Yelp Introduces AI-Powered Host and Receptionist Tools for Restaurants

Yelp's AI can now take reservations over the phone

Yelp's AI-powered solutions promise to answer calls, take reservations, and manage bookings for "understaffed" restaurants. Yelp Host and Yelp Receptionist are part of a broader push from the company and similar platforms embracing AI to streamline customer management "around the clock." Host is an AI agent that can answer calls from guests and manage tables, Yelp said. The AI can take reservations over the phone, modify or cancel bookings, provide up-to-date waiting times, and even capture special requests, as well as answer questions about the restaurant, like whether or not it has vegan options or welcomes dogs. It will also be able to send guests links to menus, join waitlists, or place orders for pickup or delivery through an automated follow-up text. Yelp first previewed the Host tool in April. It will be available to restaurants starting from $149 a month, or $99 a month for Yelp Guest Manager customers. New features are on the way, too, and the company said Host will be able to add diners directly to the Yelp Waitlist "in the coming weeks." Yelp is also launching Yelp Receptionist this week, an AI agent it says will handle incoming calls for businesses. Similar to Host, Yelp said the tool will answer calls, respond to customer questions, and collect details needed to vet leads, provide quotes, and schedule appointments. Both will come pre-trained on Yelp's business data and be ready to "work out-of-the-box to answer calls 24/7, or only when extra coverage is needed." Receptionist will only be available for "eligible" businesses to begin with, starting at $99 a month, but Yelp said it "will be widely available for local businesses across categories in the coming months." The tools are among several AI updates announced today as part of Yelp's fall release roster, including making its AI chatbot assistant available on all platforms and in Canada, a new feature that brings up photos and reviews when you point your phone at menus, and an AI-powered voice search to "make it easy to find what you need on Yelp by searching like how you'd speak." They join a growing range of AI features that can already stitch user content together to create restaurant reviews, help summarize customer reviews, and match users with service professionals in their area. Vocal AI agents like Host and Receptionist are part of a broader trend within the service and hospitality industry as Yelp and platforms like DoorDash tap technology as a means of helping businesses focus on in-person interactions and core services. Companies like Google are also working on similar products, but for customers, letting AI tools call businesses, ask questions, and make bookings on users' behalf. Maybe the time of AIs calling AIs is upon us.

Yelp Taking Your Dinner Reservation With AI Could Be a Mess

* Yelp Host's AI answers guest calls, books/modifies reservations, texts menus and waitlist links. * It could misbook tables, give wrong info, and tempt restaurants to replace hosts to cut costs. * $149/mo ($99 for Guest Manager users) -- cheaper than a human host, still a meaningful monthly cost. There are AIs that can call into a restaurant for you and take an order. But have you thought about AIs picking up your calls? Our world is getting increasingly more cursed every day, and Yelp now wants to be a part of that worsening. Yelp has announced the launch of Yelp Host, a new AI tool for restaurants. It was first previewed back in April, but it's now formally launching. The first of the new tools, Yelp Host, is an AI agent engineered to function as a digital front-of-house assistant. It can answer incoming guest calls and manage table reservations without human intervention. The system's capabilities include booking new reservations, modifying or canceling existing ones, and providing callers with up-to-the-minute wait times. Beyond simple booking tasks, Host can handle a range of common customer inquiries by drawing information directly from the restaurant's Yelp profile. It can inform potential diners about specific policies, such as whether the establishment is dog-friendly, or answer questions about the menu, including the availability of vegan or gluten-free options. And if someone needs it, the AI can also send a follow-up text message containing links to the restaurant's menu, an online waitlist, or a portal for placing pickup and delivery orders. The AI can be trained by the restaurant with information it can provide to users via calls. Yelp is seeking to pitch this as a tool that will help understaffed restaurants that might not have a dedicated human host. However, I'm still worried. Sure, AI has improved a whole bunch in recent times, but AI is still AI, and it might make mistakes. It will inevitably happen that users will call in, an AI will pick up their call, and it might mess up reservation times, tables, or even provide erroneous information to users. Furthermore, I'm also worried that bigger restaurants might choose to replace their existing human hosts with AI as a cost-saving measure. So not only will it probably mess up reservations every so often, but it's also very likely going to kill some jobs as well. Yelp Host is being offered as a subscription service, priced at $149 per month, with a discounted rate of $99 per month for businesses already subscribed to Yelp Guest Manager. It's not cheap, but it's probably way cheaper than paying an employee to handle calls, which is insanely appealing for businesses.