SMS Marketing for Hotels: Complete Guide + Best Practices

Key takeaways

SMS advertising for lodges enhances visitor experiences by offering well timed, automated communication all through the client journey, from reserving to post-stay follow-ups.

With a staggering 98% open price, SMS gives lodges a extremely engaged viewers, making it an efficient channel for direct bookings and income technology.

Personalization and context are key; tailor-made messages primarily based on visitor conduct and preferences considerably enhance engagement and retention charges.

Implementing automation and segmentation methods can streamline SMS advertising efforts, maximizing ROI whereas minimizing buyer acquisition prices.

Your visitor expertise is a journey, not only one reserving. Essentially the most dependable technique of speaking with them earlier than, throughout, and after their keep is by way of SMS advertising for lodges, with time-sensitive messages being the proper candidates for automation.

Some 98% of individuals learn their textual content messages, in line with Optimonk, and Omnisend’s analysis reveals that click on charges greater than doubled in 2025 over 2024. You actually gained’t discover a extra engaged, high-intent viewers than your SMS subscribers.

One other pull issue for resort SMS is retention and decreasing your buyer acquisition prices. The private nature of textual content messaging gives new angles for anniversary and winback messages, serving to you maximize ROI lengthy after preliminary bookings.

This text is a whole information to the perfect SMS advertising for lodges. You’ll study what it’s, why it really works, its function in your buyer journey, seize templates to make use of in your efforts, and uncover the perfect practices our consultants use for outcomes.

What’s SMS advertising for lodges?

SMS marketing for lodges is a pre- and post-booking communication channel for offering instantaneous, time-sensitive messages to clients.

Your SMS resort advertising technique will doubtless embrace:

• Welcome messages
• Confirmations
• Reminders and repair updates
• Suggestions requests
• Promotional messages, reminiscent of cross-sells

All these messages are automated, not one-time campaigns or bulk texts. You want a resort textual content messaging system, enabled by a third-party device, to develop and handle your record, construct flows, and monitor SMS deliverability and engagement.

Why SMS advertising works so properly for lodges

Lodges accumulate telephone numbers when clients enquire, ebook, and go to, so there’s an natural path to info sharing. Your clients are receptive to SMS as a result of they anticipate it when interacting with the transactional facet of your resort.

Right here’s why SMS advertising works properly for lodges:

• Excessive open and browse charges: 98% of individuals learn textual content messages, and 90% of individuals learn them inside three minutes, according to Optimonk
• Immediacy: Texts seem in messaging apps with out the tabs of e-mail inboxes, placing your journey messages entrance and heart
• Much less inbox competitors: Texts seem in your buyer’s messaging app alongside private conversations, so that they’re extra fast than e-mail and prone to get buried
• Direct bookings and income: Your texts can have hyperlinks to cost pages and supply a quick path to checkout
• Improves your visitor expertise: They’ll obtain well timed confirmations and alerts that make staying with you a pleasure
• Helps your full buyer journey: SMS is appropriate for welcoming, nurturing, changing, and retaining clients

Resort SMS advertising throughout the visitor journey

Your friends ebook, arrive, and head residence, however there are a number of extra moments and steps of their journey the place resort SMS can improve their expertise.

Prospects ought to obtain well timed communication from pre- to post-checkout to make sure they get all the data and gives they want.

Contemplate these phases of your visitor journey when planning your texts:

Pre-arrival messages

Pre-arrival messages embrace confirmations, info, upsells, and reminders. Your circulate might embrace one textual content message or a collection of them, relying on how a lot of your buyer journey you wish to cowl earlier than friends arrive.

A four-text collection to think about on your resort SMS advertising:

1. Reserving affirmation, despatched inside 5 minutes of reserving:

2. Pre-arrival message, arrives on the 72-hour level earlier than checking in

3. Upsell textual content, when acceptable, providing room upgrades and add-ons

4. Reminder textual content message, for the steps your friends have to take, or the issues they should convey

Arrival and check-in

These texts set off following your visitor’s arrival. They’re comparatively sparse and timed so that they don’t interrupt their expertise or create fatigue.

The SMS collection under works properly in most resort situations:

1. Digital check-in textual content, despatched on the day of arrival:

2. Room prepared notification, despatched after checking in

3. Welcome message, ship after your visitor has had time to get into their room

In the course of the keep

Visitors can obtain reminders, gives, and exercise notifications by way of textual content throughout their keep, serving to them get pleasure from their time with out having to hunt for info or go to your assist desk.

Textual content messaging alternatives embrace:

• Spa offers and restaurant gives
• Service reminders, reminiscent of spa appointments:

• Notifications for resort occasions
• Native climate alerts
• Adjustments to opening and shutting occasions

Publish-stay and re-engagement

SMS advertising for lodges doesn’t finish when friends try. Your texts can thank them, ask for suggestions, invite them to obtain rewards, and supply a return low cost.

It’s finest to deal with post-stay SMS advertising as a customized collection, in order that clients obtain texts with acceptable delays and contextual info.

Texts in your collection will usually embrace:

• A thank-you SMS, typically a part of your checkout affirmation
• Suggestions requests, despatched 24 hours after checkout:

• Loyalty program invites, despatched seven days after checkout
• A re-engagement supply, reminiscent of 10% off future bookings, despatched close to the anniversary of your buyer’s keep

Resort SMS advertising use instances and message templates

Prepared-to-use resort SMS templates are extraordinarily useful for overlaying an important steps in your buyer journey, from confirmations to evaluate requests.

The templates under are so that you can copy, paste, and use as you want. Substitute the placeholders with your personal info, and also you’re good to go.

The place we’ve used (Title) and different customized placeholders, totally different SMS instruments deal with dynamic personalization in a different way, so you must check with what tags they use. In Omnisend, you utilize liquid syntax, reminiscent of [[ contact.email ]].

The desk under reveals totally different SMS sorts per visitor journey phases and when to ship them:

Reserving confirmations and reminders

Confirmations are instantaneous textual content messages that your clients anticipate to obtain. A delay between 5 and 10 minutes can be acceptable. The template under is appropriate for lodges and different lodging bookings:

Why it really works:

• Mentions the resort title and reserving date instantly
• Supplies the reserving reference
• Units expectations for the subsequent message within the collection (check-in particulars)

Your clients additionally anticipate a reminder nearer to their reserving date. 24-48 hours earlier than arrival is the everyday interval, and you’ll embrace a hyperlink for added info. The template under invitations conversational SMS, you may change “Simply reply” with “Go to (hyperlink)” should you choose:

Why it really works:

• It confirms the keep and resort title
• Prospects have a concrete check-in time
• The hyperlink to extra info preserves character depend

Upselling and cross-selling

Upsells and cross-sells are revenue-generating textual content messages on your resort. You may automate them pre- and through your friends’ stays to extend their common spend.

Right here’s a cross-sell SMS template you need to use:

Why it really works:

• It references present worth to enhance the deal high quality
• Prospects can ebook straight from the textual content
• The message arrives earlier than therapy, making the supply handy

Digital check-in directions

Sending digital check-in directions to your friends can go two methods. Both you ship a digital check-in kind to scale back queues at reception, otherwise you ship info on learn how to discover the desk and which facet to queue on (amongst different particulars). Listed below are two templates:

And if you wish to assist folks verify in quicker on arrival:

Ship these texts round 24 hours earlier than check-in.

Why these work:

• Each texts assist friends streamline their check-in
• Sending them forward of time helps your friends put together
• There’s much less friction for friends once they first go to your resort

In-stay service and requests

You need to use SMS advertising for lodges throughout your friends’ stays to scale back front-desk calls. Reminders and alerts for actions are good use instances.

Right here’s an instance template you need to use for a spa reminder:

Requests are one other manner to make use of resort SMS:

Why these work:

• Mentioning your buyer by title creates a connection
• Each texts are contextual to the visitor’s keep
• The knowledge supply is concise with none promotional language

Suggestions and evaluate requests

A post-trip suggestions request is finest despatched 24 hours after checkout. Any later and the motivation to depart a evaluate drops off, though you may ship evaluate reminders as a part of a collection with an extra two or three messages over seven days.

The resort SMS advertising template under is an efficient choice:

Why it really works

• It creates a optimistic impression instantly
• The hyperlink takes your buyer to a devoted critiques app
• Including an incentive will increase the possibilities of evaluate assortment

Loyalty gives and winback campaigns

Visitors who had optimistic experiences are extremely receptive to loyalty gives and winback textual content messages. You may ship these across the anniversary of their reserving, or close to common dates reminiscent of Valentine’s Day.

Previous friends who haven’t rebooked inside six months are your goal. Listed below are two SMS resort templates you need to use:

One other engaging choice for purchasers is freebies and extras. The template under encourages extra bookings with tangible add-ons, reasonably than reductions:

Why these work:

• Rewarding loyalty will increase retention
• Retargeting present clients lowers your acquisition prices
• You may accumulate engagement knowledge and goal those that click on by way of with extra gives sooner or later

Finest practices for resort SMS advertising

Even should you use our confirmed SMS templates, your resort textual content advertising can have low click-through and conversion charges if it lacks personalization, or your messages and poorly timed or out of context.

These pointers will hold your resort textual content messages on observe:

• Maintain messages brief and action-oriented. You actually have 160 characters earlier than your SMS will get cut up into a number of messages, which prices extra and breaks formatting. Use Omnisend’s SMS length calculator to verify your character depend.
• Section your viewers. Create segments for reserving kind, room class, and journey goal, then tailor your cross-sells accordingly.

• Respect the visitor’s context. Ship resort SMS messages that match your friends’ buyer journey. New arrivals ought to obtain suggestions, friends who ebook therapies ought to obtain gives, and so forth.
• Use automations reasonably than campaigns. Ship friends a welcome, affirmation, thank-you, and suggestions SMS by way of automations. Your SMS device ought to allow you to construct flows which are triggered by your reserving system and buyer conduct.
• Take a look at your message copy. For any messages which are templated and despatched to a number of friends, an A/B take a look at can work in your favor and enhance click-through charges. Take a look at totally different traces in your cross-sells and upsells to see which get probably the most clicks.
• Don’t over-send. Fatigue will solely frustrate your friends and result in them not rebooking, or they could even block your quantity and affect your deliverability rating.
• Ship at acceptable occasions. Confirmations must be near-immediate, and reminders ought to give clients sufficient time to get issues or themselves prepared. Ship SMS no later than 9 PM to keep away from annoying folks.

• Combine your resort textual content messaging system together with your resort administration system (PMS). You may then set off automated texts primarily based on bookings, check-ins, visitor profiles, and extra.

Find out how to construct your resort visitor SMS record

You’ll construct your visitor SMS record naturally by way of transactions, reminiscent of resort and repair bookings, and from publication subscriptions. Gathering advertising opt-ins is essential for each subscriber sorts if you wish to ship them gives and offers.

These confirmed list-building strategies are good on your resort:

• On-line reserving kind. A easy checkbox throughout reservation does the job. “Textual content me reserving updates and unique gives” tells the visitor what they’re signing up for.
• Loyalty and rewards packages. Place SMS signup as one of many standards for turning into a VIP or unique member.
• Entrance desk and check-in. “We’ll textual content you when your room is prepared” is a much better ask than “Would you wish to obtain advertising messages?” Give workers a cause to supply, and friends will say sure.
• QR codes on property. Print QR code stickers and place them close to your resort’s eating places, bars, spas, and exercise areas. Supply friends a small low cost in return for subscribing to textual content messages.
• Publish-booking affirmation e-mail. Your affirmation e-mail already has a excessive open price, so embrace an SMS sign-up invite in it. “Need updates and gives by textual content? Add your quantity right here” is sufficient.
• Social media. Instagram and Fb lead-gen advertisements can drive SMS record development whenever you supply one thing in return. An unique price or welcome present in change for a telephone quantity converts properly from paid social.

Getting began with SMS advertising on your resort

Resort SMS advertising requires solely an opt-in record and a textual content messaging device to create segments and automations primarily based on buyer actions and conduct. 

You may then ship well timed messages throughout your friends’ pre- and post-booking expertise in full compliance with the TCPA and GDPR.

These steps will get you began with SMS for lodges:

• Join an SMS advertising device. Omnisend is one instance. Its Professional plan contains bonus SMS credit equal to the value of your month-to-month plan. One of the best textual content messaging instruments allow you to create standalone SMS campaigns and multichannel flows (e-mail + SMS + push messaging). Additionally search for these options:
  • Varieties and popups
  • Listing cleansing instruments
  • Depth of segmentation
  • Toll-free quantity necessities
  • SMS protection (is it world or restricted)
• Begin with high-impact textual content messages first. Corresponding to those who complement your buyer journey reasonably than selling merchandise. These are the perfect beginning factors:
  • Affirmation messages for bookings
  • Reminder texts
  • Suggestions requests
• Section your visitor record. Create buyer teams primarily based on reserving kind, spend, preferences, enterprise vs. leisure, returning vs. new, and age. These allow you to construct distinctive flows and goal them accordingly.
• Run automated textual content messages as a lot as doable; they earned a median of $0.74 per send in 2025, in comparison with $0.15 per ship for SMS campaigns.
• Use A/B checks to enhance your SMS content material. Add splits to your SMS flows to see which messages get probably the most clicks, then use the successful variations.
• Monitor your SMS metrics and act on the info. Test for prime opt-out charges and low click on charges weekly. Poor outcomes point out that your messaging, timing, or context is off and desires adjustment.

Omnisend helps you obtain all these steps in a single go. It’s an all-in-one device for resort text message marketing, letting you construct flows triggered by reserving occasions, phase friends, and meet compliance requirements.