For Skiathos businesses · Free to read · Nothing to buy on this page
Software that does not just write. It does the job, then tells you what it did.
Counted from this guide's own records, August 2026
Back to the business guides · Written August 2026
The whole page in five bullets
Twenty seconds. You should still finish this page knowing what to do on Monday.
The word is used loosely. Here it means one thing: software allowed to take an action, not just produce text.
A writing tool hands you a suggested reply and waits. An agent finishes the job and leaves you a note.
Instructions in plain words. Tools it may touch, such as your messages and your diary. And a record of everything it did.
Your customers are in another time zone, choosing where to eat from a sofa in February. Your busiest hour for questions is not your busiest hour for service.
It follows the instructions it was given. Vague instructions, vague answers. It only knows what somebody has written down for it.
In this order. Not all three at once.
Times are our estimates for an owner doing it themselves in winter
92 of the 130 places to eat in this guide take bookings by phone. A phone call does not work from another country at eleven at night. A message that sits unread until lunchtime is one somebody else may have answered first.
One afternoon10 of the 130 take a booking online. The rest are held in a head, on a pad, or in a phone call nobody wrote down. An agent puts it in one diary and sends back the date, the time, the number of people and where you are.
One afternoonNobody asks, so nobody writes one. A week after the meal, one short message, naming the dish if it knows it. Once. It stops if there is no reply. A review that names a dish is the one that gets you chosen by a stranger.
One hourStart with answering, because it is the only one where doing nothing costs you a customer you never hear from. Everything here assumes you already did the free groundwork on the checklists, because an agent repeats whatever your listings say.
We checked all 130 places to eat for a website of their own and for how they take a booking. This is the island from the outside.
Of the 130 places to eat in this guide
And across the whole guide
These counts are ours, computed from the guide's own restaurant records in August 2026, and they will drift. Websites were established from search evidence, so absence is weaker proof than presence. Nobody paid to be counted or left out.
Nobody can price this without knowing what you want it to do. What can be described honestly is the shape of the bill.
Almost always a monthly fee, then a second charge for how much you use it. Ask for both numbers before you sign, and ask what the second does in August, when the messages are heaviest.
This guide does not publish a number it cannot check, and these prices change every few months. Anyone quoting you a yearly saving before they have seen your bookings has made it up.
A few winter afternoons to write the answers and the rules. Then about an hour a week reading what it actually sent. That hour is the whole difference between working and embarrassing.
A new website. A new phone number. A member of staff. A project. If setting it up needs a project plan, it is the wrong tool for a taverna.
Not because a machine could not attempt it. Because when it is wrong, the apology is worse than the mistake.
Every one has happened to somebody. None is a reason not to do it. They are reasons to start small and read the log.
It was never given your prices, so it filled the gap with something that sounded right.
The guard. One written source it must quote from. Tell it to say it will check, rather than guess.
Two channels, one table, no shared diary.
The guard. One diary. It writes there or it does not confirm at all.
Left on the polite hotel English it came with.
The guard. Write ten of your own sentences and make it use them. Read the first fifty replies yourself.
Given permission it did not need on day one.
The guard. Let it draft and you send, until it has earned each job. Money and apologies always wait for you.
Half the island still reads as open in January, and it believes your listings.
The guard. Fix the dates on your listings first. The agent inherits every mistake already published.
Nobody was watching, and silence looks the same as nothing to do.
The guard. A daily line of what it did. If a day is blank in August, something is broken.
One job, watched for a fortnight, before it is given the second. That single rule prevents most of this list. The other half is prevented by writing your facts down once, properly, which is worth doing whether you ever buy anything or not.
None of the first three cost money and none of them need us.
Times are our estimates, not a promise
With your real answers. Where you are, when you open, do you take cards, is there shade, can we bring the children, are you open in October. This is the actual job. Everything after it is plumbing.
1 hourOpening and closing dates, address, phone number, and your name spelled the same way everywhere it appears. An agent repeats what it finds, and so does an assistant a visitor is asking.
30 minA photograph of a menu cannot be read by an agent, a search engine or a translator. The same menu typed out can be quoted, translated and recommended, and it becomes the price list the agent must not stray from.
1 hourAnswering messages out of hours. Not bookings yet, not reviews yet. If you cannot say in one sentence what it is allowed to do, it is not ready to do anything.
10 minThen correct the instructions, never the customer. Two weeks of that and you will know whether to give it the second job or turn it off.
15 min a dayIf you only ever do the first three, you are further ahead than most of the island and you have spent nothing. More free groundwork is on the main business page, and what assistants can already read about you is on being found when people ask an AI.
The rest of the business half of this guide. All free, all written for an owner rather than an analyst.
The research, the season calendar, the free five, and how to get listed or corrected. Nothing to buy.
GuideSix jobs, in order, that fit in one winter afternoon. So people and assistants can find you and describe you correctly.
Guide1,195 questions and 262 published warnings, handed back to the people who serve them.
GuideThe year you actually work, with the real air, sea, rain and sun figures next to it.
GuideWhat it actually is, what it is good at, and five jobs it can do for you this week for nothing.
Then ask before you buy anything. A free consultation for anyone running a business on Skiathos. No charge, no pitch, and a straight answer if the honest answer is that you do not need it.
A message is the whole mechanism. No form, no account, no sign-up anywhere on this site. Answers are in English, and they may take a day or two in August.