Vadstena Klosterhotel cuts booking email handling time by 90% with Altek AI and VISIT

By combining Altek AI with live booking data from the hotel’s VISIT setup (powered by BookVisit and VisBook), Vadstena Klosterhotel reduced active handling time from 5 minutes to 30 seconds in one measured booking workflow, helping the reception team respond faster to high-intent guest inquiries.

Vadstena Klosterhotel is a destination where atmosphere matters.

Located on the shores of Lake Vättern in Sweden, the hotel combines historic surroundings with modern hospitality, welcoming guests for hotel stays, spa visits, conferences, weddings, and weekend experiences.

For many guests, the first touchpoint with Vadstena is not the reception desk. It is an email.

The challenge: every unanswered guest email is a booking at risk

Vadstena receives approximately 690 guest emails per month. Many are high-intent inquiries from guests actively deciding whether to book, comparing dates, weighing room categories, asking about packages, or checking availability.

For the reception team, the inbox had become one of those invisible tasks that kept growing in the background.

The inbox covered a wide range of request types: leisure room bookings, group stays, spa packages, conference and wedding inquiries, booking modifications, special requests, and restaurant reservations. In a three-month analysis, single leisure room bookings alone accounted for an average of 109 emails per month, the largest single category.

These are not always simple FAQ emails. Each one can require a staff member to check live availability in BookVisit or VisBook, compare dates and room categories, confirm pricing, and compose a personal reply — all while managing the front desk.

In one measured benchmark, a routine room-booking email took 5 minutes of active handling time. In the real reception workflow, with interruptions, context switching, and parallel desk responsibilities, the elapsed time was closer to 15 minutes.

At that rate, the inbox was not just an administrative burden. It was a conversion risk. When guests are actively comparing options, slow replies create risk.

Why they chose Altek AI combined with VISIT’s platform solutions

Vadstena did not want a new platform for the reception team to manage. They wanted their existing workflow to work better.

Altek’s AI Email Agent stood out because it works directly inside Outlook and connects with BookVisit and VisBook, the systems the reception team already uses every day.

Instead of switching between systems, checking availability manually, and writing every response from scratch, staff receive an AI-generated draft directly inside the inbox.

The team stays in control. Staff review the draft, edit where needed, and send the final reply themselves.

The AI handles the research and the drafting. The reception team handles the relationship.

The solution: from inbox message to booking-ready reply

When a guest inquiry arrives, Altek pulls the relevant data from the VISIT platforms BookVisit and VisBook and generates a draft reply directly in Outlook. The draft includes the right rooms, the right rates, and the right next step for the guest.

Instead of starting from a blank email, staff start from a draft that is already close to ready.

The AI helps with workflows such as:

• Room availability questions
• Price and date comparisons
• Room category explanations
• Booking proposal requests
• Spa, package, and weekend stay questions

Email is the starting point, but the value is broader than email automation. Altek, together with BookVisit and VisBook, helps the team retrieve the right data, prepare the right response, and move the guest inquiry closer to booking inside the workflow they already use.

From inquiry to booking: a real example

A guest wanted to book two double rooms in Nunneklostret for one night and asked whether any rooms with a Lake Vättern view were still available.

Handling this manually required the staff member to check room availability with Lake Vättern views for the dates, identify which categories were still open, look up pricing, and write a reply from scratch, all while potentially serving guests at the front desk.

With Altek, the AI-generated draft used connected booking context to prepare a complete reply. The staff member reviewed it in approximately 30 seconds and sent it without edits. The speed gain comes from Altek instantly reading the VISIT system’s availability and pricing, removing the need for the staff member to manually query the platform.

The reply is accurate, complete, and moves the guest directly toward the next booking step.

Results: faster responses, recovered capacity, more time for guests

In the measured benchmark, a booking-intent guest email took 5 minutes of active handling time manually. With Altek AI, the same type of email took about 30 seconds to review and send.

That is a 90% reduction in active handling time for the tested room-booking workflow.

The value is not only that the team writes faster. The value is that high-intent guest inquiries can be answered while the guest is still deciding.

Using a placeholder loaded staff cost of 330 SEK/hour, the estimated saving represents approximately 17,100 SEK per month in recovered reception capacity.

These figures are modelled based on one measured benchmark workflow and Vadstena's average email volume. Actual savings vary depending on inquiry complexity and category.

The bigger picture: response speed as a revenue advantage

Response speed is not just an operational metric. In hospitality, it is a revenue variable.

Guests comparing options across properties are more likely to move forward when they receive a fast, clear, helpful reply. A high-intent inquiry that sits unanswered, or arrives at a desk already stretched thin, is a booking that may not happen.

With Altek, Vadstena’s reception team can respond to room inquiries, package questions, and booking requests faster, without sacrificing the warm, personal tone the hotel is known for.

What’s next

Vadstena will continue using Altek’s AI Email Agent to reduce manual inbox work, improve response speed, and free the reception team for the guest experience.

The next phase is expansion into more complex, higher-value inquiry types: group bookings, conferences, weddings, packages, and event requests. These workflows are likely to show even greater time savings and potential revenue impact from faster responses to high-intent guest inquiries.

Altek helps hotels turn high-intent guest inquiries into bookings faster, working inside the inbox, connected to live booking data, with human review where it matters. Within this ecosystem, VISIT provides the robust booking infrastructure, and Altek provides the speed and intelligence to turn that infrastructure into a competitive advantage.