AI Voice Agent Aims to Streamline Hotel Meeting Sales

Hivr launched Mandy on Wednesday, an AI-powered phone agent for meetings and group sales, with Radisson Hotel Group as its first customer. The company said the agent can handle a range of tasks including qualifying inbound leads, following up on incomplete email inquiries, reviving dormant leads, and providing customer support. It can capture meeting requirements, handle room block requests, and discuss catering options in more than 50 languages.

The Germany-based company, founded in 2020 by former Expedia Group executives, developed Mandy to address inefficiencies in the meetings and group sales sector. 

Hivr's broader technology suite includes channel management across major meeting platforms like Cvent, price and task automation tools, including “Alex,” an AI email agent that processes incoming inquiries, and updates hotel systems automatically. In January the company announced a minority investment from travel tech giant Amadeus.

How Mandy Works

While computer systems can communicate and automate booking processes directly through APIs, human conversations are far more complex and unstructured. That’s where Mandy comes in. 

Skift Meetings saw a demo of Mandy in action. During the conversation Mandy clarified requirements and gathered information for a fictitious event. Mandy dealt well with unstructured requests using natural language in an informal conversation using both English and Portuguese.

According to CEO and co-founder Felix Undeutsch, she acts as a translator, converting natural human speech into structured data that computers can process. Undeutsch revealed that Hivr trained Mandy trained on hundreds of thousands of actual customer requests from hotel partners, not textbooks, allowing her to understand varied terminology and informal language patterns. 

The company said the system operates within strict guardrails, focusing solely on meetings-related conversations. If users try to discuss politics, Covid-19, or other off-topic subjects, Mandy redirects the conversation back to meeting requirements. She can also connect with other specialized AI agents for tasks like checking hotel availability, though these handoffs happen invisibly to users.

On the pricing front, Mandy integrates with hotel revenue management systems but doesn't make autonomous decisions. "She doesn't make decisions on pricing, she doesn't negotiate with you based on what she thinks is best, it follows rules from the revenue management team," said Undeutsch.

This automation helps streamline workflows by reducing operational involvement from revenue managers. "By using Hivr and systemizing these decisions, the revenue manager is only steering, and not operationally involved when approving a quotation or proposal, which shouldn't be happening in the first place," said Undeutsch.

Integration and Limitations

Mandy currently hands off complex operational discussions to human staff. However, Undeutsch notes, "That's a limitation right now. I don't think it's a limitation in one year."

Rather than replacing booking platforms like Cvent, Mandy aims to complement them by providing immediate follow-up to requests made via these platforms. "This call is not happening after eight or 24 hours, you send the request and the call is placed—it's instantaneous and you as a planner, you are still in the mood and you're still in the mindset and the context of that meeting request," Undeutsch said.

Mandy aims to help the Hivr system structure all captured information and push it to the hotel's systems, eliminating manual data entry. The company said for multi-property requests, it can match requirements against available hotels and generate appropriate proposals.

Alternative to Instant Booking

While some industry players focus on instant booking capabilities, Hivr chose to target process automation. "We automate the mundane admin tasks, whatever they are," Undeutsch said. When asked why Hivr is focused on automation rather than instant booking, the response is clever. "We don't see it [instant booking] coming. We don't see any adoption for that."

Undeutsch believes instant availability and pricing are more valuable to planners than instant booking. "Booking it is something you might not do for various reasons. You need approval on it. You need to check with somebody. I think the booking piece of the instant will never ever come for more complex meetings."

Looking ahead, Undeutsch sees both opportunity and challenge in AI's impact. He believes removing administrative barriers could lead to more meaningful human interactions. "Digital will probably just vanish. It will happen in the background and we will become just more physical and human people again," he said. However, he also expressed concerns about societal impact, particularly on administrative workers whose day-to-day tasks are quickly being replaced by AI and automation.

Mandy is scheduled to go live with Radisson Hotel Group in early March 2025 during ITB Berlin, with additional hotel companies expected to follow.