How Al Barari answers every call, 24/7, with today's answer.

Industry

Real estate developer

Venue

Al Barari Playground, Dubai

AI employee

Layla, inbound voice

Go-live

One working week

Languages

7, switched turn by turn

Use case

AI receptionist

Al Barari, the Dubai real estate developer behind one of the city's greenest residential communities, deployed Layla, xAIa's AI employee, to answer every call to Al Barari Playground. The voice AI agent works 24/7 in seven languages, answers from the Playground's live status for the day and sends details to callers on WhatsApp mid-call. Layla went live in one working week.

At a glance: every call answered, more visits

What did it save Al Barari?

One AI employee now covers every call, every hour and every language, and sends each enquiry that needs a person straight to the right team.

• Round-the-clock coverage with no added headcount. Covering the phone across opening hours, early mornings, evenings and the closed day would take three receptionist shifts. One AI employee covers all of it, every day of the year.
• Staff time back on the floor. 208 hours a month that went to answering the same questions now go to the guests in front of the team.
• No missed-call callbacks. Callers are answered the first time, so the team no longer spends time returning missed calls that have often gone cold.
• Escalations routed to the right team. When a call needs a person, Layla routes it by enquiry: birthday and event bookings, group visits, feedback and anything outside her remit each go to the Al Barari team responsible, with the caller's details and request already captured. Each team handles only what is theirs, and no caller has to repeat themselves.

Working with xAIa has given us an AI employee we rely on every single day. Answering calls used to be hard, because what is open changes every day and calls kept coming in while we were on the floor with guests. Now every call is answered instantly, in the guest's own language, and our team spends its time with the families in front of them.

About Al Barari

Al Barari is a Dubai real estate developer best known for its master-planned community of villas and residences set within landscaped botanical gardens, one of the greenest addresses in the city. Alongside its homes, Al Barari runs destinations open to the public, including Al Barari Playground, an outdoor family attraction inside the community.

The Playground sits inside the Al Barari community in Wadi Al Safa 3, with water play areas including a splash pad, a Treetop Trampoline park, changing facilities and a food truck. It opens Tuesday to Sunday, 8am to 8pm, and closes on Mondays. Alongside everyday visits it hosts birthday parties and seasonal events. Families come from across Dubai and drive in from Sharjah and Abu Dhabi, and most of them call before they come.

What made answering the phone so hard?

Parents ring to ask the same handful of things. What time are you open? How much is it? Is the splash pad working? Where exactly are you? Can I book a birthday? The answers are simple, but they change every day. An amenity goes down for maintenance, the splash pad closes for cleaning, the weather shuts the water areas, a promotion starts or ends. A fixed script is wrong within a week.

• Calls peak when the team is busiest. Volume spikes at weekends and in school holidays, exactly when the on-site team is least able to pick up a phone.
• The team is on the floor. The people best placed to answer are the ones looking after guests, so a ringing phone meant stepping away from a family or missing the call and phoning back after the caller had already decided.
• Guests call in their own language. The Playground draws families from across the region and beyond, and English is not always the language they reach for.
• A wrong answer can cost a family their whole morning. Telling a caller the trampoline is open when it is under maintenance, or forgetting to mention the Monday closure, means a wasted drive from Sharjah or Abu Dhabi. Every part of the build is designed around that.

Where was revenue leaking?

For a family day out, a call that goes unanswered usually ends with the family going somewhere else. At the Playground, that leakage came from four places.

• Out-of-hours calls. Families plan the night before or early in the morning, and they call before 8am, after 8pm and on Mondays when the Playground is closed. Nobody was there to pick up.
• Peak-time calls. The busiest moments on the phone coincide with the busiest moments on the floor, so calls rang out exactly when demand was highest.
• Callers working from yesterday's information. Without a live view of the day, a caller could be told something that stopped being true that morning, and either stay home or make a wasted trip.
• Demand nobody could see. A missed call leaves no record of how many families called, when, what they wanted or which language they spoke.

What did xAIa build for Al Barari?

xAIa deployed Layla, an inbound AI employee on the Playground's existing mobile number, built around one job: give every caller the right answer for today, the first time, in their language.

• Connected to the Playground's live status. Layla is connected to a live database holding the status of every amenity, managed and updated by the Al Barari team. She checks it during every call, so a change made in the morning is what callers hear that morning.
• Seven languages, switched turn by turn. English, Arabic, Hindi, Spanish, French, German and Italian. Layla replies in whatever language the caller used last, so a parent who starts in English and moves to Arabic is answered in Arabic, with no menu.
• Escalations to the right team. Bookings and anything outside Layla's remit are routed to the Al Barari team responsible for that enquiry, with the details captured, so nobody has to repeat themselves.
• Monitoring from day one. Every call is logged, reviewed and used to tune the agent, with call logs and analytics available to Al Barari throughout.

What makes Layla sound natural?

The difference between a voice agent people tolerate and one they do not notice is a set of small decisions, each made for the phone rather than for a screen.

• Written as a brain, not a script. Layla's instructions carry almost no fixed lines. They tell her what she is trying to do in each situation and let her phrase it fresh, so a parent who calls twice does not hear the same sentence.
• Calls built to finish inside a minute. Every turn moves the call toward done. She does not pad or offer to check things nobody asked about.
• Each fact said once. Opening hours, the price, the Monday closure, the swimwear rule: each is said once per call. Repeating something the caller heard two turns ago is the fastest way to sound like a recording.
• Honest about what she is. She does not open by announcing she is an AI, but if a caller asks, she says so plainly. She never claims she can transfer a call or put someone on hold.
• Tuned for the ear. Phone numbers are spoken digit by digit with pauses, times are said as "eight to eight" rather than am and pm, and local place names carry pronunciation guides.

How does WhatsApp fit in?

The call is where the conversation starts. WhatsApp is where the details stay with the family, and where Al Barari keeps in touch with them after the visit.

• Details sent during the call. Layla can send a WhatsApp message mid-call with entry ticket details, birthday packages or the location, straight to the number the caller is ringing from, so she never has to ask for it. She answers the question out loud first, in full, then offers the message, and sends it only on a clear yes.
• A map pin for a place that is hard to find. The Playground sits between residential buildings in a community that is hard to find by ear. A parent calling from the car hears the address and gets a pin they can tap.
• Packages to read and compare. Parents want to compare birthday package prices, so the details arrive on their phone instead of being heard once.
• Broadcasts from one platform. Al Barari runs its WhatsApp broadcasts from xAIa's omnichannel chat AI platform, sharing events, offers and seasonal updates with families from the same place it runs its AI employees, with full visibility of how every campaign performs.

How does Layla keep up with real-life status changes?

At an outdoor playground, what is open changes through the day. An amenity goes down for maintenance, the weather closes the water areas, an event changes the prices for a weekend. Layla never works from yesterday's information.

• A live database of every amenity. Layla is connected to a database holding the live status of every amenity, the day's opening hours, events and seasonal prices.
• Checked during every call. She checks it live while she is on the call, so the answer a caller hears reflects the Playground as it is at that moment.
• Notes from the team, straight into her answers. When the Al Barari team adds a note, such as a closure, a new event or a change in hours, Layla uses it on the very next call.

The result is an AI employee that stays right through every season, from summer hours and holiday camps to weekend events like Autumn Fest, without families ever hearing something that is no longer true.

A playground changes every day, and an AI employee is only as good as what it knows at the moment the phone rings. We connected Layla to the Playground's live status and she checks it on every call, so families always hear today's answer, and the Al Barari team only hears about the calls that need them.

How did the AI employee turn calls into visits?

• Every call ends with a decision made on today's information. Families who would have heard nothing, or heard it too late, now hear what is open, what is not and what is on before they choose where to spend the day.
• A closed zone no longer costs a visit. Layla pairs every closure with what is open today, so a family that called about the splash pad hears about the other water areas and the trampoline, and comes anyway.
• Events and prices reach every caller. Autumn Fest pricing, seasonal hours and live promotions are told to every caller on the day they apply, and WhatsApp broadcasts carry them further.
• High-value enquiries reach the team. Birthday bookings and group enquiries are routed to staff with the details captured, and the package prices are already on the parent's phone, so the team's time goes to the enquiries worth the most.
• Demand is visible for the first time. Every call is logged with its time, topic, language and outcome, giving Al Barari a record of what families ask and when, to inform promotions, staffing and operating decisions.

How long did it take to go live?

One working week. Because calls come at random hours, there was never a quiet window to switch systems over, so the rollout was planned around zero disruption. The AI employee was built, tested against real Playground scenarios, connected to the existing number and switched on, without a single caller left unanswered in the changeover.

With xAIa, our AI employee has the full context of the Playground and is integrated end to end to handle every type of customer, from a family checking what is open today to a parent booking a birthday. We were live in one working week, without a single caller left behind.

Why AI voice agents fit real estate developers

Al Barari is a real estate developer, and the Playground shows a pattern that runs across the whole sector. Developers run more front desks than most businesses, and each one gets repeat questions with answers that change, from unit availability and payment plans to maintenance windows and access rules.

• Sales on new launches24/7 answering and qualification of enquiries, with viewings booked and leads written to the CRM.
• Owners and tenantsHandover, payment plan, service charge and leasing questions answered from live records.
• Community and facilitiesMaintenance requests logged as tickets, with access and community rules answered on the spot.
• Amenities and destinationsToday's hours, availability and offers, as at Al Barari Playground.

An AI voice agent built the same way, on a live source of truth with a clean handoff to the team, applies to each of them. xAIa deploys AI employees for real estate developers and property operators in the UAE, connected to the CRM and ERP systems those teams already run.

Frequently asked questions