BONNIE È ORA DISPONIBILE SU WHATSAPP
Restaurant Sea Palace has served Chinese cuisine from a floating restaurant in Amsterdam since 1984, and is now run by the second and third generation of the same family.
Sea Palace has one or two hostesses on the floor most nights, greeting guests at the door and answering the phone at the same time. That’s been the case since 1984, when Kai’s father founded the restaurant on the water in Amsterdam, serving Chinese cuisine from a boat that’s since become a fixture on the city’s canals. Kai took over as owner in 2007. His daughter Isabel, 21, now works there part-time, the third generation in a business her grandmother still helps run.
Isabel spent years working the door as a hostess, and describes what a weekend service actually looked like before Bonnie: over a thousand guests through the door on a busy weekend, a queue building at reception, and often no one else to share the phone with. “Sometimes it felt like I was working in a call centre,” she says. “One phone in one hand and the other in the other, and just, hello, hello, hello.”
None of what came through that phone needed much thought. Opening hours. Table availability. The same handful of questions, asked by a different guest every few minutes, whilst the queue in front of her kept growing.
There were no formal doubts about bringing in an AI assistant. There was, simply, too much ringing and not enough hands to answer it.
How it all came together
There wasn’t a single moment Kai decided Bonnie was working. He tested it for a long time before he was confident enough to commit. “It was quite new technology,” he says. “I wanted to make sure it was working, so I tested a lot before I implemented it.” For a family business that’s answered its own phones for four decades, that caution tracks, and so does the fact that testing, not a leap of faith, was what changed his mind.
Bonnie fits a pattern already in place at Sea Palace, where QR ordering has quietly changed how staff take orders without replacing the people taking them. Kai has said publicly that he sees technology as something that should support his team, not stand in for them. Bonnie was brought in on the same terms.
Le chiamate gestite da Bonnie
“Bonnie took off a lot of pressure,” Isabel says. She no longer has to repeat the same answers to every caller, since Bonnie already tells guests what they need to know before a hostess is ever involved. And when a booking goes wrong, a wrong headcount, a mistyped time, she can check the actual conversation Bonnie had with the guest rather than guessing who got it wrong.
“During busy moments, there’s no phone constantly going off,” is how the team describes the moment it started working. Not a number. Just the absence of a sound that used to define service.
Guests also receive automatic WhatsApp confirmations after booking with their reservation details, directions to the boat, and any practical information they need before they arrive. For an Amsterdam landmark that draws international visitors, that last detail helps with providing a super smooth guest experience.
Technology doesn't have to replace staff. It can help them do their work better, whether you run a restaurant, a cafe, or a school.
Isabel But
Project Manager | Sea Palace Amsterdam
