Hotels have in general been slow at introducing new ways to connect and interact with their guests directly to their mobile, especially considering a vast majority of their clients are already using a smartphone daily! Users spend more than one out of every five minutes on Facebook via their mobile. Facebook also announced recently that more than 700 million monthly active users engage with Messenger. Think about how you communicate with your friends and family today – we have become so accustomed to instant messaging being an important part of the way we communicate with others.
Over the past couple of years, we have started to see major companies like Tesco, Audi and more recently El Corte Ingles in Spain beginning to use Facebook Messenger as a new tool to connect with their customers. More recently, Hyatt was the first hotel chain to announce that they were testing a new guest service channel using Facebook’s new “Businesses on Messenger”, currently only available in the US.
Hotels and resorts are also starting to be aware of a higher number of guest interactions from smartphones for complaints, questions or posting photos. Clients want solutions in real time, from dealing with a complaint to booking a table in the restaurant, or just finding out what they can explore within your local area. Reservation confirmations, which are usually sent to emails are one-way forms of communication which don’t provide your guest an opportunity to personalise their stay further. Facebook Messenger can also provide a better online booking experience by offering real time support for the user to navigate through the transactional parts of a booking and improving the overall user experience. Interacting with your clients in real time is becoming a necessity for hotels, especially as it will help improve guest experience and satisfaction that leads to increased RevPar performance.
So how can you implement this into your hotel operation?
Read rest of the article at: eHotelier
