John Smallwood has owned, managed, and developed hotels since 1982.  In 2006, he created Travel Outlook, the Premier Hotel Call Center™, which specializes in taking voice reservations calls for hotels with the goal of improving voice channel revenue and guest satisfaction.  The only call center certified by Kennedy Training Network, Travel Outlook functions as a full reservations department, or handles overflow calls.  Travel Outlook’s software offers CRM integration with a call tracking system for streamlined and affordable sales campaign tracking and lead generation.

In 2019, Travel Outlook introduced Annette, The Virtual Hotel AgentTM, hospitality’s first guest-led conversational AI voice assistant.  Annette is based on a new and exciting approach to Natural Language Processing by PolyAI that uses social media conversational data for training, an ideal framework that is effective, affordable, and quick to train.

Annette’s technology allows hotel guests to lead the conversation with natural, human-like interactions.  For pennies, she can answer up to 60% of the calls for the front desk team, freeing staff to interact with on-site guests and saving on fixed labor expense.  Annette also offers an accurate understanding of guests’ most common needs through her Precise Guest Insight™ tool.