Last year, I stayed at a hotel where I spent 20 minutes waiting at the front desk just to ask if they had late checkout. Sound familiar? Turns out, I’m not alone. Front desk teams drown in repetitive questions while guests just want quick answers.
So I built something simple: a WhatsApp chatbot for hotels that works like a tireless concierge. No apps to download. No confusing menus. Just text your question like you would a friend.
## How It Actually Works (No Tech Jargon)
I tested this with real questions I’d had during past stays—like “Can I bring my dog?” or “Is parking included?”—and it answered correctly every time. Here’s the bare-bones version:
– **Step 1: Scrape the hotel’s website**
It reads the entire site (policies, room details, amenities) using a tool called Firecrawl. Think of it as giving the bot a crash course in everything about the hotel.
– **Step 2: Build a tiny encyclopedia**
All that scraped info gets organized into a clean, simple reference document. No fluff, just facts like “Pool hours: 7am-10pm” or “Pet fee: $50/night” with sources linked.
– **Step 3: Plug it into WhatsApp**
Guests text questions, and the bot replies instantly using that encyclopedia. No guessing. If it doesn’t know something (like last-minute event changes), it says: “Let me connect you to our front desk.”
That’s it. No fancy infrastructure. Just three steps working together.
## Why This Beats Overcomplicated AI Bots
Most hotels I’ve seen try chatbots go straight to building complex RAG systems—chunking data, setting up vector databases, adding re-rankers. Sounds impressive until the bot answers “breakfast is free” when it’s actually $25.
Here’s what I learned: **for most hotels, simpler is smarter**.
By cramming the whole knowledge base into Gemini 2.5 Pro’s massive context window (like giving the bot an entire textbook to reference), we avoid:
– Hallucinated answers (because it *only* uses what’s in the encyclopedia)
– Slow responses (no extra steps to fetch data)
– Third-party tools failing mid-conversation
It’s not magic. It’s just focused on solving the actual problem: answering guests’ boring-but-critical questions accurately.
## Who Else Could Use This?
Yes, it’s built for hotels—but swap “hotel” for “dentist office” or “co-working space” in the system prompt, and suddenly it’s booking appointments or explaining membership tiers.
The core idea works anywhere:
1. Your business info lives online (website, PDFs)
2. Customers ask the same questions daily
3. You want them answered 24/7 without hiring extra staff
## Try It Yourself (If You’re Curious)
The whole workflow takes about 20 minutes to set up if you know basic no-code tools like n8n. I shared the exact steps and a copy-paste workflow on [GitHub](https://github.com/lucaswalter/n8n-ai-automations/blob/main/whatsapp_ai_chatbot_agent.json), plus a [walkthrough video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpWx1ubSnH4).
No need to overthink it. Start small: pick one FAQ (like parking or hours), build the bot for that, and watch how many front desk calls drop. That’s how you know it’s working.