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Text Messaging For Vacation Rentals: 5 Ways It Can Change Your Business
No matter where you guests come from, they have one thing in common. They like to communicate by text messaging — and that includes when they’re on vacation.
Texting is everywhere. More than 277 million Americans identify as “texters,” according to Text Request. More than 97 percent of smartphone owners text regularly, reports Pew Research Center.
A big reason for texting’s popularity with businesses is that it gets results. Research shows that open rates are as high as 98 percent for text messages compared to a corresponding 20 percent for emails.
It’s no mystery why SMS has been embraced by the hospitality industry. Guests love the speed, ease and convenience that text communication provides. Vacation rental management companies, in turn, have discovered that text communication can be an invaluable tool for saving time, optimizing a team and pleasing guests.
Here are 5 ways that text messaging can change your vacation rental business.
1. Text messaging is instantaneous
With SMS, guests are never put on hold or made to wait for an email response when they have a question. Your answers land where guests want them: on their phones. Being able to get a quick reply pleases guests and helps your business look tech-savvy and up to date.
2. Text messaging makes you communicate more efficiently
SMS forces you to write in a direct way, so guests get a clear, concise message that’s easy to understand. Emails can get wordy, but with its limited character count, texting distills your message to its essence.
3. Text messaging saves time for you and your team
SMS lets your team attend to multiple guests at once, an impossibility with phone calls. Texting also allows team members some extra moments to formulate the best possible answer to a question.
Everyone knows how to text, so no training is needed for new hires and seasonal workers.
By helping to eliminate calls and face-to-face meetings, texting can free up valuable time that you and your team can invest in other aspects of your business.
4. Guests are comfortable using SMS and increasingly expect it at vacation rentals
With the near universal use of text messaging by hotels and airlines, guests expect text communication when they travel. They know how to use it, like having a ready form of communication at their fingertips and don’t want to deal with apps or downloads.
Guests also like having the ability to be in touch with your vacation rental business wherever and whenever they want, whether in a car, at a coffee shop or soaking in their vacation rental home hot tub.
5. Look for a texting solution
Any business with a company cell phone has SMS capability, but that won’t satisfy the ramped up texting requirements of a flourishing vacation rental business. Your company needs a texting solution that provides a unified channel for text communication with multiple features and benefits like these:
- Automatically send text messages before and during guest stays, and save time fielding repeat questions.
- Integrate with your vacation rental software so guest names, rental units and arrival and departure dates are automatically matched when you receive a message. No need to look anything up.
- Get a team inbox that saves all guest messages and replies so you and your team know that questions have been answered and how quickly and efficiently that occurs.
- Send emergency text messages informing current and arriving guests of area disruptions like severe storms, fires and road closures on a date and time you choose.
- Auto-send a customized Out-of-Office message when guests text you after hours so they can contact you in case of an emergency.
- Receive a dedicated phone number in your local area code so texts don’t go to your personal or business number.
The day is coming when it will be unthinkable to run a vacation rental business without text communication. This is the perfect time to add SMS to the way you communicate with your guests — or upgrade your current texting method — and assure a bright future for your business.
