WeSpeak built an AI hotel receptionist on Gemini to handle guest inquiries, from first message to payment, across Latin America.
WeSpeak built an AI hotel receptionist on Gemini to handle guest inquiries, from first message to payment, across Latin America.
Building a virtual AI receptionist that never misses a booking
Every missed message is a missed booking. In hospitality, a guest who doesn’t receive a response in minutes moves on to the next hotel. The problem isn’t willingness but capacity: front desk teams cannot monitor every channel simultaneously around the clock, and the volume of inquiries across WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and email makes that impossible at scale.
WeSpeak is an AI-native startup building virtual receptionists exclusively for hotels across Latin America. Founded in 2024, WeSpeak is headquartered in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and incorporated in the United States. The company deploys specialized AI sales agents across Spanish Latin America, helping over 700 hotels automate guest interactions and boost direct bookings.
"Google has helped us create the best sales agent for the hospitality industry in the world, achieving a 70% automation rate for clients using our system," says Agustín Albiero, CTO and co-founder. "Hotels that use WeSpeak sell more—that is what the numbers show."
Before Google Cloud we had a server that could go down at any moment and take the entire platform with it. We destroyed the system and rebuilt it multiple times until we found the best solution. Today I rest easy, knowing everything is not going to break.
Agustín Albiero
CTO and Co-founder, WeSpeak
Building that product required infrastructure that would never go down. Early on, WeSpeak ran on a virtual private server that could fail without warning, taking the entire platform offline. For a hotel waiting on a guest's booking decision, every minute the platform was down was a direct revenue loss. WeSpeak needed infrastructure that matched the stakes of the business it was serving.
Moving to Google Cloud solved the infrastructure problem. Cloud Run eliminated the fixed server entirely, deploying serverless containers that scale automatically to handle guest inquiries across WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. To power these omnichannel conversations, WeSpeak leverages Gemini Pro and Gemini Flash using Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform and Google AI Studio. WeSpeak ran more than a thousand automated tests on every model considered, measuring hallucination rates across real hotel scenarios.
"Gemini was the only model that consistently passed those tests," says Albiero. "We tried the alternatives. None of them gave us what we needed at a price that made our business viable."
Handling every guest conversation from first message to confirmed payment
With Google Cloud in place, WeSpeak built an architecture designed around one principle: no message goes unanswered. A queue system with automatic retries ensures that if any external service has a momentary issue, the platform keeps trying until the guest receives a response.
Gemini is the engine that moves WeSpeak. Every conversation we respond to, we respond with Gemini. We tested all the competitors and literally Google has what works best for us in terms of quality and price.
Agustín Albiero
CTO and Co-founder, WeSpeak
Cloud Run hosts the virtual receptionist itself, a containerized API that scales automatically as inquiries arrive and scales back down when they stop, eliminating the cost of keeping fixed servers running around the clock.
Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform routes each conversation to the right model: Gemini Pro for the most complex hotels and Gemini Flash for the majority of properties where speed is the priority. Google AI Studio runs in the background as a fallback, ensuring that if Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform ever has an issue, the guest still receives a response powered by the same Gemini models.
The most significant technical shift came when WeSpeak moved from a workflow-based approach, where multiple AI models each handled specific parts of a conversation, to a single agentic model that could handle the entire interaction from start to finish. "We give the AI the tools it needs and let it be," says Albiero. "It can check availability, create a reservation, generate a payment link. No predefined flow. It just responds."
What that looks like in practice: a guest messages a hotel on WhatsApp asking about room availability. The AI responds with options and photos, answers questions about parking and late checkout, collects the guest's details, and generates a payment link. The reservation is confirmed in minutes, with no staff involvement.
Selling more for every hotel in Latin America, one conversation at a time
By deploying Google Cloud and Gemini, WeSpeak transformed guest communication into a high-yield sales channel. The platform automates 70% of all incoming guest inquiries end-to-end without staff intervention, doubling overall sales volume for participating hotels and boosting direct booking conversion rates by up to 167%. Flagship clients such as Holiday Inn Córdoba (86% auto-resolved, 23% increase in direct bookings) and Howard Johnson (89% auto-resolved, 21% increase in direct bookings) demonstrate these gains in practice. Furthermore, since switching to agentic Gemini models, support tickets dropped by 70%, allowing WeSpeak’s team to focus on expanding across Latin America.
That growth is pointed at the rest of Latin America. WeSpeak's next step is distribution: getting the solution in front of more hotels across the region, especially those that have never considered AI as a sales tool. "There are hotels in the middle of nowhere that we can bring to the frontier of technology," concludes Albiero. "That is what Google makes possible for us."
For the hospitality industry as a whole, Albiero sees AI doing something more profound than automating messages. Staff who spent their days answering the same WhatsApp questions can now focus entirely on the guests standing in front of them.
Google has brought us confidence in ourselves, in knowing that we have a product backed by cutting-edge technology that does not go down. I think of Google and I think of robustness and quality.
Agustín Albiero
CTO and Co-founder, WeSpeak
For other travel tech startups, his advice is direct: iterate constantly, automate your tests so you can adopt new technology safely, and start with what’s proven. "I would start with Google and Gemini," he confirms. "Because I already know it works."
WeSpeak is an AI-native startup building virtual receptionists exclusively for hotels, handling guest inquiries and closing reservations automatically across WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and email.
Industries: Travel and Hospitality, Startup
Locations: United States, Argentina
Products: Google Cloud, Cloud Run, Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, Gemini Flash, Gemini Pro, Google AI Studio
