Twelve Questions to Put to Any Guest Messaging Vendor

Guest messaging vendors are practised at demos. The way to get past the demo is a short list of questions that a good product answers in one sentence and a weak one cannot answer at all.

Twelve, grouped by what they reveal. Ask them in writing so the answers are on record.

Ownership

1. Whose name is on the WhatsApp Business Account? If the vendor's, the number your guests save and your conversation history belong to the vendor. The right answer is: yours, set up and managed by us.

2. What happens to the number, the history and the approved templates if we leave? A good vendor has an exit process. A weak one has never been asked.

Integration

3. Which PMS, and is it read-only or two-way? Read-only surfaces reservation details. Two-way records the late check-out, attaches the signed check-in form, updates the profile. This decides whether the front desk can see what the assistant did.

4. Which fields, specifically, does it write back? "Full integration" means nothing. Ask for the list.

5. Who charges for the PMS connection - you, the PMS vendor, or both? Some PMS vendors invoice separately for API access. Find out before the second invoice arrives.

Behaviour

6. What does it say when it does not know? The most important question on this list. A product that escalates is safe. A product that improvises will eventually tell a guest something confidently wrong. Test it in the demo with a question the vendor cannot have prepared for.

7. Is it answering from our knowledge base or from a general model? Grounded in your data means it says what you told it and hands over the rest. Answering from general training means fluent, plausible, occasionally invented.

8. Which topics can we forbid it from answering automatically, regardless of confidence? Complaints, accessibility, anything with legal or financial weight. If the answer is "it handles everything", that is a warning.

Escalation

9. Where does an escalated request land, on what channel, and what happens if nobody responds? The useful answer: on WhatsApp to a group or a person on shift, with context attached, and a fallback with a time limit if unanswered. A ticket in a dashboard nobody opens mid-shift is the same as no ticket.

Languages

10. Send it a voice note in a language nobody in this room speaks. What comes back? Guests send voice, in whatever they think in. The right answer is a reply in that language, in your tone, without being asked. Then have a speaker of the language read it - correct but generic is a common failure.

Data

11. Where is guest data stored, who at your company can access it, and how long is it kept? Conversations contain names, dates, sometimes passport details and payment references. A vendor serving European properties should name the region without checking. vGuest, for the record, stores in the EU.

Commercials

12. What does this cost at our actual monthly conversation volume, and at double? Pricing scales with conversations because the vendor's costs do. A quote that did not ask your volume will change.

What to do with the answers

Put them side by side. The vendors who answered all twelve in a sentence each are the shortlist. Then ask each for a short pilot at real volume - not a demo, a pilot with your guests - and watch questions 6, 9 and 10 happen for real.

The pilot is the actual evaluation. The twelve questions are how you decide who earns one.