Stay in touch with touchless guest texting

Great way to com­mu­ni­cate with our guests! We were email­ing peo­ple and as many as half nev­er checked or respond­ed to our mes­sages. I run a hotel and now guests are tex­ting that they want ear­ly check in or that they are 20 min­utes out. Before Whis­tle, we often had no warn­ing and would scram­ble to shift reser­va­tions around to acco­mo­date them. Now, we have time to accom­date most of them seem­less­ly. It has been a big help in guest sat­is­fac­tion. ☺It allows us to com­mu­ni­cate with guests by text mes­sage and have any­one respond back because our “phone num­ber” is actu­al­ly the Whis­tle Web­site. We have sev­er­al pre­pared tem­plates that allow us to mes­sage or respond to mul­ti­ple guests quick­ly. Whis­tle has an esca­latipn sys­tem which alerts us if a mes­sage received is not respond­ed to quick­ly so we are prompt with respons­es for the guests. It also merges with our prop­er­ty man­age­ment sys­tem! ☹While Whis­tle is pret­ty esay to use, I wish that they could stream­line the ini­tial com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tem a lit­tle. It’s okay, but I believe it could be easier.

Whis­tle is an easy prac­ti­cal solu­tion for com­mu­ni­cat­ing with your guests This is a great way for our guests to com­mu­ni­cate with the front desk as text is often the pre­ferred method for com­mu­ni­ca­tion these days. [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] and his team are great and the prod­uct works great! ☺How easy it was to get start­ed and the very sim­ple and afford­able pric­ing plan. ☹When I first signed up the com­pa­ny still new so we had to work through a few things that they were still fig­ur­ing out.

Easy to use and com­mu­ni­cate with guests Huge ben­e­fit of cus­tomer ser­vice and improv­ing the guest expe­ri­ence! ☺Whis­tle was very easy to imple­ment at our bou­tique hotel and allows us to eas­i­ly com­mu­ni­cate with guests before, dur­ing, and after their stay with­out hav­ing an employ­ee on site 24/7. It was the solu­tion we need­ed! ☹At this time, I can­not think of any cons. It may be help­ful for us to be able to receive cred­it card info via the app and I wish our Think Reser­va­tions “tasks” list was acces­si­ble via Whis­tle. But we love the integration! 

Wood­stock­er’s review of Whistle Easy com­mu­ni­ca­tions with guests when no car­ri­er vio­la­tions take place ☺Ease of use and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty tar­gets enabled ☹The con­stant car­ri­er vio­la­tion issues — Frankly it defeats the pur­pose of the prod­uct. Whis­tle needs to resolve this and users should not be pay­ing for this res­o­lu­tion. It is part of the brand promise

Qual­i­ty Prod­uct with Great Features Great prod­uct love how all fea­tures have been thought out for prac­ti­cal uses in the indus­try. ☺We are in a mixed use prop­er­ty where are concierge staff pro­vide ser­vice to both hotel guests and build­ing res­i­dents. This sys­tem allows both to com­mu­ni­cate eas­i­ly with the Concierge. ☹Set­ting up some fea­tures is a bit com­pli­cat­ed. Bet­ter assis­tance in get­ting these set up would be appreciated. 

Great com­mu­ni­ca­tion tool We have defi­nate­ly increased pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of our front desk oper­a­tions with this addi­tion­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion tool. We are able to bet­ter com­mu­ni­cate between the house­keep­ing depart­ment and with Guests. It allows us to be more effi­cient in our dai­ly oper­a­tions as we are not spend­ing as much time on the phone. ☺We liked the abil­i­ty to be able to com­mu­ni­cate with our guests in a faster more effi­cient way. They did­n’t need to call us with requests, it could be texted. The Auto­mat­ic respons­es set up in the sys­tem also helped to answer the every­day ques­tions of Guests with­out us hav­ing to repeat the same infor­ma­tion over the phone. It stream­lined our process­es. ☹It does­n’t have a lost prop­er­ty fea­ture which oth­er prod­ucts offered. If a guest left some­thing in a room, the item could be record­ed in this pro­gram and thus fur­ther stream­line the process. Oth­er prod­ucts offered the abil­i­ty to have the pic­ture of the item, the address of the guests and the track­ing info once shipped all record­ed in the program.

Great way to get info to guests ☺imme­di­ate con­tact between me and guests as some peo­ple don’t want to be bom­bard­ed with e‑mails. Guests can ask ques­tions about their stay and update me as need­ed. They can request ser­vices or ask ques­tions and get a response with­out hav­ing to call me. ☹Some of the fea­tures are not avail­able or eas­i­ly maneu­ver­able via mobile phones or tablets. 

Great Solu­tion for Post-Covid Touch­free Communication Post-Covid, we had to re-cre­ate our trade­mark friend­ly and help­ful atti­tude with cau­tion, masks and dis­tance. Whis­tle helped us bridge this gap and con­tin­ue with cheery, con­ver­sa­tion­al mes­sages with links to required forms like check-ins and menu selec­tions. ☺Easy to set up and cre­ate short friend­ly com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Well accept­ed by guests and staff. Easy to imbed links for forms to be com­plet­ed. ☹With Basic Plan, lim­it­ed to just three set times for var­i­ous mes­sages. Would pre­fer to have flex­i­bil­i­ty with send times and lim­it num­ber of text avail­able in Basic Plan — this would give the small busi­ness greater flexibility.

Pros and cons It is okay. ☺It is eas­i­er to com­mu­ni­cate to guest as a whole. ☹Guests tend to get “annoyed” by the texts and tend to opt out. 

Effi­cient and approach­able mul­ti-tasker’s dream Over­all the expe­ri­ence with Whis­tle has been great. The response time for our guest ser­vices is near-instan­ta­neous as we can now respond to requests or ques­tions while work­ing on some­thing else. ☺The best part of the Whis­tle soft­ware is its approach­a­bil­i­ty. By uti­liz­ing the tex­ting app on a guest’s phone, our guest ser­vices become just like they are tex­ting a friend. It is great to see guests progress dur­ing their stay from short, some­time point­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tion, to adding emo­jis! ☹At first, the dash­board was a bit clut­tered and there­fore there was a bit of a learn­ing curve. Nav­i­ga­tion became eas­i­er after some use. How­ev­er, I do wish there was more def­i­n­i­tion or con­trast in the dash­board. This would great­ly improve “quick-glance” ref­er­ence as often front desk staff is multi-tasking.