Direct bookings instead of Booking.com commission.
Hotels lose 15-18 percent of room price to OTA commissions while direct calls at lunch or after 7 PM go to voicemail. Your agent answers directly, checks availability in Apaleo, protel or Mews, takes bookings with payment authorization and answers standard questions.
by Sven Pflüger · Founder & CEO, Rinqo·Last updated:
Notice under EU AI Act Article 50:On the first ring, the agent says clearly: you're talking to an AI. Just ask, and the agent connects you to a human.How we use AI
What does the AI phone assistant do for Hotels?
The AI phone assistant for hotels takes reservation calls around the clock, checks availability in Apaleo, protel or Mews, takes bookings with PCI-DSS-compliant payment tokenization and answers guest questions about breakfast, parking and check-in, from €99 net per month.
EU-Sovereign · GDPR · AI Act
Made in Germany. Hosted in Europe. AI-Act-ready before the deadline.
GDPR-compliant on EU servers
All calls, transcripts and knowledge data are processed encrypted on Hetzner Cloud in Falkenstein and Nuremberg, no US Cloud Act exposure, no third-country transfer. DPA in place.
LLM inference: Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service (Microsoft Ireland, Sweden Central, EU Data Boundary) as single-AI backbone — OVHcloud as opt-in Pure-EU failover
Speech: Deepgram in EU setup + KugelAudio (German company, EU-hosted)
Auto-deletion after 30/90 days, configurable per org
AI Act Art. 50, implemented before 2 Aug 2026
From 2 August 2026 every AI system must disclose to end users at the start of the conversation that it is AI-based. Rinqo enables this by default everywhere, before the deadline, not after.
Voice: mandatory disclosure as first audio frame, before any answer
Chat/Email: AI label in footer and subject
Synthetic audio will be machine-watermarked once Code-of-Practice (June 2026) ships
Penalty: up to €15M or 3 % global annual turnover (whichever is higher)
Sources: GDPR Art. 28 + 32 · EU AI Act Regulation 2024/1689 · BfDI guidelines.
Why Hotels need an AI agent.
DEHOGA counts 33,000 lodging establishments in Germany. A 30-80-room independent hotel receives 40-90 calls per day, with peaks 9-11 AM and 4-7 PM, exactly during shift change. HOTREC reports a 24-34 percent direct booking rate in Europe, every missed call goes to Booking.com (15-18 percent commission). 35 percent of calls are reservations, 30 percent service questions (breakfast, parking, check-in), 20 percent booking changes. An AI agent catches voicemail losses and turns them into direct bookings.
Lunch and evening callers frequently land in voicemail
OTA commissions eat 15-18 percent of room price
Breakfast, parking, pets — same questions 30× a day
International guests call in 5 languages, the front desk speaks 2
How the Phone Agent for Hotels.
Your agent answers within one ring max, in 20+ languages, without an IVR menu. On reservation it checks availability in Apaleo, protel or Mews, holds the room for 5 minutes, takes credit card data via tokenization (Stripe, Adyen) and writes the booking with payment authorization to the PMS. Standard questions about breakfast (buffet/à la carte/times), parking, pets or check-in are answered from your house rules PDF. Complaints, refunds or groups of 8+ are escalated.
Rinqo picks up every call. At night, on weekends, always.
What your agent does for Hotels.
Reservation calls with availability check and booking
Booking changes (date, room category, party size)
Standard questions (breakfast, parking, check-in, Wi-Fi, pets)
Directions and arrival info
Spa and restaurant reservations for in-house guests
Multilingual service (DE/EN/FR/IT/ES/NL standard)
Features of the Phone Agent
Answers common questions automatically
Books appointments directly in your calendar
Qualifies inquiries and captures contact details
Routes complex cases to your team
Speaks 20+ languages
Learns from your website and documents
Honest answers to real concerns.
The four questions every practice owner asks us before they start.
Can the agent take credit card data?
Yes, via PCI-DSS-compliant tokenization. The agent forwards card entry to Stripe or Adyen; Rinqo only sees the token, never the card number. PCI requirements stay with the provider.
How does the agent handle cancellations and refunds?
Cancellations are checked against your stored cancellation policy (e.g. free until 6 PM the day before), marked free in the PMS for free cancellations. Refund inquiries escalate to reception management.
What if the front desk team wants to take over a call?
Soft transfer anytime. The agent forwards live calls to reception (with transcript handover). The team sees all running conversations in the dashboard.
Frequently asked questions about the Phone Agent for your industry Hotels.
Apaleo (official marketplace app), Mews (REST API with OAuth) and protel (webhook) are directly supported. Other PMS like Sihot or Oracle Opera via webhook plus mapping layer, setup approx. 30 minutes.
Standard 20+ languages with native language switching mid-call. Strongly requested: DE, EN, FR, IT, ES, NL, RU, AR. The agent detects language automatically and replies accordingly.
Complaints are escalated to reception management (direct transfer or email with transcript). You define escalation triggers: refunds, wedding inquiries, groups of 8+.
Multi-channel for your industry
Rinqo for Hotels, all channels
Telephone, chat and email from one platform: business case, ROI, GDPR and integrations.
Sven builds Rinqo from a simple observation: most AI tools are designed in San Francisco and sold in Berlin. The workshop in the Black Forest, the veterinary practice in Salzburg, the family hotel in Tyrol get software that doesn't speak their language. Rinqo flips that. On European servers, set up in ten minutes, in twenty languages. With templates built by the industries themselves.
