10 Best AI Receptionists for Hotels That Keep Their Existing PBX (2026)

TL;DR: Most hotels do not need to replace their phone system to add AI. This list compares 10 AI receptionists that work alongside an existing PBX, with LuMay Voxentis first, and separates basic call handling from booking inside a PMS.

An AI receptionist for hotels is a voice agent that answers guest and prospect calls, resolves routine requests, and hands the rest to staff. The real buying decision is how it connects to your PBX and PMS.

Ranking criteria and disclosure: LuMay publishes this list and ranks its own offering. We ranked on fit behind an existing PBX, governance and human escalation, published pricing and deployment evidence, then hotel PMS booking depth as a separate check. No vendor paid for placement.

Quick Answer: LuMay Voxentis ranks first for high-volume hotel groups needing custom flows behind a PBX. Lance is the most hotel-specific fit: it connects over SIP and rings existing extensions. For PMS booking, compare Akia, Canary, HelloShift and SendSquared.

Basic Call Handling vs PMS-Integrated Booking

Vendors use the word receptionist for very different products. Before comparing names, decide which of these jobs you need the AI to do on the call.

• Basic call handling
  • Answers FAQs such as parking, check-in time, pets and directions
  • Takes messages, routes calls and transfers to the right extension
  • Does not need a PMS connection to deliver value
• PMS-integrated reservations
  • Checks live availability and rates, then creates or modifies a booking
  • Needs a supported PMS or booking engine, and often payment handling
    • Confirm write-back, not only read access, before you sign
• Operations follow-through
  • Turns in-stay requests into housekeeping or maintenance tasks
  • Usually depends on the rest of the vendor's platform

Conduit's own ranking makes the same split between voice bots that take messages and agents that act in the PMS. Treat booking claims as something to test on your own line.

Why Keeping Your Existing PBX Matters

Many hotels have invested in PBX systems tied to room phones, wake-up calls, call accounting and emergency routing. Ripping that out to add AI adds risk and cost the guest never sees.

• What coexistence usually means
  • The AI connects through a SIP trunk or call forwarding in front of, or beside, the PBX
  • Transfers ring the extensions and hunt groups staff already use
• What to protect
  • Room-to-room dialing, operator fallback and life-safety call paths
    • Fire, medical and security calls should always reach a person

For the technical detail, see our guide on how AI voice agents work with an existing PBX.

10 Best AI Receptionists for Hotels: Comparison Table

Third-party details below come from HelloShift's hotel AI phone answering comparison, checked by its authors against vendor sites, and from vendor pages. Confirm features and prices with each vendor.

The 10 Best AI Receptionists for Hotels, Ranked

1. LuMay Voxentis

LuMay's AI Products page states that Voxentis deploys behind your existing PBX, with SIP, Twilio and PSTN telephony and support for 14+ languages and dialects. That is the core requirement of this list.

The evidence is not hotel-specific. In LuMay's Voice Agent deployment story, a North American financial-services team ran Voxentis behind its existing PBX and handled 1.2M calls per month.

• Best for: hotel groups, resorts and management companies with high call volume or custom flows
  • Multi-property routing, multilingual front desk, after-hours overflow
• Strengths: published plans, governance and human escalation, flexible deployment
• Limits: no published hotel PMS connector, so reservation write-back needs scoping as a custom integration

2. Lance

Lance is the most direct hotel answer to the keep-your-PBX question. HelloShift reports that it connects over a SIP trunk alongside the existing phone system, so transfers ring phones and extensions already in place.

• Best for: independent and branded hotels that want AI inside current call routing
• Strengths: 99+ languages, housekeeping work orders during calls, texts from the hotel number
• Limits: no PMS named, so it is not a booking engine on the call

3. HelloShift

HelloShift puts AI voice inside a hotel operations app with messaging, check-in, housekeeping and maintenance. Calls ring staff first, and the AI answers only when nobody picks up.

• Best for: hotels that want phone, texting and back-of-house in one system
• Strengths: published per-room pricing, PMS booking built per PMS
• Limits: HelloShift wrote the source comparison, so verify its claims in a demo

• Best for: hotels already using Canary for check-in, authorizations or upsells
• Limits: quote-only pricing; housekeeping handled through a partner

5. Akia

Akia's voice agent hands calls to the front desk, housekeeping, maintenance or manager. Hashlogics names Akia its strongest packaged pick for answering, booking and taking payment in the PMS.

• Best for: properties that want reservations completed on the call
• Limits: voice is listed on Akia's top plan only

6. Conduit

Conduit runs voice and text on one agent and says it writes back across the PMSs it connects to. Most of its listed PMS integrations are vacation-rental platforms.

• Best for: small groups and rental-heavy portfolios that want end-to-end resolution
• Limits: pricing unit for hotels is not defined publicly

7. SendSquared

SendSquared is a hospitality CRM with AI voice, warm transfer and live PMS sync for availability, rates and reservations. It names more than a dozen PMS integrations.

• Best for: resorts and rental operators that want voice inside a marketing CRM
• Limits: CRM-first product; heavier than a phone-only need

8. KITT by The Hotels Network

KITT handles booking inquiries and reservations by voice or text, and sends the hotel a translated summary. It belongs to a direct-booking personalization suite.

• Best for: hotels already using The Hotels Network for direct bookings

9. Annette (Travel Outlook)

Hashlogics lists Annette as voice-first, routing calls to human agents who complete bookings. It suits hotels that want people, not AI, to take the reservation.

• Best for: properties outsourcing reservation calls with an AI front layer

10. Retell AI (build your own)

Retell is a general voice platform with per-minute pricing. You or a partner build the PMS lookups, transfer rules and after-hours logic yourself.

• Best for: hotel groups with developers and unusual call flows
• Limits: you own maintenance and testing

How to Choose an AI Receptionist for Hotels: Checklist

• Phone system
  • Does it connect by SIP trunk, forwarding or carrier porting?
  • Will transfers ring existing extensions and hunt groups?
• Booking depth
  • Which PMS can it write to today, and is payment captured on the call?
    • Ask for a live test against your own PMS sandbox
• Handoff and safety
  • Does it ring staff first or answer first?
  • Are emergency calls always routed to a person?
• Cost
  • Per room, per minute, per unit or quote-only?
  • What does a peak month cost at your call volume?

Our comparison of AI voice agents for existing PBX and SIP systems covers cross-industry options, and the Voxentis product page lists plans and features.

Questions to Ask Vendors Before a Pilot

• Evidence
  • Which hotels like ours run it today, and on which PBX?
• Languages
  • Which languages are live, and how is accent handling tested?
• Data
  • Is cardholder data ever handled, and where are recordings stored?

For budgeting, compare per-minute and per-room models against your real call logs. Our breakdown of AI receptionist features, costs and benefits explains the trade-offs.

Next Step

Want to see Voxentis answer calls behind your existing PBX? Book a LuMay demo and bring a sample of your hotel's call types.