iMessage for hotels and short-term rentals

Hospitality messaging has one job above all others: remove the friction between a guest arriving and a guest being settled. Everything else — upsells, restaurant recommendations, review requests — is downstream of getting that right.

The pre-arrival message earns its place

Guests are most anxious in the hours before arrival, and it is the cheapest anxiety in the world to remove. Send access details, parking and a real contact before they land, not when they are standing outside in the rain.

export const arrival = {
  // Day before, not on the day. People travel.
  preArrival: (c: Ctx) =>
    `${c.property}: you're in tomorrow from ${c.checkIn}. ` +
    `Address and directions: ${c.mapLink}\n` +
    `Parking: ${c.parking}\n` +
    `Any questions before you set off, just reply here.`,
 
  // Access codes go out close to arrival, never at booking.
  access: (c: Ctx) =>
    `${c.property}: your door code is ${c.code}, active from ` +
    `${c.checkIn} today until ${c.checkOut} on ${c.departDate}. ` +
    `Wifi: ${c.wifiName} / ${c.wifiPassword}`,
 
  settled: (c: Ctx) =>
    `${c.property}: all in okay? Anything missing or not working, ` +
    `message here and we'll sort it — much easier than at checkout.`,
};

The settled-in check is the review-saving message

Almost every bad review describes something that could have been fixed in ten minutes if anyone had known. A guest will not phone reception about a broken lamp, but they will reply to a text — and then mention it in the review instead if nobody asks.

Ask once, an hour or two after arrival, and make the reply cost nothing. What comes back is a list of small fixable things and a guest who now knows how to reach you.

Recommendations beat upsells

Guests genuinely want to know where to eat. They mostly do not want a spa package. A short, specific, honest recommendation converts better on both counts, because it makes the next message from you worth opening.

Checkout and the review

The review request goes out while the guest is still in a good mood and still remembers the stay — the morning of departure or the same afternoon, not three days later. And if the settled-in message surfaced a problem you fixed, say so: guests reliably reward a business that fixed something over one where nothing went wrong.

Wording is in the review requests playbook.