What if booking a hotel or flight felt as natural as messaging to make plans with a friend?
Read on as we explore how AI-powered conversational technology is reshaping the guest experience in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, and why the travel industry is speeding up its adoption of these new solutions with the help of companies like Unifonic.
Saudi Arabia’s travel and tourism sector is expanding quickly. The market is expected to grow by more than 40 percent by 2027, reaching over $127 billion in bookings. With developments like NEOM and the Red Sea Project, the country is opening up and positioning itself as a global destination. Travelers in the region are typically young, digital-savvy, and increasingly mobile-first. In fact, more than 67 percent of consumers in Saudi Arabia and the UAE have used AI tools like chatbots to plan trips. This is well above global averages.
Along with this impressive growth, a different approach to customer service is required. Large booking platforms, while comprehensive, can be frustrating to use. Customers often face confusing interfaces, conflicting information, and lengthy customer journeys. These systems are built for scale, not personalization.
In an effort to improve the customer experience, travel companies are turning to messaging-first, conversational solutions. A recent Unifonic survey found that two-thirds of consumers in Saudi Arabia and the UAE prefer using WhatsApp to engage with brands. In the same study, 80 percent said they expect personalized service and post-booking support.
Unifonic, a leading cloud communications platform in the Middle East, helps travel providers modernize how they connect with customers. As traditional booking platforms struggle to meet today’s expectations for speed and personalization, Unifonic offers a smart, flexible solution to revolutionize booking platforms, apps and processes..
At its core, Unifonic provides an AI-enabled communications platform that unifies voice, SMS, email, push notifications, conversational messaging apps like WhatsApp, webchat, and social channels like Instagram and Facebook Messenger, into one system. It gives travel and hospitality brands access to not only multiple channels but also low-code applications to build better guest experiences.
Flow Studio
Design and automate full guest journeys using a simple visual interface. Flow Studio allows marketing and service teams to build rule-based communication flows without writing code. For example, a hotel can trigger automated booking confirmations, upsell offers, and satisfaction surveys through WhatsApp, SMS, Voice, Push or Email.
Chatbot Builder
Unifonic’s AI-powered chatbot builder enables businesses to create virtual agents that manage customer communication across WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and webchat. These multi-lingual chatbots can answer FAQs, assist with bookings, and escalate complex queries to human agents where a personal touch is required.
Audience
Travel businesses can create dynamic customer segments based on behavior, location, language, booking history, and channel preferences. Unifonic’s platform centralizes data from existing platforms, systems, and interactions to build individual 360-degree customer profiles, enabling fully personalized promotions, reminders, recommendations, and support conversations.
Authenticate
To provide extra peace of mind and security to guests, operators can issue one-time passcodes (OTPs) over WhatsApp, SMS, email, voice, or push notifications. This allows travel operators to verify identities during login, secure transactions, or confirm bookings while offering a seamless, multichannel experience. Built-in failover logic ensures delivery even when the user’s primary channel is unavailable.
Campaigns
Reach guests across channels with coordinated and data-driven marketing efforts using Unifonic’s AI-powered omnichannel campaign tools. Launch personalized campaigns over WhatsApp, SMS, or voice, with access to dynamic profiles & segments. Real-time performance tracking and detailed analytics help track ROI and optimize future engagement with key insights like ROAS, CPA, CPL, conversion rates, and offline attribution.
Together, these tools allow tourism operators to build fully connected guest journeys, reduce dependency on outdated systems, and offer the kind of personalized, mobile-first service that modern travelers expect.
To illustrate the power of these tools, imagine a traveler planning a weekend in Al Ula. Instead of searching through websites or waiting on hold, they click an Instagram ad for a hotel and open a WhatsApp chat. Within minutes, they can:
● Check room availability
● Compare rates
● Ask about services
● Complete their booking and receive confirmation
A day before their trip, they receive a reminder and a room upgrade offer. During their stay, they can message the concierge for directions or room service. After checkout, they get a thank-you note, a loyalty invitation, and a prompt to leave a review.
This kind of experience: fast, personal, and efficient, is what this new generation of chat-based customer service makes possible.
Dara Hotels and serviced apartment brand Shada implemented WhatsApp-based guest services with Unifonic’s support in 2023. Guests can now manage reservations, make changes, and request assistance entirely through chat.
Meanwhile, the Saudi Tourism Authority launched a multilingual WhatsApp bot to help travelers with visa information, pilgrimage planning, and regional events.
These use cases demonstrate how conversational platforms reduce friction and raise service standards. Guests receive faster, more personalized support. Businesses improve engagement while reducing pressure on support teams.
Tourism in the Middle East is evolving fast, and guest expectations are raising the bar for operators in the industry. Travelers want service that is easy, responsive, and personalized. Unifonic enables you to meet these demands with messaging-based journeys that are intuitive and scalable.
To speak to an expert about offering your guests a better experience, contact us today.