The six messages every guest should get, and when

A good stay starts before arrival and ends after checkout, and six well-timed WhatsApp messages cover most of it.

Below is a journey several of our hotels use. The order matters less than the reasoning behind each step, so the reasoning is included.

The six

1. Booking confirmation, on WhatsApp. Email gets lost; WhatsApp gets read. Send it right after booking, alongside the email, not instead of it, because the email is still the document the guest forwards to whoever is paying.

2. Three days before arrival. Restaurant information, check-in and checkout times, spa confirmation, and one relevant upsell such as a birthday kit, a cake or wine. Send it before the hotel's courtesy call, not instead of it. The call then starts from a guest who already knows the basics, and turns into a conversation rather than a recital.

3. Arrival morning. One complete message: an exact map link, parking, the after-hours gate code, breakfast and pool hours, and the WiFi. Leave out room numbers. They change at the last minute, and a wrong one costs you more goodwill than a missing one.

4. Two to three hours after check-in. "Is everything OK?" This is the highest-value message in the list, because it catches a problem while you can still fix it rather than reading about it in a review. Use the check-in status in your property system as the trigger, not a fixed clock, and filter by booking source so the business guest who arrived at 23:00 gets something different from the family who arrived at 15:00.

5. Checkout morning. A short reminder of the checkout time. Some hotels send it only on busy weekends, when a late departure actually costs them a room.

6. After the stay. Ask for feedback. Guests who answer positively get your Google review link. Guests who do not get a human follow-up, not a review request. A positive reply is also the best moment to ask for marketing consent.

What Meta's rules do to this plan

Every one of these is sent outside a live conversation, which means template messages are the only kind you can send (read 28 September 2026) once the 24-hour customer service window has closed. Three consequences are worth planning around.

The window changes the answer. The window opens when a WhatsApp user messages you, and resets each time they message again (read 28 September 2026). So if a guest wrote to you two hours ago, you do not need a template to reply. An ordinary message works. In practice, once a guest starts talking to you in step 3 or 4, much of the stay runs free-form. Build the journey so that templates open conversations and people finish them.

Your pre-arrival message is probably a marketing template. Meta categorises templates as marketing, utility or authentication, and utility templates must be non-promotional. An update with a promotion attached is categorised as marketing (read 28 September 2026). Step 2 bundles check-in times with a wine upsell, which is exactly that. Meta also re-reviews approved templates and can recategorise them.

You have two honest options: accept that step 2 is a marketing template, or split it into a utility message with the practical details and a separate marketing message with the offer. Splitting costs an extra send and an extra interruption. Most properties accept the marketing category and keep it to one message, which is usually the right call. But decide it deliberately rather than discovering it when the category changes.

Meta itself throttles marketing to people who ignore it. There is a per-user limit on marketing template messages (read 28 September 2026) that "adapts automatically over time based on a person's recent engagement levels". Messages that fail for this reason come back as a failed delivery, and Meta advises waiting at least 24 hours before retrying rather than sending again immediately. Notably, marketing messages sent inside an open window do not count towards that limit.

This is the mechanism behind the old advice. Sending more marketing to unengaged guests does not get you more reach; it gets you less.

Practical notes

• Keep each template short, one line per parameter. Long templates with many variables are harder to approve, harder to translate and harder to read on a phone at a motorway services.
• Timing beats volume. Six well-timed messages feel like service; ten feel like spam, and now the platform agrees with you.
• Mind the clock and the time zone. Step 3 fires on arrival morning in the hotel's time zone, which may be the middle of the night for the guest. Set a quiet-hours floor.
• Plan for failures. Wrong numbers, guests not on WhatsApp, and throttled sends are routine. Each needs a defined fallback, usually email or a task for reception. Otherwise the message simply disappears and nobody notices.
• Honour opt-outs everywhere. A guest who says "stop" in step 4 must not receive step 6.
• Allow time for approval. A review decision can take up to 24 hours (read 28 September 2026), and first submissions are often rejected on formatting. Do not schedule go-live for the day after you submit six templates.

What to do on Monday

Pull last month's front-desk call log, or just ask the team what they were asked most. Group the questions by when they were asked: before booking, the week before, arrival day, during the stay. You will almost always find the same four or five clusters, and they will map onto the six messages above with one or two local additions.

Then write the templates for those clusters only, and submit them.

Takeaway

Map the moments where guests usually call the front desk, and send the answer just before they ask. Everything else is noise you are paying per message to deliver. And when the answer they want is a price, the quote itself is the sale.