phone in the guest’s room, and the
Web site are all channels. Today,
most hoteliers look at email as one of
the best outbound channels, and are
getting better at using social channels
like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
to push out messaging.
However, it is the social media
channels which have altered things
dramatically over the past two
years. Guests are turning to these
channels as their preferred method
to ask a question from a business
and its popularity has already started
to cause headaches. Studies have
shown that customers will tolerate
a response time of up to 13 minutes
when they message a business on
social media. Sadly, the average
response time for most companies is
7 hours.
Added to the popularity of using
Facebook and Twitter is the growth
of over the top messaging apps
like WhatsApp, WeChat, Line, and
Telegram. However, the focus for
HERE.
hotels in recent years has been
SMS texting. While an impressive
22 billion SMS texts are sent every
day worldwide, over 60 billion
messages are being sent each day on
Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp
alone. Further, SMS texting is a
challenge for international travelers
given data and roaming charges.
As a result, these messaging apps
have become the preferred tool
for communicating, especially for
globally connected travelers.
By James Geneau,
VP of Marketing at Benbria
ILHA 19