How to build a WhatsApp chatbot for a hotel (2026, free to start)
You need your rate sheet, your check-in rules and your amenities list, a WhatsApp number on a phone you control, and about ten minutes.
Building and testing the bot is free with a 30 message demo and no card; putting it on WhatsApp runs on the Starter plan at US$29 a month, which opens with a 7 day trial.
September 2026
What this bot does for a hotel
Five jobs it takes off your team, with the kind of exchange you will actually see in the transcript.
Answers the pre-booking questions that decide the sale
Rate, what is included, cancellation terms and whether the photos match the room. Answered in seconds, at the moment a guest is comparing you with two other tabs.
Customeris breakfast included in the double room rate?
BotBreakfast is included on the Flexible rate and not on the Saver rate; it is 16 per person if you add it later. Both rates include the rooftop pool and the gym, and the Flexible rate is free to cancel until 6pm the day before.
Handles check-in and check-out timing
The most repeated question in hospitality, and the one that arrives at midnight from a delayed flight. It gives the real policy, including what late arrival actually means at your front desk.
Customermy flight lands 1am, can i still check in
BotYes, reception is staffed 24 hours, so a 1am arrival is fine and no extra charge. Check-out is 12:00, and late check-out to 3pm is 25 when the room is free. Send us your flight number and we will keep an eye on it.
Explains transfers, parking and how to get there
Every guest arriving from another country asks the same four questions about the last twenty kilometres. Your bot answers them with your real prices instead of a taxi driver's estimate.
Customerhow much is a taxi from the airport and do you have parking
BotA taxi from the airport is about 38 and takes 25 minutes. Our own transfer is 45 for up to three people and can be booked in advance. Parking on site is 18 a night with in-and-out access.
Answers amenity questions with the current hours
Pool, spa, gym, restaurant, laundry, all with their real opening times and their seasonal closures. This is what guests ask most, so give the bot the exact times.
Customeris the pool open in november and is it heated
BotThe rooftop pool is open all year and heated to 28 degrees. In November it runs 8:00am to 8:00pm. The spa and sauna are open 10:00am to 9:00pm and free for guests.
Takes requests from guests already in the building
Extra towels, a late breakfast, a taxi for 7am. It records the request with the room number and hands it to the desk, so a guest never has to walk down to ask.
Customerroom 412, can we get two extra pillows and a taxi at 7am tomorrow
BotNoted for room 412: two extra pillows, going up now, and a taxi at 7:00am tomorrow. The front desk will confirm the taxi within a few minutes.
Build it in eight steps
Steps one to five are free and take about ten minutes. Step six is where WhatsApp, and the plan, come in.
Create the account
Open chatbotgen.com and sign up with an email address or a Google account. No card is asked for here, and none is needed for anything in steps one to five.
You should see: The onboarding wizard, open on the template picker.
Pick the Customer Support template
Choose Customer Support. It loads a starting prompt, three suggested questions and a widget colour written for this kind of business, so you are editing a draft instead of facing an empty box. Every line of it is yours to change.
You should see: A new chatbot in your dashboard with the prompt already filled in.
Train it on material you already have
Open Knowledge and paste your website address; the crawler reads your public pages and turns them into the bot's memory. Then upload the documents you hand people anyway: the rate sheet, the house rules, the transfer and parking information, and the breakfast and spa hours.
You should see: Each source moves from processing to trained. A twenty page site is usually done in two or three minutes.
Write down the answers your website never did
Still in Knowledge, open Q&A and add the questions your staff answers on the phone all day. For a hotel that is usually: whether early check-in is possible, what the airport transfer costs, whether the pool is heated in November, and how the deposit on the room works. Two sentences per answer is enough; the model writes the rest in its own words.
You should see: Each pair listed as its own source, trained within seconds.
Test it before anyone else does
Use the preview chat on the chatbot page and ask what a real customer asks. Start with "Can I check in at 11am and does the rate include breakfast?" Then ask the same thing badly, with a typo and no punctuation, because that is how it will arrive.
You should see: A correct answer with the source it came from. Wrong or vague? Fix the source, not the prompt. Your free demo covers 30 messages, which is enough for this.
Connect WhatsApp by scanning a QR code
Connect your existing WhatsApp number in about a minute by scanning a QR, with no Meta Business verification. Open the chatbot's WhatsApp tab, press Connect, and a QR code appears. On the phone that owns the number, open WhatsApp, go to Settings, Linked devices, Link a device, and scan it. No Meta Business account, no verification form, no approval queue. This step runs on the Starter plan, US$29 a month, opening with a 7 day trial.
You should see: The status flips to Connected within a few seconds, and the next customer message is answered on your own number. Keep that phone charged and online, exactly as it already sits on your counter.
Decide when a person takes over
The front desk should take the conversation for any booking change, any complaint, and any guest already staying in the building. You do not need a dashboard for this. If you answer a customer yourself from the linked phone, the bot records your message, steps back from that conversation for 30 minutes, and each further reply of yours pushes the pause forward. It resumes quietly, without announcing itself.
You should see: Your own replies appearing in the conversation history in the dashboard.
Go live, then read the first fifty conversations
Put the number on your website, your Google Business profile and your Instagram bio. Then read the transcripts. Every question the bot did not have an answer for yet is one Q&A pair away from being answered forever, and the first week is where the whole quality of the thing gets decided.
You should see: A Conversations tab filling up, and a growing share of messages answered end to end without you.
What to feed it
A bot is only as good as the material behind it. These are the sources that answer the most messages for a hotel, in the order worth doing them.
The rate sheet
Room types, what each rate includes, and the cancellation terms for each. Guests ask about the difference between rates more often than about the price itself.
Check-in, check-out and late arrival policy
Real times, the cost of early and late, whether reception is staffed overnight, and how a late arrival gets in.
Getting there
Airport distance, taxi cost, your own transfer price, the nearest station, parking price and whether it needs booking.
Amenities with hours
Pool, spa, gym, restaurant, bar, laundry. Include the seasonal closures, because guests ask about them the most.
House rules
Pets, children and cots, extra beds, smoking, quiet hours, the room deposit and how it is released.
The neighbourhood
What is worth walking to, where to eat late, which beach or museum is closest. Guests ask the hotel before they ask a search engine.
Set it up so customers trust it
Three settings that separate a bot people keep writing to from one they stop trusting. Each is a line in the prompt, and each one is a minute of work.
Route these to your team
- Let the front desk own bookings and changes. Rates and availability live in your PMS, and the bot sends the guest there with every other question already settled.
- Keep payments and deposits in your booking engine, where guests expect them.
- Let reception allocate rooms, views and upgrades, so every promise is one somebody can keep.
- Route anything unhappy to a person on the first message. A guest with a complaint is a review being drafted.
It answers in your customer's language
It replies in the language the guest writes in, across the thirteen the model handles well. For a hotel that is the single highest-value feature here: your night shift stops being the limit on which nationalities get a fast answer.
Hand the conversation to a person when
- Any change to an existing booking, since availability lives in your PMS.
- Any guest already staying who is unhappy about anything at all.
- Group bookings, weddings and anything with a contract behind it.
What people ask before they build one
Can it see availability and take bookings?
It answers rate, policy and amenity questions instantly, then sends the guest to your booking engine or your front desk with every doubt already cleared. That is where the money leaks: guests abandon over an unanswered question far more often than over a booking form, and this closes that gap without touching your PMS.
Do I need a Meta Business account or the official WhatsApp API?
No. You connect by scanning a QR code from the phone that owns the number, the same way WhatsApp Web does. There is no Meta Business verification, no approval queue and no per-message fee.
What about guests who are already staying with us?
That is the second half of the value. Requests arrive by WhatsApp with a room number, get logged in the dashboard, and the desk picks them up. Anyone on your team can answer directly from the linked phone, and the bot steps aside as soon as they do.
What does it cost to run?
Building and training the chatbot is free, with a 30 message demo to test it and no card. Connecting WhatsApp is on the Starter plan: US$29 a month for 3 chatbots and 2,000 messages, opening with a 7 day trial that does ask for a card. Prices are flat, not per message.
Do we need a separate number from the front desk line?
No, and it is better if you do not. Use the number already printed on your confirmation emails and your Google listing. The phone stays at reception, plugged in and online, and the bot answers on it whenever nobody has.
What happens when I answer a customer myself?
The bot gets out of the way. Your reply, typed on the linked phone, is recorded in the conversation and the assistant stops answering that thread for 30 minutes; every further message from you pushes the pause forward. It starts answering again quietly once the conversation has gone cold, so it can never talk over you mid-sentence.
Build it now, decide later
The Customer Support template, your own material and ten minutes. Nothing to install and no card for the free build.