WhatsApp for hotels and resorts: from enquiry to checkout
Endelir puts a hotel's guest conversations on one WhatsApp thread — room enquiries, reservation confirmations, pre-arrival details, requests during the stay and follow-up after checkout — answered by your team from a shared inbox. From "do you have a room this weekend?" to the invoice after checkout, a guest deals with your property a dozen times. Endelir keeps all of it on one thread on your business number, so reservations, the front desk and housekeeping are reading the same conversation instead of three different ones.
One guest, six conversations, none of them joined up
The enquiry comes in on a phone at the front desk. The confirmation is typed by hand or sent by email that nobody opens. The arrival time arrives as a message to whoever answered last. A request for a late checkout goes to one person, a complaint about the air conditioning to another, and the invoice comes from a system that has never seen any of it.
Nothing here is a hard problem on its own. Together they cost you the same way every time: the enquiry that got no reply until the guest had booked elsewhere, the transfer nobody arranged because the flight time sat in a chat on a handset, and the guest who left happy and never heard from you again.
One number, one thread, the whole stay
Endelir connects your property's number to the WhatsApp Business Platform and puts every guest conversation into a shared inbox. Reservations, reception, housekeeping and the restaurant each sign in as themselves, and a conversation is assigned to a named person, so a request has an owner rather than a hope. Anyone who opens the thread can read what was said before, including what happened on an earlier stay.
Around that, chat flows do the repetitive parts. A flow asks the questions an enquiry is missing and writes the answers onto the guest's record. Another sends the pre-arrival message a few days out and collects arrival time and transfer needs. A flow step can call a URL you control, so the answers land in the system your operations team already uses. What Endelir does not do is decide availability — it holds no calendar and no room inventory, and your own system stays the authority on what is free.
How a stay runs on one thread
- 1 The enquiry arrives A guest writes to your number — from an ad, the booking page, a listing, or the sticker at the desk. If they have stayed before, the thread opens with that history attached.
- 2 The flow collects what is missing Dates, nights, how many adults and children, which property. Each answer is saved onto the guest record rather than left in the chat.
- 3 Your system decides Reservations check the request against your own diary or property management system, by hand or through a flow step that calls it. Endelir does not know which rooms are free.
- 4 The confirmation goes out Once the booking exists in your system, the confirmation goes back on the same thread — free text inside the service window, an approved template after it.
- 5 Before they travel A pre-arrival message asks for the arrival time, the flight, and whether they need a car. Anything unusual is handed to the team that has to act on it.
- 6 During the stay Guests ask for towels, a late checkout, a table at eight. The message reaches the right team in the inbox instead of the reception queue.
- 7 After checkout The invoice or folio is sent as a document on the same thread, a short feedback question follows, and guests who have opted in can hear about a future stay later.
What this looks like in practice
A resort takes most of its enquiries on a phone kept at reception. Weekend enquiries were answered on Monday, arrival times were discovered at the gate, and the airport transfer was arranged twice for one guest and not at all for another.
On Endelir the same number feeds one inbox. A flow asks for dates, nights and party size before anyone at the property has read the message, and reservations confirm against their own system. Three days before arrival the guest is asked for the flight and whether they want the car; both answers are written onto the record, and a webhook step posts them to the operations system the drivers work from. On the day of checkout the folio goes out as a PDF, and a single feedback question goes out the morning after.
What can happen when the guest writes back
Where this fits in a property
What to know before you set it up
A reservation confirmation, a pre-arrival message and a checkout folio are tied to a booking the guest made, and fit a Utility purpose. A room upgrade, a spa discount or an invitation to come back next season is marketing, and goes only to guests who have given you permission to send it. Endelir checks for recorded consent before a marketing campaign goes out and refuses to send without it, and it honours an opt-out from then on. Keep the two kinds of message apart rather than dressing one as the other.
Two practical limits are worth knowing early. Endelir has no calendar and no room inventory, so it cannot tell a guest a room is free or stop the same room being sold twice — that stays with your property management system. A flow step can call it at a URL you control, but there is no packaged connector for a particular property system, so your side has to accept the call. And once a number is connected to the WhatsApp Business Platform it can no longer be used in the ordinary WhatsApp or WhatsApp Business app on a handset, which is why most properties connect a fresh number and keep the old one at the desk. Plan limits on seats and contacts are on the pricing page.
What to watch
- How long an enquiry waits for its first reply, and what happens overnight
- How many enquiries reach your reservation system as a real booking
- How many guests answer the pre-arrival questions before they travel
- How many arrival times and transfers are known the day before
- How many in-stay requests reach the right team without going through reception
- How many guests answer the post-stay feedback question
- How many past guests are opted in, and how many opt out of return-stay campaigns
Related
Questions people ask
Can guests book a room through WhatsApp?
They can ask for one, and the request reaches you complete. A chat flow collects the dates, the number of nights, how many adults and children, and which property, and writes each answer onto the guest's record before anyone at the desk reads the message. What Endelir cannot do is tell the guest a room is free. It holds no calendar and no room inventory, so availability is decided in your own property management system — by reservations looking, or by a flow step that calls your system and brings back an answer. Once the booking exists there, the confirmation goes back on the same thread. That division matters: Endelir cannot cause a double booking and cannot prevent one either, because it is never the record of what is sold.
Do we need an approved template to confirm a booking?
It depends on when you send it. If the guest wrote to you and you reply within the service window that their message opens, you can write freely — no template is involved. If you are starting the conversation, or answering after that window has closed, the message uses a template Meta has approved in advance. A booking confirmation, a pre-arrival message and a checkout folio are all tied to a reservation the guest made, so they fit a Utility purpose. Endelir keeps track of which situation a conversation is in, so your team is not guessing, and it syncs template status from Meta so you can see which of yours are approved.
Is a spa offer treated the same as a reservation confirmation?
No, and treating it as the same thing is the mistake to avoid. "Your room is confirmed for Friday" is tied to a booking the guest made. "Book a treatment this week and save on the second one" is promotional, and counts as marketing however it is worded. Marketing goes only to guests who have given you permission to send it. Endelir checks for recorded consent before a campaign sends and refuses without it, and an opt-out is honoured from then on. Do not word a promotion as if it were an operational update to get around that — it is against WhatsApp's rules and it is what gets a number blocked.
Can reception, housekeeping and the restaurant share one number?
Yes. That is the shared inbox. Your property number is connected once and each member of staff signs in as themselves rather than passing a handset around. A conversation is assigned to a person or a team, and the assignment is visible before anyone starts typing, so two people do not answer the same guest with two different answers. A flow can do the first hand-off automatically — a request about a room goes to housekeeping, a table booking to the restaurant. When someone leaves, you remove their login and the conversations stay, because they belong to the property rather than to whoever happened to reply. How many people can sign in at once depends on your plan.
Can we collect arrival times and transfer details before the guest arrives?
Yes. A few days before arrival, Endelir sends the pre-arrival message and asks the questions in the conversation itself, one at a time — arrival time, flight, how many are travelling, whether they need a car. The guest answers the way they answer anyone else: no link to open, no form, nothing to download. Each answer is written onto the contact record as data, and a flow step can push it to your own system so the drivers and the front desk see it. Endelir does not know who is arriving unless your system tells it, so the list of guests to ask comes from your reservations, through the API or a contact group.
Can we take a deposit or a payment through WhatsApp?
You can ask for one and carry your own payment link, but Endelir does not collect the money. A reminder can be sent on the thread with the link from whichever payment provider you already use, and the guest pays there. The confirmation of payment comes from your provider, not from us, and Endelir has no view of whether it succeeded unless your own system tells it through the API. Documents work the same way: Endelir sends a folio, voucher or invoice as a PDF on the thread, but the document is produced by your own billing system. We carry it; we do not create it.
Can we message past guests about a future stay?
Yes, if they have opted in. Guests who gave permission can be put into a contact group and sent a campaign using an approved template — an off-season rate, a reopening, a date they stayed on last year. Endelir refuses to send a marketing campaign to a contact with no recorded consent, and an opt-out is honoured from then on. Buying or scraping a list of phone numbers is not a route this supports, and it is the fastest way to lose the number. Replies come back into the same shared inbox, so a guest who answers a campaign is talking to a person, not to a send-only channel.
Give guests one conversation before, during and after their stay
Connect your property's number and put reservations, the front desk and operations on the same thread. We set the number up with you on a call, and walk through where your own system has to stay in charge.
14 days free. No credit card. We call you to set the number up.