Web chat puts a Hello Hotel chat widget on your hotel's own website. A visitor can ask a question without picking up the phone, and the conversation lands in the same shared inbox as your calls and texts — same thread, same team, nothing separate to check.
For an overview of what the widget can do, see Web Chat on hellohotel.co.
You'll need someone who can add a small piece of script to your website. That's usually whoever manages your site — a web developer, your marketing agency, or your website platform's admin.
Go to Settings → Web Chat.
Work through the setup cards on the page. They walk you through the widget's appearance and behavior, and a live preview shows your changes as you make them.
Copy the script snippet, which includes your publishable key.
Paste it into your website's HTML, just before the closing </body> tag, on every page where you want the widget to appear.
The widget loads in an iframe, so it won't interfere with your site's own styling or scripts.
A visitor's conversation arrives in your shared inbox next to calls and texts. Your team replies from the same place they reply to everything else — there's no separate web chat console to monitor.
Staff replies chime once each, rather than repeating while the conversation stays open.
With live human chat on, you can let visitors skip the contact form during business hours — a toggle in the Live human chat card, off by default. The visitor sees just a message box and a Start chat button, and can switch to the full form if they'd rather be texted or emailed back. They arrive in your inbox as "Website visitor," with no contact details.
Your team replies in the chat only, while the session is open (24 hours after the last message).
Business hours come from the same card. With none set, it counts as always open.
If hours close while a visitor has the widget open, the full form comes back with their message kept.
Every view of the widget shows a privacy notice under the message box — "By chatting with us, you agree to our Privacy Policy" — with a popover saying the chat may be monitored and recorded and, in the AI view, that replies may be written by an AI assistant. The link is the privacy policy URL you set in web chat settings, or else the privacy link from your texting registration; with neither, no notice shows. The settings card suggests privacy-policy wording you can copy (it isn't legal advice).
When a visitor asks about availability, the widget can show them real rooms — not just a rate quote.
Each result includes:
Room images
Multiple rates for the same room
A direct booking link carrying accurate pricing
This means a visitor can go from "do you have anything for Friday?" to a completed reservation without leaving the conversation. The rooms, images, and links come from your PMS. With Mews, the rates shown are the ones on your booking engine — Hello Hotel reads the booking engine URL set under AI Agent → Settings and quotes that engine's rates, so the price in the chat matches the price on the booking page. With Cloudbeds, results come straight from Cloudbeds' availability, with taxes and fees included.
Web chat has a kill switch. You can disable the widget from Hello Hotel without touching your website or asking anyone to remove the script — useful if you need to pause it outside of staffed hours or while you're making changes.
Standard embed only. The widget installs as an iframe via the script snippet. There aren't alternate embed formats.
Room search needs a PMS. It works with Mews (with your booking engine URL set) or Cloudbeds. Without one, the widget still works for conversations — you just won't get live room results.
Mews properties: the booking engine URL is required. Room search quotes the rates behind the booking engine URL set under AI Agent → Settings — the same rates, priced for the party size, that the "Book now" link lands on. Until that URL is set, the room-search toggle is disabled with a notice explaining that the link is needed.
The AI can answer on its own. If you turn on AI mode, the AI replies to visitors directly, without a staff member reviewing first. See How Web Chat AI Mode Works before enabling it.
An anonymous visitor can't be reached afterwards. Once the chat session ends, there's no way to text or email them unless they left details.
Chat messages don't start automations. The inbound-message trigger is SMS only, so a visitor's message never fires a workflow. See Inbound Message Trigger.
Use the chat widget in the app, in this help center, or on hellohotel.co, or email us at [email protected].
