The Hotel of the Future – Possible with SMS Gateway Integration?

Can the SMS gateway help us get closer to the hotel of the future? Easy access to information and convenience – that’s what your customers want.

It’s 2010, and we’ve just slid out of the global recession. Very cautiously, people will start returning to their old spending habits – not all, but some of them. Travel, for instance, is one that won’t easily die down.

Statistics indicate that post-recession travel has already increased in demand. What has changed, however, is how people make their choices.

One advancing key trend is mobility. Your customers want to be able to use the devices they carry with them to conduct all their travel related business. And by employing the SMS gateway, you can give it to them…

The Future, strangely enough, is about the “right here, right now”

We’re all subject to those same demands our customers have – we’ve grown accustomed to getting what we want, when we want it. And thanks to competition and the ubiquity of information, we’re able to get it. We live in an “instant gratification” society.

When it comes to hotels, we expect no less – “let me make my booking right now and give me an easy way to access the information I want, please”. The SMS gateway can help hotels automate their front desks to provide customers that are on the move with a client service interface that will see them right in a matter of minutes…

Hotels can implement a text-based front desk system (via the SMS gateway) to provide customers with a platform that will help them:

• Check the availability of rooms. Clever hotels will allow potential customers to subscribe to an availability service that will alert them what rooms are available at specific times.

• Make reservations. “Need a room? Just reply to this message with the number of people in the party and we’ll get back to you with all available options.”

• Get Queries Answered. Provide your customers with a platform that will give them the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions:
  1. How to find us
  2. Parking
  3. Babysitter service
  4. Disabled Facilities
  5. Shops nearby
  6. Tourist Attractions

• Access Room service. “Text FOOD at any time for a menu of our daily specials. Alternatively, text EAT and we’ll point you toward the best restaurants in the area.”

• Sign up for Alerts. Give current and potential visitors the benefit of real time access to important information that will help them make important decisions when they’re in the area…
  1. a. Balance Updates
  2. b. Weather alerts
  3. c. Local news
  4. d. Places to see
  5. e. Pubs, clubs & restaurants

Everything above forms part of a value-added service offering that is focused on the customer. In short, your business becomes more customer-centric, which, coincidentally, is exactly what businesses need to do post-recession.

The Undercarriage of a Text-based Hotel Menu

So what do you need to make this work? Take a look at the following diagram for a very simplistic visualization:

Here’s the process illustrated in the above diagram… A hotel guest sends a keyword to your short code. From his phone it goes to the network provider (e.g. AT&T, Verizon, etc.), on to the SMS gateway and from there to the hotel. The connection between the SMS gateway and the hotel is over the internet, which means it is TCP/IP based.

Although the connection between the hotel and SMS gateway is established over the internet, the transmission of messages is done with an application programming interface. There are a number of interfaces for different programming languages, to facilitate easy integration with the software environment of the hotel.

Once the message is received from the hotel visitor, the database and application will work together to get the information the visitor wants (and store the visitor details and query) before creating the reply message, sent back the way it came to the mobile of the hotel guest.

Yes, it’s that easy!

Find out if there is an interface for your business’ software environment. Go to our SMS gateway page now.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.