🗣 Tell me about your experience with SMS / WhatsApp guest communications!

From our property in Florida, we must contract with another service provider who offers SMS capabilities to supplement the email capabilities in the Mews Guest Journey because Mews does not offer SMS as a means of outbound communication without the Guest first messaging us. Email, while still a common communication method, is nearing or matching the postal service’s delivery of junk mail such that emails are often ignored entirely. This is a terrible disservice to Guests who could benefit from the information we can provide in advance of their arrival and throughout their stay. 

SMS is simpler to execute and enables us to reach our Guests where they already are… texting friends and family… about information relevant to their upcoming visit or their in-progress visit. Emails may not be seen by Guests until after they’ve checked out, eroding the effectiveness of services such as pre-arrival online check-in, pre-arrival upsells/add-ons, mid-stay upsells/add-ons, end-of-stay online checkouts, and post-stay emotional touchpoints - all extending the personalized attention and fostering the 1:1 relationships we strive to create with our Guests.

We use SMS to ask Guests for their ETA, something we’re unable to obtain through any existing Mews service/feature. We encourage Guests to look for the email invitation to check-in online, something they would overlook in much greater numbers than before we implemented this touch-point. We provide Guests with pre-arrival information about parking in case they miss any one of the half-dozen other places where we provide them with parking information. This has reduced call volume asking about parking options and Guest dissatisfaction following the towing of their vehicles. This has increased the sale of pre-arrival parking permits, enabling us to email the permit for printing prior to traveling and reducing the time taken to do all of this at the Front Desk upon arrival. We provide Guests with pre-arrival guidance for how to enter the building and find the hotel’s Front Desk since it is not a conventional layout given the historical aspect of our building’s construction and ground floor space usage. Doing so has practically eliminated Guest satisfaction with entering the building and finding the Front Desk. Guests have provided us with very positive feedback ever since these touch-points were introduced.

One of our primary drivers of repeat bookings within 90 days of departure is our bounce back program in which Guests respond to our automated SMS message and then receive a bounce back promo code.

If Mews opts to enhance their service offerings and introduce SMS for 2-way communication rather than responsive messaging only, consider the following features that can benefit properties.

• WhatsApp is more widely used outside the US, but a very small percentage of our Guests are traveling from outside the US. In 15 months since we opened, only two Guests asked us if we use WhatsApp. SMS is more prevalent here. Offering unlimited SMS messages along with unlimited character lengths is critical.
• Many providers are stuck on limiting texts to 140 characters. Beyond driving a Guest to a web page instead of providing the information in the text, a 140-character length message hardly can effectively communicate anything beyond a headline and a link.
• Enabling the service to auto-respond to a variety of messages the property determines can be handled through auto-response makes better use of the property’s labor instead of having to manually respond to Guest messages 100% of the time, even if there are pre-scripted responses.
• AI is making this possible more and more, and consumers are growing more accustomed to truly intelligent chat bots. At a minimum, AI should be leveraged to generate a draft response the property can review and edit before it’s sent, enabling the system to learn and improve.
• Having the option to embed data fields sourced from Mews into messages is helpful, as it is in email templates within the Guest Journey. Information blocks sourced from Mews are helpful, but when the data within these blocks of information cannot be sourced by individual field, this is challenging when creating email templates. For example, it is not possible to embed a Guest’s departure date in any of the email templates within Mews. This data is only available in an information block that includes many other data points, challenging the property with how to construct a message that omits the departure date or somehow makes use of the information block, extending the message unnecessarily.
• Enabling Mews users to manage the SMS inbox while identifying whether the message is coming through a Chat With Us link in an email or an SMS message. Ideally, creating a unified inbox that also brings together the multiple other inboxes properties must manage separately (e.g., OTA extranet messages, integration services’ inboxes, property email inboxes, etc.) would be a major win with Mews. We must contract with a third-party service to do this, a service that can not only read from Mews through the integration, but also write to Mews when important data/details are captured through the third-party service but are needed in Mews, specifically in association with specific Guests and their specific reservations. This is revenue Mews is leaving on the table and compounding the service agreements a property must have to achieve a seamless communication experience with Guests.
• Enabling messaging on the property’s website that funnels into the Mews messaging inbox furthers the 1:1 property/Guest relationship goal properties have. 
• The ability for the property to customize an out-of-office message that actually helps communicate that a response may take longer than a standard text message, especially if the Guest has messaged the property after standard hours of operation. Our property is not staffed 24/7 and, although rare, we have some Guests who believe if they book a reservation at 2:00 AM, they should be able to check-in immediately. Not only can they not enter the building, but there’s no one to respond to their message asking for help at 2:00 AM.
• The ability to incorporate Mews features in SMS that can help expand the way in which SMS can be used should be considered. An example is the sending of a payment request and an invitation to check-in online to a Guest should be planned. Having been around before the internet, before email, before SMS, before apps and smart devices, CDs, DVDs, and streaming, the evolution of communication continues to grow at lightning speed as new technology make capabilities possible, some of which we never dreamed were even something to consider. Avoiding the creation of a service that has boundaries and limitations preventing its expansion as new uses for SMS are identified and adopted by businesses and consumers is critical for the continued growth of Mews. An example is the creation of the current cloud-based platform on which Mews is served to properties - although some features are mobile-optimized, many are not and using a smart phone to conduct business from remote locations can be challenging at best. Another example is the limitation of features such as the glance at the week ahead easily viewed on a desktop or tablet, but it cannot be customized to look at a different set of dates, nor can it be viewed easily on a smart phone due to browser display limitations.

I anticipate being inspired but the contributions of other Mews users on this thread, but for now, these are the thoughts that come to my mind on this subject.

Good luck with this research project - every great accomplishment begins with a single idea!

David Foxx
General Manager, Hotel Operations
Mari Jean Hotel | St. Petersburg, Florida, USA 

Please pardon any typos.

Hello 

Never use the SMS Notifications 

Thanks

@wahiba, my post is in moderation right now. When I write, it’s not just a few words which probably triggers an algorithm that redirects my posts into a moderator mailbox. I wrote earlier this morning so it will eventually show up here.

Hi,

we have been using it for some time now. 
I think it’s a must have for every that wants guest to go digital. 
I am however missing two features. 
1. costumizeing our messages so that they fit our brand. 
2. manually send the text to guest. This can be if the phone number was wrong/missing the first time, or the guest is asking about. It. 
 

Have a great day!

Hi there,

We currently do not have SMS enabled at our property, and I'm finding it quite challenging to find information on how this appears from the guest's perspective.

Would love to see some examples of the messages that guests actually receive, as well as the steps they go through.

Thanks,

Kat

@ettore.zotarelli for us, NL based chain.. SMS is simply not interesting. at all. over 75% of all our guests are on whatsapp, and we can easily reach these all using another integration. The remainder either has no mobile phone number, or no whatsapp - and these guests we reach via email. 

Having said that; be your next communication channel a RSS feed, SMS text or Whatsapp message.. For us as chain of hotels, the method of sending and receiving messages is secondary to the actual response. Having multiple message channels and a omnichannel inbox is nice, but only provides more work. You need to ensure that 99% of all messages are responded to fully automatic. And for that, you need a proper trained AI.

In the intermediate, get the ‘magic link’ in the API, and let each property decide for themselves what works for them. For us, we are very happy with the AI powered Whatsapp service from Runnr, as this has taken away loads of questions asked to receptionists. 

Hi Katherine! This is super useful feedback and I have already started working on providing more information on our product pages and website. In the meantime, I have asked @merel.vanzuiden to help us to organize a call - would love to see what kinda info is discussed when we talk about comms.
Thank you for letting us know!

Hi @ettore.zotarelli, 

we’re sending SMS to our guests for about 2 years over with STRAIV (Our guest journey tool with API to mews). We have a quite some experience with that toppic (Online Check-in & Feedback SMS). We would love to switch these SMS (and in the future Whatsapp) procecces directly to mews.

Please feel free to get in touch with me.

Marlon

I could not agree more, Marlon. Managing multiple services for the sake of creating what appears to Guests to be a seamless experience is burdensome on the operation, especially when you have a small property like mine (54 rooms) and an even smaller staff.

Thank you @DavidFoxx @Marlon Meiser @Vegard Kaspersen @wahiba and @mauritsbots !!! This is super useful information and I definitely would like to have a chat with each of you to go deeper into the topics you brought up.

@mauritsbots I know the link via API is definitely on the radar. I think we should at least offer you a choice of providers while I work on being your option of choice one day.

@Vegard Kaspersen Happy to hear you are enjoying it! Our team is studying the customization piece but we know it's a must. Once that is done, opening up for custom, ad-hoc messages (like messaging someone who just forgot something at the lobby!) should be fairly simple to follow up with. I will definitely reach out when those improvements are in Beta 🍾

@wahiba is there a reason you have decided not to use it? Or are you using another solution to communicate with your guests/increase the number of online check ins? 

Thank you all once again, love the engagement!

We tried the SMS package, but stopped it - I think it’s a good add-on, but

• don’t know if guest actually responded to the SMS or did the online Checkin anyway, there are not analytics to get some insights if messaging is acutally working - we didn’t really see a major increas in OCI use, subjectively estimated
• we are a small property, and we could never use up the included sms volume, so the carry over just accumulates - why not a cheaper package and pay-as-you-go sms cost added

If you are considering broadening the messaging capabilities of MEWS consider

• custom on-demand email and SMS/whatsapp messaging: allow to send custom messages any time manually from the reservations or the profile (custom text, inserted in a custom template)
• integrate whatsapp/sms responses with guest messaging from the guest portal, so that one can respond from within mews to incoming messages/responses

Kind regards,

JP.

JP, I like your recommendations for on-demand email and SMS/whatsapp messaging, both recommendations. It’s kind of surprising this doesn’t already exist within Mews.

In the past, with our old PMS, we have mainly used text messages to let our guests know when the room has been cleaned. 
We have many guests who arrive in the morning. These guests automatically received an SMS with the corresponding message at the moment housekeeping set the room as checked in the PMS. This was very convenient for reception and for the guests.
SMS also helps with short-term information. 

Communication should be traceable in the guest's reservation screen and should also be managed via this.

Best regards

Leif

@j.spiess Thank you for sharing! I also saw you posted about it on our feedback platform and I truly appreciate it! I have done an audit on your metrics and indeed, the minimum is just too much for the volume of messages your property sends - which may change in the future as we add more SMS types (e.g. invitation to check out online, or as @Leif Penning mentioned, an sms letting guests know their room is ready + number; which is something I am happy to say I am currently working on).

It is also super important that we give users visibility to what benefits is this package bringing: we actually do track check ins and their upselling revenue that came from an SMS link and the results are fantastic - but that info is not displayed anywhere yet 😢. I can't wait to surface all that!

Thank you 💙

A dream for my hotel would be to have a “one-stop shop” for guest communication, allowing us to manage everything in one place and avoid the risk of missing anything. I’m thinking of Mews Chat, emails, text messages, as well as messages from our Google Business Profile and Facebook, Expedia and Booking etc.

This, combined with smart AI, could hopefully handle most guest inquiries automatically.

An extended dream would be chat technology capable of searching for availability and even making reservations — fully integrated with the Mews PMS.

Since Mews is on a shopping tour lately, probably they should look for a good chat solution too. :)