SMS vs Emails

In different markets, either text messages or emails are favoured heavily by guests as a means of communication. Obviously, each has its own strengths and weaknesses.

We believe that for many customers, having a combination of both will work effectively in achieving different business goals.

Text messages will usually work the best when you want the guest to perform a simple action; for example, prompting the guest to complete the check-in form, or rating their stay.

Such actions don't need much explanation, so you will spend less money sending them out.

Text messages have the greatest benefit in that your almost always have your guest's attention. Studies show that text messages are very effective in having your guest actually read what you have to say.

Obviously, we are communicating only with text (no images), and messages cost money to send. These are considerations you might like to take into account.

The strength of emails is that they support rich content. For this reason, they work best where visuals are used; usually for upselling.

The other benefits are that of course, emails don't cost anything to send, nor is there a limit of how much information you can include (though of course, shorter is always better!).

The drawbacks to emails is that they can get "lost in the crowd", or even marked as spam in some cases. People these days tend to receive a lot of emails daily, so some may be inclined to ignore them, even if it relates to their upcoming hotel stay.

There might be other reasons you might favour one mode of communication over the other; for example, your reservations may have more email addresses than phone numbers, or vice versa.

You can now see a breakdown of this information on the page Guests > Overview: