Why guests message at night, and what to do about it

If you run a hotel or homestay in Kohima, Dimapur or Mokokchung, you know the pattern. The phone is quiet while you work, and then the messages start after dinner. Is a room free on Saturday? What’s the rate for a double? Do we need an Inner Line Permit? Most of them wait until morning.

Here is why that happens, and what you can do about it this week, without buying anything.

Why the questions come late

Most people plan a trip in their own free time: after work, after the children are asleep, on a Sunday. That is when they open WhatsApp and write to a few places at once.

A few things add to it:

• WhatsApp feels like texting a friend, so nobody thinks twice about writing at eleven at night.
• Visitors from outside Nagaland have questions a local would not ask, such as the Inner Line Permit, or how to reach you from the station.
• Around the Hornbill Festival, people write to many places while they look for a room.

The trouble is that a guest who has written to several places may settle on whoever answers first, and by the time you wake up, the decision is made.

Write it down once

Almost every late message is one of the same few questions. Write your answers down once, on one page, in plain words. Call it your fact sheet:

• Rooms and rates, exactly as you charge them, including festival rates
• Check-in and check-out times
• How to reach you from the airport, the railway station and the bus stand, with a map pin
• Food: what is included and what costs extra
• Facilities: parking, hot water, Wi-Fi
• House rules
• How guests can pay
• The Inner Line Permit: what you tell guests who need one
• Your number, and the best time to call

It is useful on its own. Your staff can answer from it when you are away, and it stops two people quoting two different rates.

Save your answers as quick replies

If you use the WhatsApp Business app, you can save answers as quick replies. Save each part of your fact sheet as its own reply: rates, directions, check-in times. In a chat, type a slash and pick the one you need, instead of typing a paragraph on your phone at night.

Keep each one short.

Set an away message with your hours

The same app lets you set an away message that goes out when you are not available, including outside the business hours you set. A good one says three things:

• that the message has arrived
• when you will reply, in plain words, such as “from 7 am”
• where to find the basics in the meantime

For example: “Thank you for your message. We reply from 7 am. Our rooms, photos and directions are here: [your link].” The guest knows they have not been ignored, and when to expect you.

Put rates and directions in one place

The link can go to your Google listing or a page on your own website. What matters is that there is one place, and that it is kept up to date. An old rate on a forgotten page causes more trouble than no page at all.

If you want a website, we build them for homestays, schools, clinics and shops, and keep them up to date on a monthly care plan. The Eden Academy office in Mokokchung posts its notices by adding a row to a Google Sheet, and a site can be updated the same way. More on our websites.

What we are building

We are building Reception, a WhatsApp assistant built first for hotels and homestays, with clinics next. It is designed to answer guests’ routine questions (rates, check-in times, directions, house rules and the Inner Line Permit) using only a fact sheet the owner fills in, and to note the dates, number of guests and room a guest asks about, for the owner to confirm.

Its limits, in plain words:

• It cannot see your booking calendar, and it is instructed never to confirm that a room is free. It books nothing.
• It sends no reminders and no follow-ups. Every message it sends is a reply to one the guest sent.
• It is in development. No hotel or homestay uses it yet, and there is nothing to try.

Its fact sheet is much like the one above, so writing yours today helps either way. There is more on Reception for hotels and homestays.

If you would like to talk through how your front desk handles late messages, message us on WhatsApp.