Do you often get concerned calls from guests checking whether their booking came through or not?
Have your guests ever turned up underprepared for the adventure trip?
Bridging the guest communications gap with emails can help operators avoid these scenarios.
How to Use Emails for Guest Communications
Emails have become a necessity for doing just about anything online. With email usage on the rise, it is arguably the best way to reach your contacts. Whether it be information about the upcoming tour or unexpected delays, operators can rely on email to provide guests with relevant information and a frictionless experience.
In this post, we cover the five essential guest communications emails every operator should send to nurture guest relationships and promote brand loyalty.
1. Booking Confirmation Emails
As the first point of contact with guests, operators should cash in on this opportunity to make a great first impression. Confirmation emails should hit guests’ inboxes immediately after the booking, letting them know everything is good to go.
The booking confirmation helps guests and operators ensure that the booking details—guest information, date, time, activity type and location—are accurate. It could avoid unnecessary back and forth emails and phone calls from the guests who want to make sure that their booking and payments have been processed correctly and they’re 100% booked.
Operators can also use the space to highlight additional notes, such as their cancellation or refund policy. A well-designed, information-rich booking email could end up as a useful, centralized resource for the guests to refer back to while on the go.
2. Tour Notification Emails
Who doesn’t want to get reminded of the exciting trip and the amazing adventures waiting for them?
When set up correctly, it can help drum up excitement around upcoming experiences. Use the email body to count down their trip, tell them what they are in for and spark excitement.
💡 Zaui Tip: It is best to send these emails a couple of days or even a week in advance as a reminder, and also, operators can let guests know how best to prepare.
For example, for whale watching tours, operators can inform guests beforehand to bring their sunglasses, sunscreen and recommend appropriate clothing such as windbreaker jackets and closed-toe shoes. This would ensure that guests are well-prepared to have an exceptional experience.
Operators can use the tour notification email to pitch other relevant offerings or merchandise to enhance the guest experience. Also, save their time by including digital waivers along with the tour notification if they missed it during the booking process.
3. Disruption Notification Emails
We’ve all learned one lesson over the past year: to be prepared to face the uncertainties and adapt to the changes quickly. If any disruption or cancellation happens, whether pandemic-driven or weather-driven, it’s important to keep your guests informed.
Guests may not always be reachable by phone, so any changes in the schedule or expected delays should be delivered by email or SMS as soon as you hear of the delay. Following the old school phone calls may not be viable when you try to reach out to all the bookings.
Communication at the right time will save your team from anxious phone calls from booked guests. More importantly, your guests will appreciate you informing them of the delays instead of being surprised by an unexpected delay or cancellation.
💡 Zaui Tip: Disruption notifications be quite effective, especially for transport operators encountering regular traffic or weather delays. Learn more about our Service Disruption Manager feature here.
4. Thank You Emails
Sending the thank you email immediately after the trip is the first step in continuing the bond with guests after the trip is over. A thank you note is always appreciated and makes guests feel valued.
💡 Zaui Tip: Tweak the thank you email for your guests and personalize it with mention of activities or tours they’ve embarked on. Also, consider including promo codes to show gratitude and appreciation, incentivizing them to return.
Besides thanking them for their visit, invite them to connect with you further on social media or subscribe to your newsletter.
Operators can also use the thank you mail to promote upcoming offers as it would give them the mileage of word-of-mouth marketing. If guests loved the trip, they would be happy to forward the email, recommending it to their network looking for similar tours and activities.
5. Review Request Emails
Operators shouldn’t be waiting too long to send this one! The request for review should reach them when the memories of the experience are still fresh in them, ideally within 1-2 days after their trip.
When you send the review request, add photos of their adventures to remind them of the good times they had. Zaui enables tour and transport operators to include a downloadable link to the pictures of the tour group with our recent integration to Fotaflo, a photo marketing platform.
Operators could link the TripAdvisor page or Google Business on the email, making it easy for guests to share their feedback.
For a little nudge, an additional promo code for their next trip may just do the trick 😉.
Final Word—Start Automating Guest Communications via Emails
We can’t stress enough how important it is to connect with your guests and keep them informed both pre and post-tour. Guest communications do not end with their trip. There are many opportunities to stay in touch and to collect business reviews to attract future guests.
Setting up the emails may sound like a lot of work, and the thought of reaching out to each guest after every trip, especially when operating with a small team, can be daunting.
This is where automated emails come in. Relying on booking management software to handle the heavy lifting by automating your email communications and confirmations can help you address this challenge directly.
In Zaui, users can pre-draft these emails and set the time and date for these emails to go out. Start automating emails to avoid the tedious work of creating emails manually for every booking.
If you are an existing customer and have not fully set up transactional emails in Zaui, connect with our customer success team today to learn more about our guest communication and email sending features.
Not a Zaui customer yet?
Learn how Zaui can help you automate emails to boost engagement with your guests.
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