• SmartReply answers guest messages, either as drafts your team sends or automatically end-to-end.
• SmartPriority reads every incoming message and flags the conversations that need attention first.
• The Booking Agent answers people who do not have a reservation yet, searching real availability and presenting rooms with prices.
• AI Knowledge Sources is where you manage what the AI actually knows about your property.
• The AI Weekly Report summarizes what your guests wrote about each week. - Coming soon!
• Host-side AI tools help your own team, including polishing a message before you send it.

Duve's Generative AI Agents

Quick navigation:

• Applies to
• Pricing
• Use cases
• Before you start
• How to set it up and use it
• Host experience
• Guest experience
• Troubleshooting
• Restrictions and limitations
• Tips and tricks
• FAQs
• Related articles

Use cases

• Cover the hours you do not staff. Overnight and weekend messages get answered instead of waiting for the morning shift.
• Take the repetitive questions off your team. WiFi, check-in times, parking, and breakfast hours are answered from your own content.
• Turn website chat into direct bookings. Visitors without a reservation get real rooms and prices with a link into your booking engine.
• Let guests order extras in the chat. When a guest asks for an extra towel or a crib, the AI can place the order for them.
• See what is urgent at a glance. A flagged inbox tells your team which conversations to open first.
• Answer in any language. Guests are answered in the language they write in, without your team translating.

Before you start

• Confirm which agents are on your plan. Locked agents show an upgrade message on their card.
• Put your knowledge in place first. The AI answers from your Guest app posts, your upsells, your room types, the text sources on the Sources tab, and core account details such as address, phone, check-in and check-out times, WiFi details, and FAQ.
• Connect a booking engine under Settings > Connections > Booking Engines if you plan to use the Reservations agent.
• Decide whether you are configuring the account or a single brand.
• Tell your team that notifications are personal. Turning an agent on does not subscribe anyone to alerts.

How to set it up and use it

Where everything lives

• Settings > DuveAI > Agents holds two groups of agents:
  • Guest Communication: SmartReply, with the Reservations and Sales agents inside it.
  • Team Operations: the Priority agent (SmartPriority) and the AI Weekly Report (Coming Soon).
• Settings > DuveAI > Behavior holds AI Conversation Disclosure, Tone of Voice, and Instructions Plus.
• Settings > DuveAI > Sources holds your AI knowledge sources.
• Settings > Connections > Booking Engines is where you connect a booking engine for the Reservations agent.

• Your profile > Notification Center is where each user picks their own AI alerts.

  

A recommended order

1. Start with your knowledge: Open the Sources tab and check that what the AI can read matches what your team would actually tell a guest. Add text sources for anything true but not published in the Guest app.
2. Turn on SmartReply in Suggestion Mode: The AI drafts a reply to every incoming message, and your team reviews, edits, and sends. Nothing reaches a guest without a person approving it.
3. Turn on the Priority agent: It works independently of SmartReply and starts flagging conversations immediately. Have each team member set their own notification levels.
4. Turn on the Reservations and Sales agents if they fit your property.
5. Review the Behavior tab: Decide whether guests should be told they are chatting with a digital assistant.
6. Move SmartReply to Auto Answer Mode when you are comfortable: Use Exception Rules to keep specific guests or segments in Suggestion Mode.
7. Switch on the AI Weekly Report: Add recipients, and it starts arriving. - Coming soon!

Agents tab: Guest Communication

SmartReply

SmartReply is the main card at the top of the Agents tab. Click the mode button on the card (it shows the current mode) to expand the list of modes, then select one:

• Disabled: SmartReply is completely off. All guest conversations are handled manually by your team.
• Test Mode: SmartReply sends replies to guests for selected reservations only. Use it to test responses in a real setting.
• Suggestion Mode: SmartReply drafts a response for every incoming message. You review, tweak, and send.
• Auto Answer Mode: SmartReply responds instantly and manages conversations end-to-end.

Note: When a mode other than Disabled is active, the mode button and the SmartReply title are highlighted with the DuveAI gradient.

Exception Rules

When Auto Answer Mode is selected, the Exception Rules button next to it becomes available. Use rules to switch sensitive guests or segments to Suggestion Mode, where DuveAI drafts a reply for each message and your team reviews, tweaks, and sends. Each rule is evaluated separately.

Reservations agent

The Reservations agent sits inside the SmartReply card. It answers people who do not have a reservation yet, searches real availability in your connected booking engine, and presents rooms with prices and a book link.

To turn it on:

1. Connect a booking engine under Settings > Connections > Booking Engines. If none is connected, the card shows "Connect a booking engine to use the Reservations agent." with a link that takes you there.
2. Make sure SmartReply is not set to Disabled.
3. Switch the Reservations card on.

Sales agent

The Sales agent also sits inside the SmartReply card. When a guest asks for something you offer as an upsell, the AI can place the order for them directly in the chat after the guest confirms.

To turn it on:

1. Make sure SmartReply is not set to Disabled.
2. Switch the Sales card on. By default, the agent can submit free upsells.
3. To review what the agent can submit, click the settings (gear) icon on the Sales card. The Sales Settings pop-up asks, "Which upsells can 'Sales' submit to guests?" Select Free Upsells and click Save. Paid Upsells is marked Coming Soon.

Good to know:

• If a guest asks for a paid upsell, the AI does not order it. It sends the guest a link to book it themselves.
• In Suggestion Mode, or when an Exception Rule applies, the order waits until your team sends the AI's suggested reply.
• Orders placed by the AI are marked as placed by DuveAI in your order screens, so your team can tell them apart from orders placed by a host.
• The AI only places orders for guests with a reservation. Anonymous chats cannot place orders.

Agents tab: Team Operations

Priority agent (SmartPriority)

The Priority agent reads every incoming message and flags the conversations that need attention first. Switch the Priority card on to start. It does not depend on SmartReply, so you can use it even when SmartReply is Disabled.

Each team member then chooses their own alerts under Your profile > Notification Center.

AI Weekly Report (Coming Soon)

The AI Weekly Report card summarizes what your guests wrote about each week, including topics, requests, and complaints. The card is visible but cannot be switched on yet.

Behavior tab

The Behavior tab controls how DuveAI talks to guests. A banner at the top links back to your agents with See your agents.

AI Conversation Disclosure

This switch controls whether DuveAI tells guests that they are chatting with a digital assistant.

• On: DuveAI sends a short disclosure message before its first reply in a conversation: "Hi, you're chatting with a digital assistant who's here to help. You can ask to speak with a human representative at any time."
• Off: No disclosure message is sent, and the AI replies as usual.

Setup notes:

• The setting is off by default on all existing and new accounts.
• When the disclosure is sent, it appears in the Communication Hub as a message from your property, directly above the AI's answer, so your team sees exactly what the guest saw.
• Turning the setting off does not remove disclosure messages that were already sent in past conversations.

Tone of Voice

• Professional and Formal, precise and courteous, and it avoids contractions
• Friendly and Conversational, warm and approachable
• Elegant and Discreet, refined and descriptive
• Hip and Trendy, casual, upbeat, and modern

Sources tab

The Sources tab lists everything DuveAI uses to answer guest questions: your Guest app posts, your upsells, and any text sources you add. Use Add Source to add a text source for information that is true but should not be published in the Guest app, such as "Reception services are unavailable between 22:00 and 08:30."

Brand-level settings

If you work with brands, each brand can run its own DuveAI configuration:

1. Open the brand's settings and go to DuveAI.
2. On all tabs, switch on the override toggle at the top. This one switch covers both tabs. Without it, the brand follows the account's settings.
3. Configure the brand's agents and behavior.

Host experience

• AI drafts, AI-sent replies, and priority flags all appear in the Communication Hub alongside your team's own messages.
• Each AI answer records which of your sources it used, so you can see what a reply was based on.
• AI answers and priority decisions both carry a thumbs up and thumbs down. Feedback goes to the Duve team to improve the product. It does not retrain the AI on your account, so to change behavior, update your knowledge sources.
• When the AI hands over, the conversation is flagged with a reason recorded.
• A manual reply from your team always takes precedence over a queued AI reply.
• Orders placed by the Sales agent show DuveAI as the order placer.

Guest experience

• Guests are answered in the language of their latest message.
• The tone is a warm, concise concierge: it acknowledges the question, then answers it, usually in a sentence or two, with bullets for multi-part questions.
• When AI Conversation Disclosure is on:
  • The message is translated into the language the guest is writing in. If that language is not supported, it is sent in English.
  • It arrives as its own message, just before the AI's answer.
  • It is sent once per conversation, not before every reply.
  • If the guest returns after 6 hours or more with no messages in the chat, the disclosure is sent again at the start of that new session.
• Guests who ask about a free upsell can have it ordered for them in the chat. For paid upsells, they receive a link to book it themselves.
• The AI never claims to have done something it cannot do. It points guests to self-service links and offers to check on anything that needs a person.
• It hands over to your team rather than guessing whenever it cannot answer confidently, and always for complaints, booking changes, emergencies, billing disputes, and any message with an attachment.

Troubleshooting

• The AI is not replying at all: Check the SmartReply mode first, and check whether the conversation is assigned to a person or a team, which takes it away from the AI.
• The Reservations or Sales card cannot be switched on: Read the message on the card. It tells you whether the agent is not on your plan, SmartReply is Disabled, or (for Reservations) no booking engine is connected.
• The Save button in Sales Settings is grayed out: At least one upsell type must be selected. Select Free Upsells.
• The AI escalated instead of answering: Usually, no source in your knowledge explicitly covers what the guest asked. Related is not enough, so a source about parking will not answer a question about bicycles.
• A guest question was answered wrongly: That is a knowledge problem, not a settings problem. Correct the source, then retest.
• Nothing is flagged as urgent: Check that the Priority card is switched on and that each user has set their own notification levels.
• A brand behaves differently from the rest of the account: Check the override switches on that brand's DuveAI tabs. Agents and Behavior share one override, and Sources has its own.
• The page shows an upgrade banner: DuveAI is not active on the account. Contact Duve Support.

Restrictions and limitations

• DuveAI answers only from your own content. It does not fill a gap with general knowledge about hotels, and it never tells a guest that information is missing. It offers to check instead.
• It answers only about the stay, the property, and the surrounding area.
• It cannot create, change, or cancel a reservation, and it never takes payment.
• The Sales agent can submit free upsells only. Paid upsells are coming soon.
• Tone of Voice is not editable by hosts at this time.
• The AI Weekly Report is not available yet.
• Notification preferences are per user and cannot be set centrally for a team.
• The Reservations and Sales agents only work while SmartReply is active, and the Reservations agent also needs a connected booking engine.
• The AI Conversation Disclosure message content is fixed and cannot be edited. Even with the setting on, the disclosure is not sent when:
  • SmartReply is in Suggestion Mode, because AI replies become drafts for your team rather than messages to the guest.
  • An Exception Rule is active on the conversation, for the same reason.
  • The AI decides not to reply to a message, so the guest sees nothing.
  • The conversation is escalated to your team, and no guest escalation message is sent for that turn.

Tips and tricks

• Fix the knowledge before you change the settings: Most issues with AI answer quality are content problems, not settings problems.
• Read a week of Suggestion Mode drafts before going to Auto Answer Mode: It is the cheapest quality check available.
• Use the thumbs down with a comment: The comment is what makes the feedback usable.
• Roll out Auto Answer Mode one segment at a time using Exception Rules, and remove the rules as your confidence grows.
• Keep guest-visible information in Guest app posts, where guests can also read it themselves, and reserve text sources for knowledge that should not be published.

FAQs

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