guide on how to choose one lists what to ask about. If instead you want to see how ours behaves, there is the features page and the pricing.