What Is Akia’s AI Agent Feature?
Train Akia to help answer guest messages in your inbox, allowing your team to focus on important tasks and only be notified when Akia is unable to respond.
Akia works on the SMS, WhatsApp, Email, Airbnb, and Web Chat platforms, and is a great way to reduce your response time and answer repeat questions.
How Do I “Train” My AI Agent?
Training is how you teach Akia to answer your guests accurately and in your voice. The more you train Akia, the more questions it can handle on its own — so your team only steps in when it’s truly needed.
There are three places where training happens, each answering a different question:
Where | What it controls | Think of it as… |
Knowledge Base | What Akia knows about your property | The reference library Akia searches before replying |
Skills | How Akia behaves and speaks | Akia’s standard operating procedures and tone |
Self Training | Learning from real conversations | Akia proposing new answers for you to approve |
🤓 Akia already reads guest and reservation data from your PMS (and any custom fields you’ve created in Akia). You don’t need to re-enter information that’s already there — Akia knows it. Training is for everything outside that data: policies, local recommendations, procedures, and tone.
Knowledge Base
The Knowledge Base is the information Akia refers to when forming an answer. Open it from the left sidebar, or go directly to https://sys.akia.ai/knowledge-base.
It’s organized into five tabs: General, Unit Specific, Internal, Resources, and Self Training
General
Your main, guest-facing knowledge — policies, FAQs, recommendations, and procedures. Entries are grouped into categories (e.g. Pre-Arrival, Amenities, Nearby), and each category holds individual references.
To add knowledge:
- On the General tab, click the + on the left to create a category and name it.
- Group similar topics together so they’re easy for staff to scan (e.g. Parking, Directions, and Door Code all under Arrival).
- Add references inside the category. For each one you provide:
- A prompt/title — the guest question or topic this answers.
- A response — what Akia should say or reference when answering a guest.
- Keep adding categories and references wherever you notice Akia struggling to answer a question.
💡 More is better. The richer your Knowledge Base, the more Akia handles without your team. You can paste message tokens (custom fields/attributes) right into a response, and Akia will fill them in per guest.
Example categories to start with
Address / Property Location
Check-in & Check-out Times
Parking / Parking Information
Pet Policy
WiFi / Internet Access
Door Code / Access
Early Check-in & Late Checkout Policy
Local Attractions & Restaurant Recommendations
Gym / Fitness Center
Thermostat / AC / Heating
Available Amenities
You can configure how Akia should handle each section in the Knowledge Base based on the following settings:
✔️ Always: Akia will always try and respond to the guest/leverage the available capability/response. Only when she is unable to handle the conversation would she notify your team to intervene.
🤚 Ask (Supervised): Akia will suggest a message with her intended response for your team to allow, edit, or deny - no message, task, or other action will automatically take place.
Managing supervised messages
When a guest messages in, you will see a suggested message box if Akia was able to formulate a response to the guest:
You have four options based on the suggested message:
- Always Allow - Akia’s answer was on point and you want Akia to automatically send the given message to any guest when they ask a similar question.
- Allow - Akia’s answer was correct but you still want to monitor this response for future guests - you do not want her to automatically reply to guests who ask this/similar questions.
- Edit - Akia wasn’t completely correct, train her so she learns! Click the pencil icon to edit the her message before sending it.
- When you edit Akia’s message, you will be connected to the chat
Once you send the message, Akia will indicate a staff member edited the suggested message:
- Deny - You do not approve of the suggested message and don’t want Akia to send it to the guest nor modify to re-train her.
🚫 Disabled: Akia will not try and answer/handle these types of requests and will always notify your team.
Unit Specific
Knowledge that applies to one specific unit or location type (or specific unit) rather than the whole property — for example, the gate code for a particular cabin or the parking spot for a specific room. Use this when the answer differs from unit to unit so Akia gives each guest the detail that matches their stay.
Select the room type or particular room to set up the particular Akia reference.
You can also upload unit-specific files or links in the Unit Specific > Select the unit type/unit > Resources section!
Internal
Same idea as General, but for staff only. Akia uses Internal knowledge to decide what to do, but never repeats it to guests. Good for escalation rules, vendor contacts, and procedures you don’t want surfaced in a guest reply.
Resources
A place to store links — external guides, policy documents, or reference pages — that support your knowledge base. Click Add Link to add one.
Self Training
Self Training is Akia’s feedback loop. As real conversations happen, Akia identifies recurring questions and drafts answers for them — then waits for your team to review before it uses anything. Nothing is added to your live Knowledge Base until you approve it. Find it under Knowledge Base → Self Training (https://sys.akia.ai/knowledge-base/self-training).
Each proposed reference shows four things:
Column | What it tells you |
Reference | The guest question Akia heard, and the answer it proposes |
Confidence | How sure Akia is about the answer — HIGH, MEDIUM, or LOW |
Observed | How often Akia has seen this question come up |
Approved | How many of your team members have approved it so far |
Click any row to review it, then:
- Accept — The answer is added to your General knowledge, where Akia can use it going forward. (You’ll see a confirmation that it’s now in the General section.)
- Reject — The proposed answer is discarded and Akia won’t use it.
💡 Review Self Training regularly — it’s the fastest way to grow your Knowledge Base, because the suggestions come straight from questions your guests are actually asking. When the queue is empty you’ll see “No self-trained references waiting for review.”
Skills
While the Knowledge Base controls what Akia knows, Skills control how Akia behaves — its rules, its standard operating procedures, and its tone of voice. Open Skills from the sidebar, or go to https://sys.akia.ai/skills/guest-services/prompts.
Prompts
The core instructions that shape Akia’s behavior and voice. To edit, start a draft, make your changes, and save to publish. Each saved version is kept, so you can see how your instructions have changed over time.
Examples of effective instructions:
- Always notify staff if a guest reports an issue in their room.
- If a guest says “Confirm upgrade,” notify staff immediately and do not respond.
- Keep replies warm, concise, and on a first-name basis.
A few phrases Akia understands:
- Open ticket / notify staff / escalate — Akia re-opens the conversation (red dot in the inbox) so your team is alerted.
- Create task for ___ — Akia routes a task to the department or person you name.
- Don’t respond — Akia stays silent. Pair this with an escalation instruction if you still want to be notified.
Conditional Prompts
Instructions that apply only to guests who match certain filters — your way to tailor Akia’s behavior for specific segments without cluttering the main prompt. For example: a different tone for owners or VIPs, or special handling for in-house guests.
- On the Guest Services agent, open the Conditional tab and click Add Conditional Prompt.
- Write the instruction Akia should follow.
- Add at least one filter so it only applies to matching guests (an instruction with no filter belongs in the main Prompts editor instead).
Permissions
Configure Akia’s agent mode and what permissions she has when messaging guests.
✔️ Always: Akia will always try and respond to the guest/leverage the available capability/response. Only when she is unable to handle the conversation would she notify your team to intervene.
🤚 Ask (Supervised): Akia will suggest a message with her intended response for your team to allow, edit, or deny - no message, task, or other action will automatically take place.
Managing supervised messages
When a guest messages in, you will see a suggested message box if Akia was able to formulate a response to the guest:
You have four options based on the suggested message:
- Always Allow - Akia’s answer was on point and you want Akia to automatically send the given message to any guest when they ask a similar question.
- Allow - Akia’s answer was correct but you still want to monitor this response for future guests - you do not want her to automatically reply to guests who ask this/similar questions.
- Edit - Akia wasn’t completely correct, train her so she learns! Click the pencil icon to edit the her message before sending it.
- When you edit Akia’s message, you will be connected to the chat
Once you send the message, Akia will indicate a staff member edited the suggested message:
- Deny - You do not approve of the suggested message and don’t want Akia to send it to the guest nor modify to re-train her.
🚫 Disabled: Akia will not try and answer/handle these types of requests and will always notify your team.
Tasks
Akia will refer to the items you designate in this section to automatically create tasks for your staff members. If an item is not defined here, the agent will not automatically create the task and instead notify your team to respond/manually create the task.
We recommend phrasing the items in a Verb Noun format (Bring ___, Deliver ___, Investigate ___) so the agent is better suited to handle different ways guests might message in. (A task for bringing crib is different than fixing a crib.) The agent does have a concept of synonyms, so “Sheets” would be considered the same as “Linens,” but you can also specify each item individually if there’s specific nuances.
When you create a task item, you can either have the agent auto assign the task to a queue/department based on the nature of the task, or directly specify which queue/department the task should be created for.
Learn more about Tasks here: Create and Manage Tasks
Self Training
Self Training is Akia’s feedback loop. As real conversations happen, Akia identifies recurring questions and drafts answers for them — then waits for your team to review before it uses anything. Nothing is added to your live Knowledge Base until you approve it. Find it under Knowledge Base → Self Training (https://sys.akia.ai/knowledge-base/self-training).
Each proposed reference shows four things:
Column | What it tells you |
Reference | The guest question Akia heard, and the answer it proposes |
Confidence | How sure Akia is about the answer — HIGH, MEDIUM, or LOW |
Observed | How often Akia has seen this question come up |
Approved | How many of your team members have approved it so far |
Click any row to review it, then:
- Accept — The answer is added to your General knowledge, where Akia can use it going forward. (You’ll see a confirmation that it’s now in the General section.)
- Reject — The proposed answer is discarded and Akia won’t use it.
💡 Review Self Training regularly — it’s the fastest way to grow your Knowledge Base, because the suggestions come straight from questions your guests are actually asking. When the queue is empty you’ll see “No self-trained references waiting for review.”
Tips for Training Akia
- Start with your most common questions. Check-in, parking, WiFi, and pet policy usually cover a large share of guest messages.
- Be specific and complete. Add the actual door code, the exact address, the real policy — vague entries lead to vague answers.
- Let Self Training do the heavy lifting. Approve good suggestions instead of writing everything from scratch.
- Use the right tool. Facts → Knowledge Base. Behavior and tone → Skills. Segment-specific rules → Conditional Prompts.
- Revisit often. When you notice Akia hand off a question it should have answered, add that answer — it won’t miss it again.
📣 Need help getting started? Reach out to your Akia implementation manager or contact support at help@akia.com.
What Is Supervised (Ask) Mode vs Agentic Mode?
By default, your agent’s responses will be in a supervised mode. This means the agent will not automatically respond to guests but it will suggest the message it would’ve sent to the guest. This is a great way to evaluate your agent’s training and tone of voice to make sure it’s behaving correctly and referencing the correct information before you switch it to the standard mode where the agent will automatically respond to guests if it’s able to.
When a guest messages in, you will see a suggested message box if Akia was able to formulate a response to the guest:
You have four options based on the suggested message:
- Always Allow - Akia’s answer was on point and you want Akia to automatically send the given message to any guest when they ask a similar question.
- Allow - Akia’s answer was correct but you still want to monitor this response for future guests - you do not want her to automatically reply to guests who ask this/similar questions.
- Edit - Akia wasn’t completely correct, train her so she learns! Click the pencil icon to edit the her message before sending it.
- When you edit Akia’s message, you will be connected to the chat
Once you send the message, Akia will indicate a staff member edited the suggested message:
- Deny - You do not approve of the suggested message and don’t want Akia to send it to the guest nor modify to re-train her.
Use Akia to Facilitate Bookings
Akia can help direct guests to book on your booking engine by providing them options based on their desired dates and party size. This works if guests text or email in, but it’s an even better experience if you use our Web Chat feature on your website.
Add Akia’s Web Chat feature to your website: Web Chat
To set this up, go to your property configuration settings page (Admins or Super Admins only) and paste in your booking link from your website - the URL when the available rooms are shown to website visitors. Akia will automatically try and parse the URL into a dynamic link so the agent can provide the correct redirect link based on the guest’s filters.
Remember to Save Changes at the bottom of the page, and try messaging in via web chat or texting your property number asking to book a stay!
To add photos to the rooms being offered in web chat, that would be set up in your Room Types page (Hotel) where you can upload a photo for each room type, or Listings page (Vacation Rental) where you can upload an image per listing.
FAQs
- Can Akia respond to guests who are not currently on property or do not have a reservation?
- Yes! Akia can respond to all messages regardless of platform.
- Is each guest conversation unique? Is there a risk of Akia responding to one guest (John Doe) based on the conversation with another guest (Jane Smith)?
- All guest conversations are unique, Akia will only respond based on what was discussed in each individual conversation.
- When will Akia try and respond to guests?
- Akia will try and respond to any unattended conversation, meaning as long as no user is connected to the chat, she will try and respond if it’s able to. If Akia has already opened up a ticket (meaning she could not answer the guest herself) and the guest asks follow up questions, she will not automatically respond.
- Can Akia search up the web for information?
- Yes! If you allow Web Search in your Permissions, she will be able to search the web for information.