SMS for hospitality — no empty tables due to no-shows
A table of four that fails to show up on a Saturday evening is no small loss. And whoever does not appear at 8pm leaves you no time to fill the spot again. A confirmation by SMS a day in advance, with the option to cancel, changes that.
SMS is also the channel that lets you still fix things last minute: offering a cancelled table, notifying a waiting list or filling a quiet evening. Provided your guests gave consent for it, of course.
Where does it go wrong today?
No-shows at peak times
An empty table on a Friday or Saturday evening cannot be recovered.
Late cancellations
Whoever only calls off at 7pm leaves you with a gap. A confirmation the day before brings that moment forward.
Quiet evenings
A half-empty room is hard to turn around without a channel that gets read immediately.
This is what it looks like in practice
The examples below are illustrations. The parts between percentage signs are tags: you fill them in from an Excel list or through the API, so that every recipient gets their own version.
Thank you for your reservation: %date% at %time% for %count% people. See you then!
See you tomorrow! Your table is ready at %time% for %count% people. Unable to make it? Reply NO.
A table has become available on %date% at %time%. Interested? Reply YES within the hour.
Your order is ready for pickup. See you soon!
This week: our autumn menu at %price%. Book via %link%. Stop? Reply STOP.
How do you prevent no-shows in hospitality with SMS?
Confirm at booking
Send a confirmation right away with the date, time and number of people, so the guest has the details in black and white.
Remind a day ahead
Schedule the reminder when the booking is made; it then goes out automatically at the right moment.
Capture cancellations
Send from a number guests can reply to, so a cancellation comes in on time.
What you use for this
Reminders
Timing, texts and three ways to have it run automatically.
Schedule ahead
Set up the reminder the moment the table is booked.
Send promotions
Setting up promotions correctly: opt-in, unsubscribe and the right moment.
Follow up on replies
Confirmations and cancellations in one overview per guest.
Good to know
Mind the distinction: a reservation confirmation or reminder is operational, a menu promotion is advertising. For the latter you need the guest's prior consent and every message must include an unsubscribe option.
At SMSBOX you pay per message sent, from €0.06 per SMS to Belgium (excl. VAT). No subscription, no setup costs: a month without any sending costs you nothing. All processing takes place on Belgian servers, within the GDPR.
