The Alwar haveli whose front-desk found its evenings.
Neemrana Haveli Resort is a restored Rajput haveli on the road to Sariska Tiger Reserve. In tourist season the front-desk telephone rings every two minutes. The same fifteen questions, in five languages. The signature welcome — a tilak, a marigold garland, an arrival in the courtyard — was being delivered by exhausted people.
"A multilingual concierge that handles the boring fifteen, so my staff can deliver the important one."
The problem
The same fifteen questions, five hundred times a day.
Vikram Singh, the GM, walked us around the property at 6am one morning. "Look at this courtyard," he said. "This is what the guest pays for. Now come watch my front-desk at 11am, and tell me which one we're actually delivering."
Pre-arrival queries arrived on three channels — WhatsApp, the booking-engine chat, and direct phone calls — in English, Hindi, and a steady trickle of broken Marwari from local visitors. The questions were almost always: room types, Sariska safari booking, distance from Delhi, check-in/out timing, food options, and whether the resort was "actually heritage or just decorated like one." Real questions, asked sincerely, by people about to spend ₹15,000 a night.
The cost was twofold. Direct bookings were leaking to OTAs because reply latency was too slow. And the in-person guest experience — the part the resort was famous for — was being delivered by staff who were tired before the guest's car arrived.
The marigold I put around your neck when you arrive matters. The marigold I put around your neck after answering forty messages — that one is just a marigold.
What we scoped
A concierge that understands languages and luxury.
We sat in the front-desk office for three days. We answered 80 calls ourselves. We learned the rhythm. The brief was clear:
- One agent across three channels — WhatsApp, booking-engine chat widget, voice (later phase).
- Three languages, one tone — English, Hindi, and basic Marwari, all with the resort's warm hospitality register.
- Bookable, not just chatty — quote room availability live, hold rooms for 30 minutes during conversation, send payment links.
- Knows the property — distances, dietary options, dress code, Sariska timings, even the family history of the haveli.
- Hands off graciously — when a guest needs a human (special occasion, large group, dietary concern), the bot introduces them by name to the duty manager and steps back.
What we built
A bot that quotes the courtyard, not the rate sheet.
WhatsApp + on-site chat widget
WhatsApp Business Cloud API with green-tick. A second deployment as the chat widget on the resort's direct booking site. Single conversation memory across both.
The full property, written by us
We spent two days writing a 14-page property brief — with Vikram — covering everything from peacock sighting probability to the haveli's 1782 origins. The bot retrieves only from this.
Wired to the PMS
Integrated with the resort's existing PMS (Hotelogix). The bot sees real availability, can hold a room for 30 minutes, and sends a Razorpay link with confirmation.
Reviewed by native speakers
Tone document signed off in three languages. Marwari coverage explicitly bounded — bot defers to a human within four messages if conversation drifts beyond pre-trained patterns.
How it ran
Nine weeks, no downtime in tourist season.
On-site discovery
Three days inside the front-desk. Property brief drafted with Vikram.
Build & PMS integration
Hotelogix integration tested. Three-language tone document approved.
Shadow on WhatsApp
Bot drafts, staff approves. 3,400 conversations logged before public cutover.
Public & widget go-live
Live to public during off-season. Tourist season measured at full load.
What changed
The marigold got its meaning back.
Direct bookings rose 22% in the first complete tourist season, attributable to faster reply latency on the chat widget. The OTA share of bookings has dropped four points. The Google rating climbed from 4.2 to 4.7 across 200+ new reviews — most of them mentioning the warmth of the in-person reception.
Vikram's softer measure: the front-desk staff who used to clock out exhausted now clock out by 7:30pm. The duty managers say guests arrive at the courtyard already feeling welcomed — because the WhatsApp conversation that morning was, for the first time, actually warm.
One review I read last week said: "the welcome started two days before we arrived." I have been GM here for nine years. I have never read a review like that.
What we'd change
One thing we got wrong.
We over-trusted the Marwari handling
We knew Marwari coverage would be partial — what we underestimated was how often guests switch mid-message between Hindi and Marwari, sometimes within a single sentence. The bot held up well in pure Marwari but lost the thread on switches. Three guests had confusing exchanges before we caught it. We added a "switch detected" signal that escalates to a human within two messages on any code-mixed Marwari. Tested across two weeks before we trusted it again. The fix took a week; the lesson took longer — code-switching is the rule in Indian languages, not the exception, and we now treat it as a first-class case.
What is your front-desk losing?
A 30-minute call with a partner. We will tell you honestly if there's a system to be installed.
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