With the month of May being the month of celebrations, a lot of events are round the corner. Travel packages, offers and discounts seem to be flowing in the air. Express your feelings and tell people that you care. Travel and hospitality sector is in full boom to encash this opportunity to take full benefit of the same. Amidst all this, let us have a clear vision of how this industry can use SMS to gain more and better profit returns.

Need of the industry

Showing graciousness to the guests! SMS goes beyond graciousness in improving the overall feel good factor of the guests! The more comfort you give to your guests, the more hospitality you are providing and that is the need of the industry. There is so much information, so many emergencies, lot many alerts, important messages to be delivered. And all these need to hit with perfect timings. Just have a look how you can give better hospitality to your guests either traveling or staying.

Why SMS in this industry?

a. Ubiquity

A short message can fit into any mobile phone from the smallest to the most feature rich smartphone.

You just need to text to your guests without any other bothering like to mail a few and call a few. This makes it a one solution for all problems.

b. Urgency of delivery

This industry is usually in the urgency to deliver information. A SMS is the only medium which is delivered in shortest span of time. It is believed that approximately 97% of people open a text message received within 90 seconds of receiving whereas an email takes 2.5 days to respond. Also, people have mobile phones in their arm’s reach for around 14 hours per day according to a survey.

This serves  two major factors, one is a very wide and varied reach, and second is the speedy response time. Both are crucial as one can miss the travel if missed.

Where to use?

i. Reservations and bookings confirmation

You can send a message at the time of reservation to confirm the reservation status. For example, Indian Railways is using it beautifully to inform their customers immediately on reservation.

ii. Alert Passengers, logistics firms and crew members

You can send alerts about any schedule changes especially to logistics firms as their business governs entirely by travel schedules. This will help them lot in managing further line of controls, which will lead in an increased trust over you!

You can notify the passengers for any delays in flight/train/bus timings or about any changes in routes or gate number changes. A reminder message can be sent to passengers delayed in reporting to reach early. All this is considered as a value added service for the customers.

You can inform your crew members by sending messages about any changes in duty timing or any changes in job roles. The shift timings too can be texted to the crew members.

iii. Travel agents

It works the best for Travel agents in provoking customers to plan trips! You can use it to inform your customers about any upcoming tour packages, vacation packages, honeymoon packages and official packages or about special discounts or offers. You can send in the complete itinerary details to all the members of a group if its a group package like of an organization for an official tour or some educational institute for educational tours.

iv. Hotels

In hotel industry, text messaging can be a key factor in customer relationship management and loyalty programs. Notifying customers about any live events, programs and dining facilities that are changed can be a great step in going beyond the classical way of hospitality. You can send a thank you message after checkout, and inform about any left over things as in lost and found.

Other than the above specific functions, one can use Bulk SMS to conduct Text messaging contests and campaigns which are the latest “in thing” today.

To gain instant virality, creating buzz in the market is just a SMS close now!

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