Using Text Messages for Guests Notifications

Should you use Text Messages (SMS)?

The process of managing your guests' bookings notification is done via email templates that are dynamically created at run time, when the booking is made. The templates automatically add the relevant tags pertaining to the type of reservation. These include tags for pre-ordering, credit card details / deposit requests, and special offers.

Emails are free, can be fully branded using the provided html editor, and can also be used to add extra information such as terms & conditions, or even promotion of future events.

Considerations

Some restaurants also like to use text messages, in addition to emails. Whilst this option is available, please consider the following to ascertain whether that option is right for your restaurant, both in terms of guest communication and in terms of additional cost to the business.

Text messages can only be sent based on a pre-approved template, as part of the booking management process;
'Free text" text messages cannot be sent on an ad-hoc basis - you will still need to contact your guest by phone;
A text message includes 160 characters per SMS - so if the your message is more than 160 characters, it may include a multiple of SMS i.e. if your message has 240 characters, this will count as 2 SMSs, if it has 340 characters, it will count as 3 SMSs. This could prove quite expensive if your restaurant uses features such as credit card details / deposit or pre-ordering, as in addition to the standard booking notifications (Confirmation, Reminder, Cancellation), it will also include payment reminders, pre-order reminders, payment acknowledgement, pre-order completion acknowledgement. So this should be taken into consideration.
Text messages are sent to all guests, regardless of whether the booking contains an email address or not. So a guest that provides an email address will receive both an email notification & a text message notification.

For the above reasons, we do not recommend using Text Messages, firstly because the amount of information you send in a text message is restricted (through templates) and limited (in length), but also because of the additional cost this adds to your booking management process.

Please note that whilst you can try to work out the number of characters in a text message, the number of characters may vary, based on the information in the text message. For example, if the guest's name is ‘Jo", this would count as 2 characters, however, ’Dominique' would count as 9 characters. Therefore, it is not possible to know in advance the exact number of characters a text message will contain.

Examples:

For a standard booking, a standard text message would look like:

Dear [CUSTOMER_FIRSTNAME], We are pleased to confirm your booking at [SITE_NAME] for [GUEST_COUNT] people at [BOOKING_TIME] on [BOOKING_DATE]. Please click [BOOKING_URL] if you need to change your booking.

This would use a base of 205 characters (or 2 SMSs)

However, if you use credit card details / deposits as part of the booking, it would be longer:

Dear [CUSTOMER_FIRSTNAME], We are pleased to confirm your booking at [SITE_NAME] for [GUEST_COUNT] people at [BOOKING_TIME] on [BOOKING_DATE]. [PAYMENT_URL:START]Please click here to submit your credit card details to secure your booking: [PAYMENT_URL].[PAYMENT_URL:END]. Please click [BOOKING_URL] if you need to change your booking.

This would use a base of 334 characters (or 3 SMSs)

And if you use pre-ordering, this would also add to the length of the message:

Dear [CUSTOMER_FIRSTNAME], We are pleased to confirm your booking at [SITE_NAME] for [GUEST_COUNT] people at [BOOKING_TIME] on [BOOKING_DATE]. [PAYMENT_URL:START]Please click here to submit your credit card details to secure your booking: [PAYMENT_URL].[PAYMENT_URL:END] [PREORDER_URL:START]. Please click on this link to submit your pre-order as soon as possible: [PREORDER_URL] [PREORDER_URL:END]. Please click [BOOKING_URL] if you need to change your booking.

This would use a base of 462 characters (or 3 SMSs)

How to calculated number of characters in your text message?

You can enter your text message in a Word document and click on word count:

Creating / Editing Text Messages in your booking system

To create / edit text messages in your system, click on Configuration then click on Notifications

Click on the Templates tab

Click on the + Add SMS Template to create a new one (all templates can have a start & end date if different templates are required throughout the year) OR click on the Edit button to change the txt in your template.