Pre-Arrival Guest Messages For Hotels (With Examples)

What's in it for me?

‍Guess what? The guest journey begins way before a guest even arrives at your doorstep.

This is what makes 'pre-arrival' one of the most essential and initial stages for the hotels to work on carefully and sincerely to provide a stellar experience during the rest of the guest journey. 

This guide will acquaint you with the pre-arrival concept by providing samples and examples along the line while dealing with the guests at this stage, right from confirming a reservation to scheduling a reminder message regarding their upcoming booking. 

Also, we have provided sample messages for other stages of the guest journey for a holistic understanding of the guest messaging concept.

There is a radical change in how the hospitality industry operates today compared to the last decade, from shifting guests away from the front desk-only approach to favoring mobile-first, giving guests options, flexibility, and convenience.

The need for communication is increasing tenfold between the hotel leaders, employees, and guests, as everyone must navigate the ongoing uncertainty and changing societal norms. 

Keeping in tandem with the latest technological developments, hotels have begun to employ these tools to maximize their efforts to cater to the needs of modern-day travelers/guests.

One of such tools that have increasingly become a significant and inseparable part of the hospitality industry is Guest Messaging.

Although the utility of guest messaging is widely applicable, its integration with the guest journey mapping, specifically the starting pre-arrival guest messages, can help any hotel ensure a personalized and memorable experience.

Pre-Arrival In Hotel

Although not exactly the first stage in the guest journey cycle, as the significance of the discovery and booking stage has started getting the maximum exposure in the world of customer journey mapping for hotels, pre-arrival can be regarded as one of the initial points of contact with the guests. 

It is one of the first stages and the first impression of your hotel as you and your crew gear up to set the stage for providing a wonderful welcome and an overall stellar experience to your guests. 

While a hotel heavily invests in offline actions to prepare the stage better for a memorable stay experience, communication at this stage is equally important to help your guests look forward to a seamless experience at your property. 

Before guests checks-in, you need to consider the things that need to be done pre-arrival. This is the preparation time when the guests will be gearing up for their upcoming trip after receiving the booking confirmation from your end.

A great pre-arrival messaging will enable guests to be informed, plan better experiences, and refine their itinerary.

Just imagine that even before meeting the guest, you can sweep them off their feet with your distant service and, with the right tools, help them plan and make it a remarkable visit. 

Importance Of Communication At Every Step Of the Journey, Including The Pre-Arrival

Now that you know what pre-arrival is, you must proceed to create experience-oriented services that are associated with emotions. To create positive emotions for guests- the entire sensory spectrum, right from the pre-arrival guest journey, must be activated, and verbal and non-verbal communication must be taken into account.

Because only emotionally charged experiences succeed in anchoring themselves in the long-term memory of guests, leading to guest satisfaction and loyalty, thereby generating a decisive competitive brand advantage in the market.

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How Guest Messaging Can Facilitate Communication

Nowadays, guests seek personalized, convenient experiences during their travels, which can be achieved with guest messaging. 

How to get started? To forge a meaningful experience that will resonate with the guests and turn them into fans, you should focus on authentic interactions – and personalized communication. You need to have an in-depth understanding of guests' psychology and understand what motivates your guests - what their needs are, their hesitations, and concerns. 

Mapping the guest journey is a great start, which helps you understand and spot opportunities. 

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What Are The Stages Of Guest Cycle?

The various stages of the entire hotel guest journey mapping help precisely in knowing the guests' needs better.

These stages are as follows:

• Travel research and planning
• Booking the stay
• Pre-arrival
• On-arrival
• Mid-stay
• Departure
• Post departure

‍Mapping the hotel guest journey helps understand what customers go through and improve the quality of your customer experience, ensuring consistency and a seamless experience at all touch-points.

There is no substitution for listening to your customers about how the steps in the journey are working out for them and how their experience can be amplified. This is where tools such as guest messaging come in handy.

Guests expect immediacy, whether it's quick to search and book options, or respond to their pre-stay or in-stay inquiries, or dealing with cancellations. Hotels will need to use their staff service smartly to make sure guests' requests are honored, and hotel operations are seamless. 

Guest messaging solution gives the additional boost the hotels need to secure bookings, manage online check-in, and provide guest services digitally. In all these different stages, the hotels communicate differently with their (potential) customers (for instance, pre-arrival guest messages at pre-arrival), and they have different goals during all the stages.
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For the hotels, it is important to get more insights into what their customers' experiences are during this journey. They need to make sure their customers feel like they are taken seriously and that they get a delightful and valuable experience out of it. 

Identifying what your customers want and expect will increase customer value and customer satisfaction. By mapping the customer journey, the hotels can figure out what the most important touch-points are between them and their customers, and they could improve these by enhancing the customer experience with solutions for detected problems.

What Does A Pre-Arrival Guest Expect?

What to do before guests arrive at your property?

Here are all the answers that will set the stage better for the pre-arrival of guest:

1. Booking confirmation from the hotel.

2. Both the necessary and additional details to make their stay easier- check-in time, online check-in facility (if any), itinerary, weather details, things to do and pack, amenities offered, hotel address, special services, details regarding the shuttle or transport service that the hotel offers, the facility of leaving their baggage with the hotel while they explore the city, local recommendations, etc.

3. Preferably, a personalized micro page or pre-arrival email wherein is listed all the relevant and useful information regarding their upcoming stay with the hotel, almost like literally helping the guests with "this is what you will need." Smart hotels are resorting to pre-arrival guest messages to make things a lot easier.

4. A reminder for their upcoming reservation, preferably a day before their scheduled arrival.

5. Special services, if any, to be booked at the very outset.

6. Easier way to connect with the hotel for any inquiries and requests. This could be through SMS, WhatsApp (Guest Messaging), or a guest self-service portal.

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Guest Messaging At The Pre-Arrival Stage

The pre-arrival stage in the guest cycle is one of the very first stages. It is crucial in the entire cycle of guest journey mapping. This is perhaps the most important stage of the entire cycle, as this stage forms the initial impression of the hotel in the mind of the guest.

Travelers usually spend a significant amount of time researching their ideal holiday destination and suitable accommodation that will contribute to the amplification of their experience.

The amount of time, money, and effort invested in the entire endeavor by the guests is usually in expectation of a memorable and lifelong experience. Guests prefer a personalized service and quick response to their queries.

Guest Messaging can help you in creating a great first impression on your guests by instantly responding to their queries. These queries may range from a wide variety of issues from something as obvious as the room availability, asking about shuttle service, the type of breakfast to weather details, exact location, value-added services, etc., all of which could be handled very well even before visitor books with you.

This personalized interaction can help you score well, providing you the chance to convert your potential visitors into customers because personalized communication is acting as one of the driving forces here.

Engagement with guests at every touchpoint, especially at the pre-arrival stage, can be achieved through pre-arrival guest messages via guest messaging, along with providing a personalized guest experience and communication.

Guest messaging can be an ideal alternative for human resources. In addition, guest messaging requires minimum resources and efforts but allows you to communicate with a bigger targeted audience and enhance engagement.

However, the most important aspect of this tool is the Option of availability 24x7. Guest messaging helps in providing prompt responses to the online traffic and helps them to resolve queries faster and deliver a positive user experience.

To have a better understanding of the extent of the impact that guest messaging will have on delivering a positive guest experience, certain examples have been provided below. With Guest Messaging, you can do so much more in terms of sending out accurate pre-arrival guest messages:

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Various Aspects Of The Pre-Arrival Touchpoint

Just like pre-arrival email to hotel guests, pre-arrival guest messages are extremely important:

→ Booking Confirmation Message

This will be your first point of contact with the guests. So remember to make it warm and appealing. Once a guest books your hotel, you can send them a welcome message confirming their booking status:

"Hi Suzanne, thank you for choosing to stay with us. Your reservation is confirmed. We look forward to hosting you on June 28 :) Please feel free to connect with us for any queries or special services. For more details on your booking, please visit *the URL.* We hope you will enjoy your stay, and we look forward to welcoming you!"  

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→ Reminder Message

As the reservation date comes nearer, you can also send them reminders. They will surely cherish them, alongside your preparation for guest arrival:

"How are you doing, June? This is a gentle reminder to you regarding your booking with us on June 30. We look forward to welcoming you!"

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→ Sending Out Relevant Information (amenities, location, what’s happening around, add-on services, breakfast timings, and other details)

Your guests would love to know more about you- things you offer, special facilities, what's happening in your neighborhood, top attractions nearby, value-added services, etc. So sending out a brochure can serve the purpose well. 

This is one of the great ways to acquaint your guests better with your hotel and the amenities offered before they make their choice:

"Hi, Jennifer! How about knowing each other a little better? Kindly click on *the URL* below to download our personalized brochure in a PDF format, directly in your inbox. If there's a special service you would like to request, text us here, and we'll take care of the rest. See you real soon."

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