AI Receptionist for Hotels in India: Which Calls to Hand Over

Give the AI the calls that have one correct answer you can write down today. Keep with staff every call where the answer depends on a decision, a payment or a person's state of mind. Calls in between are captured by the AI and finished by a human.

In the table, "hand over" means the AI handles the call. "Keep" means staff handle it, and the AI only transfers.

This split is our recommendation, not an official standard. It is deliberately cautious, because a wrong answer to a type 4 or 5 call costs more than a slow answer to a type 1 call.

Write down every enquiry call for seven days, tag each with one of the six types above, and mark whether it was answered or missed. After a week you will see which types dominate and where you lose calls. Do this before changing any setting.

Use one line per call with these columns:

Three habits make the log useful:

• Log missed calls too. A missed call has no type, so write what you think it was from the number and any message. Missed calls are the ones that cost you a guest.
• Note the hour. Check-in rush, late evening and early morning are when a small desk cannot pick up. Mark OTA and travel-agent calls in the outcome column, because they may cluster in your busy hours.
• Tag honestly. If a caller asks about rooms and then asks for a discount, tag the call by the harder part (type 3 or 4), not the easier one.

At the end of the week, count calls per type. A property where type 1 dominates gains most from handing over. Where types 2 and 3 dominate, the gain is in capturing the enquiry reliably and calling back fast. Where types 4 and 5 dominate, the phone problem is service, and an AI will not fix it. For night calls in particular, see our after-hours call answering page.

Rate and availability calls go to a callback because an AI receptionist that cannot see your live rooms and rates cannot know either answer. A quoted price is a promise to a guest. A rate that was right last month, or a room that was sold on an OTA an hour ago, becomes a dispute at check-in.

Our AI Receptionist does not check live room availability or rates. That is a limit of what we offer, and it shapes the rule:

• Availability: never answered by the AI. It captures the dates and party size, and a person confirms.
• Rate: answered only in a sentence you have approved in writing, such as "Rates depend on the dates, our team will confirm the exact price today". Do not give it a number unless the number will be true on any date the caller might ask about.
• Everything else on the call: still captured. Name, dates, number of guests and phone number reach you even when the answer waits.

The AI is still useful for these enquiries: the caller is greeted straight away, gets the fixed facts, and leaves with a clear next step. The alternative is a ring that nobody picks up.

Staff should receive the caller's name, dates, party size, phone number, the exact question and what the AI told the caller. With those six items, the person calling back never has to ask the guest to repeat themselves.

Two handover routes cover everything:

• Transfer: the AI connects the call to a person while the caller is still on the line. Use it for types 4 to 6, and whenever the caller asks for a person. Our guide to warm transfer versus cold transfer explains how to pass the details across.
• Callback: the AI captures the enquiry and a person rings back. Use it for types 2 and 3, and when nobody is free to take a transfer. Our missed call callback workflow covers the follow-up step.

Decide in advance who takes each route and by when. A callback with no owner is a missed call with extra steps. We suggest a deadline you can keep on a bad day, such as "before the end of the same day for every captured enquiry".

Our AI Receptionist answers calls, works out why the caller is ringing, answers the frequently asked questions (FAQs) you give it, captures names, numbers and requirements, and either connects the caller to the right team member or schedules a callback.

For a hotel, that maps to the table like this:

• Type 1: answered from the FAQs you set.
• Types 2 and 3: the enquiry is captured, and the callback is booked.
• Types 4 to 6: the call is transferred to staff.

After each call, our AI Call Summaries produce a transcript and a short summary within a couple of minutes, covering the customer requirement, the questions asked, the next follow-up and the call outcome. Our call analytics report total calls, answer rate, missed calls, talk time and peak hours, and the reports can be downloaded. If your team misses a call, our missed call automation can call the customer back automatically once you switch it on in settings.

As of November 2026, our Pro plan costs ₹999 + GST a month with three hours of talktime a day, and extra talktime is ₹49 + GST an hour. Customers can cancel anytime. Customer relationship management (CRM) integration is Enterprise-only and quote-only. This page is about phone calls only.

Run the AI on the call types you tagged as hand over for seven days, keep the same log, and compare five numbers with your baseline week. Review every call in the pilot, because a small property has few enough calls to read them all.

Then apply two rules, which are our recommendation:

• If a type 4, 5 or 6 call was dealt with by the AI beyond a short acknowledgement and transfer, narrow what you hand over.
• If many type 1 calls were transferred, write the missing answers and run the week again.

Use the summaries to read each call quickly, and listen to the recording whenever a summary and your tag disagree.

We recommend telling callers at the start of the call that it may be recorded, and handling the name, number and travel dates you capture as personal data under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDP Act). Our recording setup plays an announcement at the start of the call.

As of 1 November 2026, the notice, safeguards and erasure duties below are not yet in force.

The Act's text sets these duties, which apply to a business that decides why and how guest data is used:

• Notice: a request for consent must come with, or after, a notice stating the data being collected, the purpose, how the person can exercise their rights and how to complain to the Data Protection Board (section 5(1) of the DPDP Act). Under section 7(a), personal data a caller volunteers for a stated purpose, such as an enquiry, is a legitimate use, so a notice may not be required for those details. Notice is needed when you ask for consent or use the data for other purposes.
• Safeguards: you must take reasonable security safeguards against a personal data breach, including for processing done for you by another party (section 8(5)).
• Erasure: erase the data once the person withdraws consent or the purpose is served, unless a law requires you to keep it (section 8(7)).
• Penalty: the Act's Schedule says a breach of the safeguards duty may be penalised by up to ₹250 crore. That is a ceiling, not a typical outcome.

In practice, we recommend three habits: keep enquiry records only as long as you need them, limit who can open recordings, and never let a phone call collect card numbers or ID numbers.