Sms?? That seems a bit outdated..? Why not activate the magic link in the api, so integrations can share that? Or did i miss an update?

Hi @gabriela.smrckova,

That’s great news! I have a few questions:

• Which triggers will there be, same as the email flow?
  • At booking confirmation
  • 2 Days before arrival
  • Day of arrival at 09:00
     
• Will the online check-in link url be of a reasonable length? The url send through emails is around 230 characters long.
  • And if the link gets shortened, will this be applied to the email url?
     
• Will the SMS message text be customisable?
   
• Will you update the online check-in form to be better at getting phone numbers?
  Right now there is no additional country code box when guests fill in their phone number. Which causes many of them to add a phone number without a country code, which isn’t very helpful if you’re trying to automate SMS communications.
   
• Will we also be able to manually re-send out an SMS, the same way we can manually re-send out email templates?
   
• Will there be some kind of notification if delivery of an SMS failed because of an invalid phone number?
   
• How soon is soon?

Lastly I have to repeat @mauritsbots. Who is making a point I’ve also made a few times before, but it cannot be said enough:

I realise that in rolling out this new paid add-on you have even less motivation to do so, but can you please make the magic link accessible to us through the API. It would solve so many problems. And we’d still happily take the SMS add-on from you.
 

@mauritsbots while SMS may seem outdated in Europe, where WhatsApp and alternative messaging systems dominate, the US/Canadian/Australian markets are almost exclusively SMS-driven. This is for historical reasons with how mobile phone carriers charged for text messaging.

We will build upon technical foundations we lay for SMS to expand to other communication channels.

Why not activate the magic link in the api, so integrations can share that?

Thanks for the feedback.

Hi @andreas,

Thank you for your interest! To address your questions:

• We'll begin with just one SMS type, the online Check-in reminder
  • The trigger will be on the day of arrival at 09:00, as you mentioned
  • Given the cost of SMS, we'll initially leverage emails and use SMS to nudge guests who haven't completed online check-in on their arrival day
  • However, we will introduce more triggers soon (please feel free to let me know which ones you'd be most interested in)
     
• You're correct; we make sure to keep SMS length under 160 characters (including links under 50 characters)
  • As for emails, we plan to enhance our entire email solution next year, and adding shortened links into the templates will be a part of it
     
• Initially, we won't offer customization options to keep SMS length just under 160 characters (as longer messages incur extra costs)
  • As mentioned, we plan to add more triggers and customization soon
  • I'd love to know which one is more important to you–customization options or additional triggers
     
• We're exploring ways to improve the quality of phone number data, not only for online check-in but also for the booking engine
  • We intend to incorporate not just a country code field but also validation
  • Also, we will do the phone number validation before sending the SMS to avoid costs associated with invalid numbers
     
• Manual re-sending is something that will not be part of the initial release, but it is definitely something we want to add
  • Do you see this as highly important?
     
• We'll have a Text messages queue, similar to our email queue, allowing you to check message statuses
   
• And Lastly, "soon" means in a couple of weeks! :)

I understand the importance of the ephemeral/magic links. As I mentioned, we are aware of it, it is just more complex than it may seem.

I look forward to more of your insights, and I'll make sure to inform you when SMS add-on is ready. 

Gabriela

Hi @mauritsbots,

Thank you for your feedback. As Tim mentioned, perceptions of SMS can vary by market. While SMS may not be the most groundbreaking marketing channel, it is a valuable tool for transactional communication supporting guests during their journey. Some interesting stats and insights:

• Customers are more likely to open text messages before any other form of mobile communication
• SMS has up to 98% open rate, beating well-performing emails at 40-60%, showing strong customer engagement
• Click-through rates mirror this trend
• Only 10% of SMS marketing is spam (versus 49.7% for emails potentially leading to email overload)

By strategically adding SMS into the guest journey, we believe it can enhance the guest experience and open up new revenue opportunities for you.
 

As for the ephemeral/magic links; we have indeed been exploring it, knowing its significance. We don't have it available in the Connector API for personal data protection reasons, as the links allow guests to access their private information. Due to this legal aspect, there is also a technical complexity in the way we create them. However, we haven't given up on this matter; we will continue to explore it.

Let me know if you have more questions,

Gabriela

Hi everyone, I wanted to share that the SMS add-on is now available in your Mews Marketplace. I've updated the main post with additional information, but if you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to reach out.

@gabriela.smrckova 

Is that function still available? I was unable to find it in the marketplace

Hello @Linus.Bihn,

Thank you for your interest! It has only been enabled for a rather small group of customers at the moment. However, I am more than happy to make it available for you as well. Please let me know which property (or properties) I should enable it for 

Gabriela

Hi, please enable for Styles Hotel Karlsruhe

Thanks

@gabriela.smrckova we’ve just enabled the SMS functionality in the Marketplace. I’m happy to see that Mews is taking this step!

Thank you also, for your extensive reply to my previous post. Here’s a few remarks from my side:

Choosing which bookable service to send SMS for
Will there be a new option under Services > General settings > Visit options to select wether the system should send SMS for that particular service? I imagine most hotels would like to send out messages for their Stay service, but not for Parking or Spa :)

Or will you link this to the ‘Enable automatic before start email’ option?

Our specific use-case
I realise we are not your typical Mews customer, since we’re using a single production environment to manage multiple small properties divided under bookable services.

Still, is there any way you have these SMS messages use the bookable service name instead of the {enterpriseShortName}? This would make these messages look a lot more trustworthy to our guests.
 

US sender number:
I see that you’re using Twilio as a communications platform, which is a great choice by the way :)

Alphanumeric sender names are not allowed in every country, and I can see you’re using a single US number as sender for those countries where alphanumeric doesn’t work. 

For a European, receiving an SMS from a US number seems very dodgy, I wouldn’t trust a link send in that way, especially if it asks for my credit card details.

Perhaps you could invest in a few additional numbers (they’re cheap!) to keep the sender country logical. So either use a number from the hotel’s country as sender (preferable) or use a number from the recipient’s country as sender.

I assume you’re using Twilio Studio, so setting a flow to accommodate for this should be easy.

Two-way communication.
Since you’re using alphanumeric senders, two-way communication will not be possible, and adding more triggers does not make so much sense at the moment. 

Are you planning on implementing two-way communication in the future? The current chat functionality could be a good starting point for receiving customer responses via SMS/WhatsApp. 

 

Hey @andreas,

I'm happy to hear that you've enabled the SMS Package, and it is so great to go through your questions and feedback. Your insights are really valuable, and I'm impressed by your knowledge! So, a big thank you for that.

To address your questions:

Currently, SMS messages are tied to the ‘before start’ email option. If there's a ‘before start’ email enabled for a specific service, we'll also send an SMS. While there could be cases where it makes sense to send only one of them, it's not something we'll be focusing on in the immediate future.

Regarding {enterpriseShortName}, the SMS currently uses the content predefined by Mews. However, this is just the starting point. We want to give you, our customers, more control over communication with your guests. Customizing the SMS content is on our roadmap, and your suggestion to use a placeholder for the service name, alongside or instead of the enterprise name, is something we will consider and look at.

I'm also happy that you appreciate our choice of Twilio . You're absolutely right; we do provide a single US number in cases where the sender ID is not supported. While most messages sent from Mews currently use sender names (around 80%), it always depends on the business mix. So, we are indeed exploring the option of providing localized phone numbers to enhance trustworthiness. Although, it will not be feasible before the end of the year, it's really important part of the solution. However, there are additional monthly costs associated with this, and these costs vary by country. Some countries have low fees for renting the localized numbers, while others, even in Europe, may have higher costs (and the monthly fee can be $30 or more). Therefore, we'll need to work through these details and determine the best way forward.

Finally, we are exploring ways to improve the communication solution we offer. Adding WhatsApp to the mix is in our plans, as well as enhancing our current Messaging/Chat functionality.

Thank you again Andreas for your feedback, and please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any more questions or suggestions.

Gabriela