By Joel Lee, SEO marketing specialist at Trumpia
As people bustle to and from destinations for the holidays, don’t miss out on the opportunity to increase the traffic to your hotel. You want to make sure the property is filled and that your staff stays busy with guests to serve.
Here are 4 ways texting will increase traffic for your hotel this holiday season:
Start with a Holiday Marketing Strategy
You want to integrate text into your marketing to ensure guests are reading your messages.
Approximately 98% of texts are opened and usually within minutes. You can use special keywords and
event marketing to grab the attention of holiday travelers and bring them into your website. From
there, you can encourage guests to sign up for text messaging by offering coupons to your spa,
restaurant or other hotel deals. By getting people on your texting list, you can continue to market to
them during future holidays and events. The key with texting is to keep your texts straight to the point
and only send them at opportune times. You don’t want contacts opting out of your texting because
they feel inundated with offers they don’t care about. Personalize your holiday messages and offers to
make sure you are sending guests messages that interest them and increase their engagement with your brand.
Decrease the Hassle of Holiday Needs with Texting
Your help desk can be inundated with calls during busy stay times. You can utilize texting for better
customer service by offering the ability to send out text reminders and receive guest requests on the
platform. Your concierge can notify guests of booked appointments and special deals via text. When
your guests need service from a valet, bellhop or items from the front desk brought up, they can simply
text in their request. Your staff will be able to stay better organized and less bogged down by customers
talking, chatting and complaining on the phones. If your guest is having an issue with something, like
internet connection or cable issues, they can check to see if it is an issue with their room or a common
problem in the hotel.
Offer Automated Recommendations
Your guests can text an automated service to find out more information about surrounding attractions,
entertainment and dining options. Increase the holiday traffic by getting the surrounding businesses to
plug your hotel and then plug their business in return. Your guests will appreciate knowing what great
options are around them and you will benefit from increased holiday visitors as surrounding businesses
promote your hotel to their patrons. To really take advantage of this relationship, you can even offer a
discount when local businesses are mentioned at check-in and those businesses might offer the same
kind of deal when guests mention being referred to them by your hotel.
Request Positive Reviews
Many travelers only leave reviews if they have a negative experience. Remind your guests to leave you
positive Google or Yelp reviews if they had a good stay. You can increase the number of positive
comments and helpful reviews that are left by simply asking guests to rate you and including a link. In
order to reduce the number of negative reviews, you can first ask guests to take a very short survey and
then only offer the link and request for public feedback if they are happy with their experience. Not only
will you increase public recommendations, you will gain valuable insight into both happy and unhappy
customers on how you could improve their stay over the holiday season.
You want to use texting to keep guests happy and build up traffic for the holidays. Text messaging is an efficient way to drive new traffic, build relationships and ease the workloads of your employees.
Joel Lee is the SEO marketing specialist at Trumpia, which earned a reputation as the most complete SMS solution including user-friendly user interface and API for mobile engagement, Smart Targeting, advanced automation, enterprise, and cross-channel features for both mass texting and landline texting use cases.