Guest Texting Overview (Cloud) 🎥

Guest Texting Overview (Cloud) 🎥

Guest Texting is a free feature in Visual Matrix that opens a new channel of communication allowing you and your guests to connect before, during and even after their stay. Guest texting is available in the Visual Matrix Desktop and Cloud version. However, the most advanced features that are Custom Responses and Automatic Triggers are only available on the Cloud version. There is NO charge from Visual Matrix to activate or use Guest Texting.
All a hotel has to do is sign up with a Twilio SMS account.  Twilio may have a small fee to use their service, but it's minimal. For US and Canadian hotels, Twilio does charge less than one cent per text. For more information: https://www.twilio.com/sms.

The features are as follows:
- Notifies guests when their room is available for check-in (when a clean room is assigned, or when the room that's assigned is marked clean).
- Sends a welcome message to guests at check-in.
- Accepts special requests from guests via text message during their stay (sends customer confirmation when posted, asks for room number if multiple rooms have the same cell number).
- Notifies the On-Call hotel employees when a guest text is received (notifies guest when clerk marks complete).
- Sends an automatic thank-you message at checkout.

The Customer Experience from Room Available to Check-Out
The customer has elected to receive text alerts. The box has been checked in the reservation:
- When a vacant & cleanroom is assigned to the reservation the guest will be sent an alert advising their room is ready. If you assign a dirty room, no alert is sent until the room is cleaned.
- Once the guest checks in, they will receive a welcome alert. It explains that if they need anything during their stay they can just reply to this text. This message can be personalized.
- When a guest needs something (like extra towels), they can send a text message as a reply to the welcome text they received. This will send a text message to each user in the On-Call section set to receive Guest.

Text Requests
- The guest in the room will receive a message that says their request has been received.
- The text goes to the user(s) and the request gets created in Front Office > Supervisor > Text Alerts.
- This has the same functionality as Special Requests. You can see the request here and you complete the request here.
- Once the request is completed here it sends a text to the guest stating the request has been marked completed.
- When the guest checks out, they will receive a Thank you for staying message.

Guests will also receive an opt-out alert as well in case they do not want to receive text messages. They can opt out which unchecks text messages from their reservation.

Pre-Setup Automatic Responses
Messaging only works for the guest while they are checked in.
- If two rooms share the same phone number and the guest sends a request, they will be asked which room has the request.
- If the guest enters a room number that does not have the phone number they are texting from they will receive a message along the lines of “a reservation cannot be found with this number, please contact the front desk”.
- If a guest sends a text message before check-in or after check out they will receive a message to call the hotel.


Hotels should ask guests as they speak with them or make reservations and ask if they would like to be activated for text messages. GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and other regulations require you to ask the guest for permission before just sending them text information. Hotels may also want to confirm the phone number on the reservation can receive text messages. 

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