Athena — Your AI Revenue Assistant
Athena is the AI revenue assistant built into Hotellistat. She watches your hotel's data for you, tells you when something needs attention, answers your questions in plain language, and — only ever with your confirmation — can carry out changes for you.
This guide explains what Athena does, how you work with her, what she looks at, and the promises we make about your data.
A note on setup: whether Athena is switched on for your property, and which parts, is configured by the Hotellistat team based on your subscription. Wherever you see "→ contact Hotellistat", that's something we set up for you — just reach out to your Hotellistat contact or [email protected].
1. At a glance
What it is | An AI revenue-management assistant inside Hotellistat |
How you reach it | The Ask Athena page in the app, and proactive cards in your Insight Feed |
What it does | Proactively flags what needs attention · answers your questions · gives opinionated recommendations · can act for you (with your confirmation) |
Cost | Included in your Hotellistat plan; the proactive/advisory tier is part of the paid Athena package (→ contact Hotellistat) |
Can it change my data? | Only through Hotellistat, only what your rights allow, and only after you confirm each change. It can never write to any database directly. Which actions Athena may perform is set per role (see §4). |
Languages | Ask in your own language — Athena answers in kind |
2. What Athena can do for you
Athena works alongside you, like an extra revenue manager who never sleeps.
She spots things before you ask. Athena reviews your hotel on a schedule and, when something matters — a weekend pacing behind last year, a date range with no price, a drop in your review score — she posts a short, specific note to your Insight Feed. Not a dashboard to interpret: a clear "here's what I see, here's what I'd do."
She answers your questions. Open Ask Athena and ask anything about your hotel:
"Show me this week's pickup by room category." → a table you can download as Excel/CSV.
"How is my weekend of the 22nd pacing versus last year?" → the figures, read for you.
"How do I set a minimum-stay restriction?" → a plain answer with a link to the exact help article and settings page.
She has an opinion. For questions that call for judgement, Athena doesn't just show numbers — she interprets them the way an experienced revenue manager would, and tells you what she'd do and why.
She knows her way around Hotellistat. Athena knows every page in the product, what each one shows and which figures sit behind it. Ask "where do I check whether the OTAs are undercutting us?" and you get the right screen by name, with a link — not a guess.
She can act — with your yes. When Athena proposes a change she can carry out (for example adjusting a rate), she does it only after you confirm. You're always in control; nothing happens silently.
She tells you when she can't. If you ask for something Hotellistat doesn't measure, Athena says so plainly and offers the closest figure she does have. She will never quietly relabel a different number to look like an answer.
3. Your data is safe — the promises we make
This is the most important section, so we'll be explicit.
Athena can never change your data on her own. Every change she makes goes through Hotellistat with your explicit confirmation, using exactly the permissions your user already has. She reads from a strictly read-only connection and physically cannot write to any database.
Nothing happens without your confirmation. Athena proposes; you decide. Looking at your data is free and automatic; doing anything always asks first.
Your internal data stays yours. Your PMS/on-the-books data (occupancy, revenue, reservations, pickup, your STR benchmark) is used only for your hotel — never shared with or shown to a competitor, even when that competitor is also a Hotellistat customer.
Competitor information is public only. Where Athena talks about your competitive set, she uses the same public signals any rate-shopping tool sees — shopped OTA rates and public reviews — never a competitor's private data.
4. How you work with Athena
The Athena page
Ask Athena is its own page in the Hotellistat app, with your past conversations listed down the left. Every chat has its own link, so you can come back to one later or send it to a colleague. Ask in normal language — no query syntax, no menus.
Athena figures out whether you want to see data, get a how-to answer, or get an analysis, and responds accordingly:
Data requests ("show / display / report …") come back as clean tables and figures, which you can download as Excel (XLSX) or CSV.
How-to questions ("how do I …", "where can I …") come back with a short answer and links to the right help-center article and settings page.
Analysis questions ("why …", "should I …", "what would you do about …") come back with an interpretation and a recommendation.
Every answer includes, at the bottom, the sources it used — links to the underlying Hotellistat page, the relevant setting, or the help article — so you can go straight to the detail or take the next step.
Who in your team can do what
Athena's abilities are switched on per role, in Settings → Hotel → Roles, under its own Athena section. Four separate switches:
Switch | What it allows |
Ask Athena | The chat, voice input and the Insight Feed |
Set prices | Let Athena set a price and derive it through the price grid |
Set corrections | Let Athena apply a correction to an ARIS strategy |
Push prices to PMS | Let Athena push prices to the PMS |
Athena always comes second. Switching an action on here does not grant the underlying permission — it only lets Athena do something the person could already do by hand. If a role cannot change prices in the pricing module, then Athena will not change prices for them either, however that switch is set. Where the two disagree, the restriction wins, and Athena says so before offering rather than failing halfway through.
Sharing a chat with a colleague
A conversation is private to whoever had it. You can share one with named colleagues at your hotel, or with the whole hotel, from the chat itself — and unshare it again. A shared chat is read-only for the people you shared it with.
Sending an answer on
Any answer can be emailed straight out of the chat — to yourself, to colleagues at your hotel, or to an address you type in. Pick the format you need and Athena attaches it: CSV, Excel (XLSX) or PDF. The full answer comes through in the body of the mail as well, so the recipient can read it without opening anything.
If you add an address outside your organisation, Athena flags it before sending — so a mistyped or external recipient is a deliberate choice, never an accident.
The Insight Feed
This is where Athena reaches out to you. Proactive insights appear as cards on your hotel's schedule (in your local time). Each card is a single, concrete observation with Athena's recommendation. You can read them whenever suits you — they wait for you in the feed.
5. What Athena helps with
Athena is a revenue-management assistant, so her strengths are the levers that move your performance:
Pricing — dates priced flat while demand isn't flat, prices that ignore the forecast, the last few rooms sold too cheaply.
Pace & pickup — how you're tracking versus the same time last year, near-in cancellations/wash you should be reselling, weeks with no booking movement.
Business mix — over-reliance on one segment, low-value nights crowding out better business, group exposure on specific dates.
Rate coverage — future nights with no live price (inventory you can't sell).
Reputation — a slipping review score, which quietly erodes the rates you can achieve.
Reports & data — any figure in your hotel, shown on demand and downloadable.
How-to & orientation — where to find a feature, how a setting works, what a term means.
She reasons using your property type (city hotel, resort, campsite, hostel, long-stay, apartment), so her thresholds and language fit your kind of property — beds vs. rooms, short vs. long booking windows, and so on.
6. What Athena looks at
Athena reads the data you already have in Hotellistat — nothing new to connect:
Your on-the-books data — occupancy, ADR, RevPAR, revenue, reservations, pickup, business mix (from your PMS integration).
Your rates — your own prices and your competitors' shopped rates.
Reviews & reputation — your scores and public competitor scores.
Your ARIS setup — strategies, recommendations, forecast and KPIs.
Benchmark & budgets — where you have them (STR-style benchmark, planned targets).
What's available depends on what your property has connected. Some hotels have an STR benchmark or budgets, others don't. Athena simply uses what's there — and where a data family is missing, she says so and points you to the help center rather than guessing. If you'd like a data source she mentions is missing, → contact Hotellistat.
7. Proactive alerts & timing
Proactive insights are scheduled per property, in your local time. You tell us the hours that suit you (for example a morning and an early-evening check), and Athena reviews your hotel at those times.
Alerts only fire when there's something worth saying — Athena stays quiet when your hotel is on track. No noise for the sake of it.
→ contact Hotellistat to change your alert hours or turn proactive insights on/off.
8. Good to know
Athena advises; you decide. Her recommendations are exactly that — recommendations. You stay in control of every pricing and strategy decision.
She'll always ask before acting. Any change Athena can make waits for your explicit confirmation.
She won't invent numbers. If the data to answer something isn't available for your hotel, Athena tells you so and points you to the help center — she never makes up a figure or a table.
Getting prices to the PMS. Set the price or the correction, and ARIS uploads to your PMS per your strategy configuration — as it always has. A direct "push now" from the chat is not switched on yet; Athena says so rather than pretending.
Availability grows over time. Athena's abilities (the questions she can answer, the actions she can take) are expanding continuously; if there's something you wish she could do, tell us — that feedback shapes the roadmap. Schedules and Wizards are visible in the chat sidebar and marked Soon for exactly that reason.
9. Getting started
Make sure Athena is enabled for your property. The Hotellistat team switches on the chat and (for the advisory tier) the proactive insights. → contact Hotellistat if you don't see Ask Athena in your app.
Ask her something. Open the chat and try a real question — "show me this month's occupancy versus last year", or "how do I load my competitors".
Set your alert hours. Tell us when you'd like Athena to review your hotel (in your local time), and watch the Insight Feed.
Give feedback. Tell your Hotellistat contact what's useful and what's missing — it directly shapes what Athena learns to do next.
Contacts
Hotellistat customer team — enabling Athena, setting your alert hours, any question about what she can do for your property: [email protected]