Should an AI agent give a price quote or stall?

"Quote, don't stall" means the agent gives a real price as soon as it has the dates and the party, instead of promising that a colleague will send an offer. At Hotel Pirin, our own hotel, the share of agent replies carrying a price rose from 50% to 92% after we set the rule on 24 September 2026.

What does "quote, don't stall" mean?

When someone writes "do you have a room for two adults and a child on these dates, and how much is it?", there are two ways to answer. You can say thank you and that a colleague will send an offer. Or you can answer: the total for the stay, what is included, how the child is priced, the deposit, the cancellation terms and how to book.

The first answer is polite and safe, and it costs hours or days. The second one is useful straight away. Our rule for the reservations agent at Hotel Pirin was: quote as soon as you have the dates and the party.

Hotel Pirin SKI & SPA is a 68 room hotel in Bansko, Bulgaria. It is owned by a Sellinger co founder and Sellinger runs the agents on it, so read the numbers below as an operator's own results, not an independent customer's. The full story is in the Hotel Pirin case study.

What changed at Hotel Pirin?

Before the rule, families with two or more children were handed to "a colleague who will send an offer". Those offers took from 3 hours to 7 days. After the rule, the agent quoted from the hotel's official rate card when a live availability check could not.

Where the dates or the ages of the children were missing, the first reply asked for them. The scores cover 22 and 43 scored replies, rated against the rules in force at the time.

Speed was already good. The median first reply across the 54 guest inquiries was 41 seconds (Messenger 12 seconds, email 49 seconds). The slowest first reply took 83 seconds, and 122 of 123 agent answers reached the guest within two minutes. Guests who wrote at 00:16 and at 23:01 had an answer in 49 and 56 seconds.

What must a good quote contain?

A quote that is only a number invites another round of questions. The rule we gave the agent covers six things:

• [ ] The total for the stay, for the real party, not a "from" price.
• [ ] What is included in that total.
• [ ] How children are priced where this applies to your business.
• [ ] The deposit.
• [ ] The cancellation terms.
• [ ] A way to book, in one step.

Where does the price come from, and what if the check fails?

The agent quotes from one of two sources. The first is the hotel's live availability system. The second is the official rate card, used when the live check fails. The agent is set up to price only from those two sources.

The live check was attempted in 30 of the 54 guest threads. In 5 of those it failed, and the agent priced from the rate card. We recomputed all 5 totals by hand: they matched the card. One missed a 3 night discount, which is the kind of error a fallback needs a person to catch.

What should the agent not answer?

An agent that quotes quickly still has to say "I do not know". The rule is: quote what you can compute from the live system or the rate card, say what you do not know, and hand over what needs a person.

Some messages go to people by design. Groups, travel agencies and Booking.com messages go to staff, and staff answered first on 54 of 57 group and agency threads.

What still needs a person?

Quoting fast did not fix the hand off, and it did not fix the booking step.

• The hand off to staff. Staff answered group requests in a median of almost 4 hours across 18 threads. After a guest was handed over to staff, the wait ran from 3 hours to 14 days. A hand off needs an alert and a clock.
• The booking itself. The agent created no reservation. Of the 7 reservations that followed an agent's first reply, 2 were made on the hotel website at the exact rate the agent had quoted, 1 was made on Booking.com 22 minutes later, and 4 were closed by staff, the owner or the reply desk.
• Attribution. Staff join threads that already look promising, and most agent only threads are Facebook chats that staff do not see. So these numbers do not show that the quote rule caused more bookings.

When can't you quote?

Not every business has a rate card. A waste carrier cannot price a collection without knowing the type of waste, its code, the quantity, the city and how often it is collected. In the Green Shield study the agent's rules were: no prices, qualify the request, offer a 15 minute call and hand offers to the founder. The founder confirmed meetings within the hour and sent offers one to three working days after the requirements arrived (Green Shield case study).

So the rule has a second half: if you cannot compute the price, ask for exactly the facts you need, in one message, and say when the offer will arrive.

How do you set the rule for your own agent?

The steps below are what we did at the hotel, written as a checklist. Adapt them to your own prices and your own team.

1. Write the quote rule in plain words. Name the facts the agent needs before it quotes (here, the dates and the party) and the six things a quote must contain.
2. Pick the price source and a fallback. Here the first source was the live availability system and the second was the official rate card. Tell the agent to use nothing else.
3. Tell it to ask when a fact is missing. If the dates or the ages of the children are missing, the first reply asks for them in one message.
4. Decide what goes to people. Groups, agencies and marketplace messages went to staff by design. Write down which messages those are.
5. Check the fallback totals by hand at first. We recomputed all 5 rate card totals. Do the same until you trust the rule.
6. Score a sample of replies. We scored replies from 1 to 5 against the rules in force at the time, which is how we saw relevance and next step clarity move.
7. Put a clock on every hand off. The agent answered in seconds, and a thread that needed a person took hours. Alert someone, and measure how long they take.

What do we not know?

We have no test that compares bookings with a price in the first reply against bookings without one. The before and after groups are small (18 and 36 inquiries). We can say the agent replied fast and more completely. We cannot say the rule alone produced more bookings.