Travel is a great market for chatbots, and here’s the proof:

SnapTravel, a bot that lets users find and book rooms via SMS texts and Facebook Messenger, just raised $8 million.

Unlike a lot of chatbots on the market today, SnapTravel isn’t a fully automated solution.

The bot handles onboarding and answers users’ simpler questions, and human agents are always ready to help with the tough ones.

For example, if you booked a non-refundable hotel but your flight gets cancelled due to weather, an agent would respond to your questions and try to help, rather than leaving you to deal with an unsympathetic bot.

Here are top 9 insights from their journey:

1. Chatbots are great for onboarding a customer. A user can quickly engage with a chatbot as it is a simple UI they are familiar with. Chatbots are also great for answering simple questions.

2. Human Agents are necessary for tricky situations. If you booked a non-refundable hotel but your flight just got cancelled due to a storm, you want to chat with a live human agent — not a chat bot! At SnapTravel — our live human agents are available 24/7.

3. A Webview (mobile web) is essential for most hotel searches. If you are a business traveler who has booked with us many times before and you make a request — we could just send you a booking form for the perfect hotel.

4. Building on top of Messenger means that we have access to a new and untapped source of distribution (discover, drawer…).

5. It means that we can engage a user without forcing them to download a new app.

6. It means we can leverage sponsored messages — one of the most untapped ad units on the platform.

7. If a user makes it to the booking form but doesn’t complete the transaction, we can retarget that user directly in their messaging inbox as opposed to trying to follow then around the web with display ads. We have seen a 30%+ jump in conversion rate with effective Messenger retargeting techniques.

8. Continuous A/B Testing is essential — The leader in the hotel booking space (Booking.com) is well known for their rigorous A/B testing platform. Similar to Booking.com, we have invested in internal tools that allow us to run hundreds of tests in parallel, anything from messaging frequency, tone and length to web ui fonts, colors and interactions. Due to our relentless focus on data driven experiments, we’ve seen a 2x higher conversion on mobile compared to traditional bookings websites.

9. Delight the customer — One of the benefits of working with a traditional travel agent is the personal service and attention you get. However, no one has the time anymore to walk into a travel agency, or even pick up the phone to call. At SnapTravel, we have invested significant resources in delighting our customers — providing 24/7 human agents/customer service over messaging.

https://medium.com/@hussein_fazal/snaptravel-8m-series-a-raise-conversational-commerce-77c389fa4edf