Instant Messaging – The Future of Communication for Hotels
Communication is of primary importance in tourism and hospitality sectors. The importance of communication in the context of hospitality has created a slew of concepts aimed at providing a detailed understanding of the customer/guest and better serving them.
Guest trip mapping and guest messaging are two examples of such notions. Using guest messaging to please visitors has made its way into the hotel’s core operations, allowing guests to make the most of their stay and property owners to better connect with their clients.
Marketers can no longer rely entirely on traditional communication mediums such as emails. Using new avenues to contact and connect with customers appears to be unavoidable. As companies have begun to grasp the potential of instant messaging as an efficient communication channel for marketing and beyond, the usage of messaging in everyday personal life has spilled over to commercial settings.
Understanding how guests want to be accessed and interacted with is especially important in service-based sectors like hospitality, where customer experience is at the core of the business and every touchpoint is vital.
Customers, for example, will switch to firms that provide text messaging as a communication channel if they believe it improves their experiences. The Covid-19 pandemic has hastened these developments, since technology and accommodations that do not need direct face-to-face contact are increasingly viewed as safer for customers and staff, and such a choice has become a symbol of concern for a customer’s well-being.
Contactless communication and guest messaging are the present and future of business and consumer contact. Reducing unnecessary physical contact allows you to create connections and increase revenue without losing your peace of mind. With ‘social distance’ on everyone’s thoughts and lips, hotels must include this much-highlighted idea in their ways of communication. That being said, Hotel Guest Messaging has almost become an absolute necessity.
Communication via online means has become commonplace in the digital world. With the continuing ubiquity of high-speed internet and mobile devices, customers are now communicating with others through mobile platforms regularly. Mobile devices now account for almost 50% of all internet traffic worldwide, with one of the primary motivations for utilizing mobile devices being to socialize or connect with people via instant messaging programs.
Hotels must meet visitors where they are in order to improve guest communications and the overall guest experience, and guests are texting more than ever. While it may have seemed unusual and strange to send direct text messages to guests a few years ago, guest messaging is increasingly becoming the communication mode of choice, and taking over other forms of communication like emails and phone calls.