Industry guides
Travel and hospitality
How Telonic agents handle conversations for airlines, hotels and tour operators, at any hour and through the peaks.
On this page
- Three businesses, three kinds of conversation
- The rules behind every answer
- Changes within fare and rate rules
- Delays and cancellations
- Pre-arrival requests and reservations at any hour
- Seasonal peaks
- What the agent takes, what it prepares, and what stays with your team
- The systems the agent works in
- How a first deployment starts
- In practice
- What your team controls
- Related
Travel never closes. Someone has to answer at 3am on a public holiday, and a Friday when flights are delayed looks nothing like a normal Tuesday. Telonic agents are built for the way travel works: fare and rate rules, itineraries that depend on several suppliers, and volume that follows the calendar. This page sets out the conversations the agent takes, the rules behind its answers, the systems it works in, what stays with your team, and how a first deployment starts.
Three businesses, three kinds of conversation
"Travel" is at least three businesses, and each has its own conversations.
| Business | The conversations that fill the queue | What the answer depends on |
|---|---|---|
| Airlines | Booking changes, flight status, rebooking after delays and cancellations, baggage and refund status | The fare rules, and whether a change was the passenger's choice or the airline's |
| Hotels | Reservation enquiries, changes to a stay, pre-arrival requests such as transfers and early check-in, billing questions | Whether the guest booked a flexible or a non-refundable rate |
| Tour operators and travel agencies | Itinerary questions, changes to one part of a trip, transfer times, documents | Several suppliers at once: flights, hotels and ground transport |
For an airline or a tour operator, the agent is usually a servicing conversation, measured on how long it takes to reach someone, how long a rebooking or refund takes, and complaints afterwards. For a hotel, it is often a revenue conversation too. A WhatsApp enquiry at 11pm that waits until morning can easily become a booking made somewhere else.
The rules behind every answer
Each workflow below is configured during implementation for your business, using your fare rules, rate rules, policies and systems.
Changes within fare and rate rules
Whether a passenger can change a flight depends on the fare rules, and on whether the change was their choice or the airline's. What they are owed is different in each case. At a hotel, "can I change my dates?" depends on whether the guest booked a flexible or a non-refundable rate.
The agent applies these rules as limits. It offers only the options the fare or rate permits, then completes the change in your booking system and sends the confirmation. It understands a trip with several legs as one itinerary, so a change to a flight also shows what happens to the hotel and the transfer.
Delays and cancellations
When flights are delayed or cancelled, which the industry calls disruption, the agent contacts affected passengers with an approved WhatsApp template and takes the routine rebooking questions that follow. It acknowledges the problem before it offers options, rebooks onto available flights within the fare rules, and issues meal vouchers or other entitlements within your policy limits.
An answer in these moments is only as good as the schedule data feeding it, because what was true an hour ago is often wrong now. The agent reads flight status and seat availability from the systems you connect at the moment of each conversation, and tells passengers only what those systems show. Before go-live, we map with your operations team where your schedule data comes from and how quickly it updates.
Pre-arrival requests and reservations at any hour
Guests ask for airport transfers, early check-in, a late checkout or a cot in the room. The agent takes each request into the right system and confirms it. Reservation enquiries by phone and WhatsApp are answered at any hour, in Arabic, English and many other languages, including Urdu, Russian, Chinese and Spanish, with availability and rates from your own systems. Where you choose, the agent sends a payment link from your payment provider, so the booking completes during the conversation.
Seasonal peaks
Volume follows the calendar: Ramadan, Eid, summer departures, the winter high season and, in Saudi Arabia, Hajj and Umrah. It also jumps whenever weather or an airspace closure changes a schedule. The agent holds many conversations at the same time, so capacity follows demand rather than the shift rota. Overflow routing, configured during implementation, sends calls to the agent when your queue passes a threshold you set, so your team keeps the conversations that need a person.
What the agent takes, what it prepares, and what stays with your team
| Zone | What happens | Examples in travel and hospitality |
|---|---|---|
| 1. The agent handles | Completes the request within your limits, using your systems | Booking and reservation changes within the fare or rate rules. "Is my flight on time?" and "What's my new departure?" Routine rebooking onto available options after a delay or cancellation. Baggage and refund status. Pre-arrival requests. Reservation enquiries at any hour. Vouchers within your policy limits |
| 2. The agent prepares and hands over | Gathers the booking, applies your policy and hands to a person with a written brief | Refund and compensation requests, for a person to approve. Complaints about a stay or a journey. Group bookings. Requests for special help, such as a wheelchair at the airport. Visa and entry questions beyond the answers you have approved |
| 3. Stays with your team | Recognises the situation and routes it straight to a person. The agent has no access to the decision | The family stranded overnight. Goodwill gestures outside policy. Anything involving safety, health or a guest in distress. VIP guests who expect their own contact |
During a major delay, this is where the agent helps most. It takes the hundreds of routine rebooking questions, so your people are free for the passengers who need someone. See Decision boundaries.
The systems the agent works in
| What it connects to | Examples | What the agent does there |
|---|---|---|
| Your booking or reservation system | Connected during implementation, through a custom action where needed | Looks up bookings, checks fare and rate rules, makes changes and sends confirmations |
| Online travel agencies | Booking.com, Expedia | Looks up reservations made through these channels, so the guest is recognised |
| Schedule and operations data | Your operations systems | Reads flight status, delays, cancellations and seat availability |
| CRM (the system that holds your customer records) | Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365, HubSpot, Zoho | Writes the summary, outcome and next steps against the customer |
| Messaging | Holds conversations and sends approved updates to affected passengers and guests | |
| Telephony | e&, du, stc | Takes and places calls on your existing numbers |
| Contact centre platforms | Genesys, NICE, Five9, Amazon Connect | Works alongside your routing, and hands conversations to your team with the brief |
| Payments | Payment providers | Sends payment links for bookings and extras |
Each connection has its own permissions, set with your IT team. See Permissions.
How a first deployment starts
Start with one queue: flight status and booking changes for one market, or out-of-hours reservation enquiries for one property. The agent runs alongside your team, and routing can send conversations back to your team at any time.
Before go-live, you and Telonic agree what will be measured, so your first review looks at your own conversations. For travel, that is usually time to first useful answer and how often the conversation goes to a person. For a hotel, it also includes how many enquiries become direct bookings.
Bring the right people in early, starting with whoever runs your booking and reservation systems, because the agent works inside them. For an airline, whoever owns operations and schedule information, because a rebooking answer depends on it. For a hotel, revenue management, because the rates and rules are theirs. And your legal team, for call recording consent.
In practice
Nakhla Travel, a tour operator, uses the agent for travellers already booked on its Umrah packages during Ramadan.
- The agent is connected to Nakhla's booking system and to each package itinerary: flights, hotels in Makkah and Madinah, and transfers.
- At 2am, Ahmed messages on WhatsApp in Arabic to ask when his transfer from Jeddah airport leaves. The agent finds his booking and gives him the time and meeting point.
- He asks to add his mother to the booking. Adding a traveller changes a group booking, which Nakhla's team handles, so the agent collects the details they need and passes the request on with a brief.
- Two days before he travels home, the airline changes his flight time. Nakhla's booking system updates, and the agent sends Ahmed an approved WhatsApp update with his new pick-up time from the hotel.
- At 8am, Nakhla's team opens every overnight conversation in the customer record, with the one request that needs them at the top of their queue.
What your team controls
- Which markets, properties and conversation types the agent covers first.
- The fare rules, rate rules and policy limits it applies, including voucher limits.
- The triggers that send a conversation to a person, and who receives each one.
- The wording of every proactive update and template.
- The hours and queue thresholds that route calls to the agent.
See The controls your team holds.
Related
- Industry modelsAgents
- Decision boundariesGovernance and control
- Travel and hospitality integrationsIntegrations
- Voice: transfers, callbacks and overflowChannels
- WhatsApp: message templates and outbound messagesChannels
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