WhatsApp for Hotels: Why the Channel Is Nothing Without the Message

There's a curious delusion in hospitality marketing: that simply being on a channel is enough. We've got WhatsApp messaging for our hotel now, the thinking goes. Job done. Pop the champagne.

It's rather like buying a set of golf clubs and assuming you can now break 80.

Key Takeaways

• Having WhatsApp isn't enough. The messaging matters more than the channel itself.

• A/B testing WhatsApp messages can deliver 3x higher guest engagement.

• Templated messages underperform. Your hotel needs its own conversational fingerprint.

• Optimising WhatsApp means training the AI like a member of staff: tone, timing, and conversational branching all matter.

• User-generated content outperforms polished marketing on WhatsApp. Keep it human.

The uncomfortable truth is that the channel is merely the pipe. What flows through it, the actual content, the words, the timing, the conversational architecture, is what determines whether your guest engages or quietly mutes you alongside their cousin's cryptocurrency tips.

The Email Marketing Lesson Hotels Keep Forgetting

Every hotel runs email campaigns. Every single one. The Ritz does it. The Premier Inn does it. That charming B&B in the Cotswolds with the questionable Wi-Fi does it.

And yet, conversion rates vary wildly. Why? Because two hotels sending emails to the same inbox, at the same time, with the same subject line structure, will achieve radically different results based on what's actually in the email. The copy. The offer positioning. The subtle understanding of what makes their particular guest click through rather than archive.

Brand and design obviously play their part too. A beautifully designed email from a trusted name earns more attention than something that looks like it was assembled in haste. But even with perfect branding, weak copy underperforms. The visual earns the glance. The words earn the click.

This isn't controversial. It's marketing orthodoxy.

The same principle governs paid advertising. Marketing agencies don't simply set up Facebook and Google ads, then wander off for a lengthy lunch. They optimise. They test headlines. They swap images for video for audio. They fiddle with calls-to-action and button positioning and the precise placement of trust signals until the click-through rate inches upward. It's why Booking.com reportedly runs thousands of A/B tests annually. Thousands. They understand that the platform is merely the arena. The combat happens in the creative.

Hotel WhatsApp Messaging Is No Different (Except It Is)

When we've run A/B message tests on WhatsApp for hotels, we've seen guest engagement increase by three times. Not 30 percent. Three hundred percent. The same channel, the same guest segment, the same timing window. Different words, dramatically different outcomes.

This shouldn't surprise anyone who's thought about it for more than a moment. WhatsApp is an intimate channel. It sits alongside messages from family, friends, and that one group chat you can't seem to leave. A message that feels templated, generic, or robotic doesn't just underperform. It represents your hotel brand in exactly the wrong way, at exactly the wrong moment, in exactly the wrong context.

One tip that's worth mentioning: user-generated content works remarkably well on WhatsApp. This is a channel of connection, not of polish. A quick smartphone video of a staff member talking about tonight's specials will outperform a professionally produced clip. Save the glossy content for the website.

Here's where hotel WhatsApp communication gets properly complicated.

Unlike email, where you craft a single message and send it into the void, WhatsApp conversations are exactly that: conversations. They branch. They meander. They respond to what the guest says and where their interest lies.

Fifty percent of Biteluxe message threads contain more than ten messages. That's not a broadcast; it's a dialogue. And optimising a dialogue is fundamentally different from optimising a one-way communication.

Two Layers of WhatsApp Optimisation for Hotels

When you're serious about WhatsApp performance, you're actually optimising two distinct things.

First, there's the tone of voice. Your hotel WhatsApp AI should sound like your hotel, not like a generic hospitality bot assembled from committee-approved phrases. A boutique property in Mayfair should communicate differently from a lakeside spa in the Lake District. This seems obvious, yet the number of hotels using identical templated WhatsApp messages is genuinely remarkable.

Second, and this is where it becomes genuinely interesting, there's the conversational architecture. How does the AI branch when a guest mentions they're visiting for an anniversary? What path does it take when someone asks about late checkout? When should it introduce an upsell, and when should it simply provide value without asking for anything in return?

These branching decisions compound. Get them right, and you build genuine rapport with hotel guests. Get them wrong, and you've simply automated awkwardness at scale.

Why Every Hotel's WhatsApp Strategy Is Unique

Optimising these conversations is not too radically different from training a new member of staff. You need to tell them what to do in every circumstance. How to respond to complaints. When to escalate. Which upsells to mention and which to hold back. How to read the room. It takes time, attention, and ongoing refinement based on what's actually working.

But here's the thing: the Biteluxe AI that powers hotel WhatsApp conversations is agentic. It has access to your PMS. It can communicate across multiple channels. It can even reach out to the florist down the road to arrange a surprise for an anniversary booking. These abilities are constantly growing. AI is just around the corner from being the public face of your hotel brand, the first meaningful interaction guests have before they meet anybody human at check-in.

That's worth spending care and time getting right.

This is precisely why hotels feel the pressure of adding "yet another" guest communication channel to manage. When we speak on panels around the country, it's consistently one of the top three concerns hoteliers raise. They understand the potential of WhatsApp for guest engagement. They simply don't have the bandwidth to train another system on top of everything else.

And what makes it particularly tricky for hotels hoping to solve it with off-the-shelf WhatsApp solutions is that what works for one property won't work for another.

Consider somewhere like Bertie's Bar at The Fife Arms. Our onsite ethnography studies reveal something instructive: a significant number of guests don't even realise they like whisky until they turn up. They're not booking because of the whisky selection. They're booking because the place feels right, because someone recommended it, because an Instagram post caught their eye. The whisky discovery happens in the moment, through conversation, through the right question at the right time. A hotel WhatsApp AI that simply lists the drinks menu misses the point entirely. An AI that understands how to spark curiosity and guide discovery? That's something else altogether.

The emotional triggers that sell room upgrades at a romantic country house hotel are entirely different from those that work at a city-centre business property. The discovery questions that build rapport with leisure guests fall flat with corporate travellers who simply want efficiency. The contextual awareness that helps book a restaurant table for a celebrating couple is useless for a guest arriving for a conference.

This optimisation is, in effect, a fingerprint. Unique to every property. Developed through testing, iteration, and a fair amount of intelligent trial and error.

It requires watching which conversation paths actually achieve goals. Not vanity metrics, but real outcomes: hotel guests who feel understood, upgrades that feel like suggestions rather than sales pitches, ancillary bookings that happen because the timing and context were right.

Five Tips for Better Hotel WhatsApp Messaging

1. Use user-generated content. WhatsApp is a channel of connection, not polish. A quick smartphone video of a staff member talking about tonight's specials will outperform a professionally produced clip. Save the glossy content for the website.

2. Test your WhatsApp messages. Different openers, different upsell timing, different tones. You won't know what works until you measure it. The gap between good and great can be threefold.

3. Match your tone to your hotel brand. If your hotel is warm and informal, your WhatsApp shouldn't read like a legal contract. If you're a formal country estate, don't suddenly start using emojis. Consistency builds trust.

4. Think in conversations, not messages. Think in conversations, not messages. Optimise for the full thread, not just the first message. Where does the conversation branch? Where do guests drop off? Where do they engage most? This is especially true for upsells, where context and timing can triple your conversion rate.

5. Do your own ethnography. If you have unique experiences or amenities, spend time understanding why guests actually value them. Ethnography simply means observing and talking to real guests in context, not in surveys, to understand their true motivations. You'll often find they book for different reasons than you assume, and that insight is gold for your hotel WhatsApp messaging.

WhatsApp Messaging for Hotels: The Biteluxe Approach

Biteluxe does all of this, and rather more besides.

We bring deep A/B messaging experience to WhatsApp conversations for hotels, the same rigour that performance marketers apply to paid advertising, adapted for the unique demands of conversational AI in hospitality. We develop your hotel's specific conversational fingerprint through systematic testing and optimisation, ensuring your WhatsApp messaging performs as well as it possibly can for your guests, your brand, and your commercial objectives.

Because having WhatsApp is no longer a differentiator for hotels. Every property will have it soon enough.

What you do with it, that's where the advantage lies.

We're speaking next in Northampton at Whittlebury Hotel and Spa January 8th, then The Headland in Newquay January 13th, where we'll be talking about getting instant messaging right in the luxury hotel segment. Come along if you'd like to continue the conversation in person.