In restaurants and hotels, admin work happens in the gaps: between lunch and dinner service, late after closing, in the morning before deliveries. That is when you reply to reviews, confirm bookings, prepare orders and write to guests. These are short tasks, but there are many of them, and they come after the customer in the dining room.
AI agents take over this background work. This article reviews the most useful uses for a restaurant, an independent hotel or a holiday rental, with briefs to copy and points to watch.
What an AI agent does for a venue#
An AI agent is a program that carries out a specific task using your tools: your email, your online booking book or spreadsheet, your Google and Tripadvisor listings, your holiday rental software, your text messaging tool. It works at set times or whenever something happens, and reports back to you.
The tasks that suit it best:
- replying to and tracking reviews, because they arrive every day;
- booking confirmations and reminders, because no-shows cost covers;
- supplier orders, because they follow a repetitive calculation;
- guest messages, because the questions are always more or less the same.
Replying to reviews, without canned phrases#
Replying to every review shows the venue is attentive. But a generic reply ("thanks for your feedback, hope to see you again soon") is spotted immediately. A good reply picks up a detail from the review: the dish mentioned, the waiter named, the comment about the wait.
A review agent reads new Google and Tripadvisor reviews every day, prepares a personal reply that picks up a concrete detail, alerts you immediately to one- and two-star reviews and sends you the most-mentioned dishes and service points every Monday. That is the Restaurant reviews template.
Every day at 3 pm, read the restaurant's new Google and Tripadvisor reviews. For each review, prepare a reply of three to five sentences that picks up a specific detail from the review, signed "Claire, on behalf of the whole team". For 1- or 2-star reviews, do not reply: send me the review on WhatsApp with a suggested reply, and I will decide. Never offer a goodwill gesture without my approval.
Rules to set#
- Never promise compensation, a free meal or a refund without your approval.
- Never publicly dispute a fact (an opening time, a bill): the agent flags it to you.
- Never solicit reviews in exchange for a reward or publish fake reviews: it is prohibited and the agent must not do it.
To go further, the Customer reviews, replies and report chain links three agents: collection, replies, monthly report.
Confirmed bookings, tables back online#
A booked table left empty on a Saturday night is a straight loss. Confirming the day before reduces no-shows and lets you recover cancelled tables in time.
A booking agent gathers the next day's bookings, sends a confirmation by text message, puts cancelled tables back online and prepares the floor plan with special requests: birthday, reported allergies, high chair, wheelchair access. That is the Confirmed bookings template.
Allergies deserve particular attention. The agent can copy onto the floor plan what the customer reported, but it must never state that a dish is free of a given allergen: information about the allergens in your dishes is your responsibility and comes from your recipe sheets.
Tomorrow's order, calculated#
Preparing orders means cross-referencing three things: expected covers, recipe sheets and the stock counted in the kitchen. The calculation is simple but long, and it is often done by eye.
An ordering agent cross-checks the next day's bookings, your recipe sheets and the kitchen's stock count every afternoon, calculates the quantities and prepares one purchase order per supplier before the cut-off time. That is the Restaurant supplier orders template.
Monday to Saturday at 3 pm, read tomorrow's bookings, add a margin for walk-ins depending on the day (the "Walk-ins" tab of my spreadsheet), then calculate the quantities needed from the recipe sheets. Subtract the stock the kitchen counted this morning. Prepare one purchase order per supplier, in each supplier's selling units, and send them to me for approval before 4:30 pm.
The Expected covers and restaurant orders chain splits the two steps: one agent forecasts covers, the other prepares orders from that forecast. Each month, the Monthly food cost template reviews your ratios based on your purchases and sales.
Hotels, guesthouses and holiday rentals: guest messages#
For accommodation, messages always follow the same cycle: arrival information a few days before, questions during the stay (wifi code, parking, check-out time), a thank-you and a review request afterwards.
A dedicated agent sends arrival information three days before, answers common questions from your welcome guide and asks for a review after departure. That is the Guest messages template. It forwards you anything outside the guide: a complaint, a late check-out request, a technical problem.
| When | What the agent does | What stays with you |
|---|---|---|
| 3 days before | Sends the address, access, code, times | Updating the guide if something changes |
| During the stay | Answers questions covered by the guide | Unusual requests and incidents |
| Departure | Reminds guests of check-out time and instructions | Inspecting the property |
| Day after | Thanks the guest and asks for a review | Replying to negative reviews |
Two other templates round out the setup: Cleaning schedule alerts the cleaning team at each departure, and Competitor accommodation prices tracks the rates advertised around you.
The daily menu, published everywhere#
Changing the chalkboard is quick; updating your Google listing, Instagram, Facebook and website is much less so. The Daily menu published everywhere template starts from a photo of the board or a dictated message and publishes the menu on your channels. If you do not have a website yet, the Restaurant website with booking and Guesthouse or hotel website templates build a hosted site that you refine in the chat.
A typical day in a forty-cover restaurant#
To see how these agents fit together, follow a neighbourhood brasserie open for lunch and dinner, Tuesday to Saturday.
- 9 am: the chef counts the stock in the cold room and enters it in a form on his phone. Nothing else to do.
- 3 pm: the review agent has prepared replies to the previous day's four reviews. The manager approves three with one tap; the fourth, a two-star review, mentions a long wait for dessert. She receives it on WhatsApp with a suggested reply, which she rewrites herself.
- 3:30 pm: the ordering agent sends three purchase orders for approval: greengrocer, butcher, dairy. The quantities account for the thirty-two covers booked for the next day's lunch and the usual Wednesday margin.
- 4 pm: booking confirmations go out by text. Two customers cancel within the hour, and their tables are back online before service.
- Monday morning: the weekly review report shows that Thursday's dish of the day often comes up in positive comments, and that the wait for dessert is mentioned several times. That is management information, obtained without rereading every review.
Every step existed before; it simply happened in the evening, or not at all.
Setting up your first agent#
- Choose the task that costs you the most covers or nights: often confirmations or reviews.
- Gather the source: online booking book, recipe sheets, welcome guide.
- Describe the task in the chat or on WhatsApp, handy when you are writing from the kitchen, or start from a template in the restaurant library or hospitality library.
- Answer the architect's questions: hours, channels, signature, rules.
- Connect your tools in one click, then approve the sample and the monthly price announced.
An agent costs from €3/month, most between €9 and €49 depending on complexity. Plan details are on the pricing page, and more examples are on the restaurant use cases and hospitality use cases pages.
What remains your job#
Welcoming guests, cooking, handling an unhappy customer in the dining room, choosing a goodwill gesture: none of that can be delegated to an agent. What can be delegated is everything that repeats and keeps you out of the dining room. For venues that also sell products online, see AI agents for e-commerce.