Hospitality text messaging is how hotels, short-term rentals and event venues send guests the details of a stay or event by SMS, and handle guests' questions in the same thread. Most of it is four or five short texts per stay: pre-arrival details, the check-in code, an open line for requests, checkout instructions and a review request.
The texts themselves are easy to write. The work is in the setup: a registered number so carriers deliver your texts, consent you can show, a shared inbox so the front desk sees the same thread, and a check that the cost per stay makes sense. This guide covers each piece, with templates you can copy. We use Ready, the platform we make, as the worked example.
What hospitality text messaging covers
"Guest messaging" and "hotel guest texting" mean the same thing: texts tied to a booking. The text types are similar for a 12-room inn, a vacation rental, a wedding venue and a 200-room hotel:
- Pre-arrival: check-in time, parking, directions, what to bring.
- Arrival: room number, door or lockbox code, wifi.
- During the stay: an open line for towels, late checkout, restaurant suggestions.
- Checkout: the time, where the keys go, any late-checkout offer.
- After the stay: a review request. A return-visit offer is a marketing text and needs marketing consent.
Venues follow the same pattern with different content: vendor load-in times, gate instructions and the day-of contact.
Text messaging for motels, inns and lodges
Hotel text messaging works the same for a 12-room inn, a motel or a lodge as for a large hotel. You register a number, get consent through the booking, and send the same few texts per stay.
Small properties usually gain the most, since one shared inbox lets a single person answer guests from anywhere on the property. The setup, templates and costs below apply to any size.
Get the number registered before the first guest text
US carriers filter unregistered business texts sent from regular 10-digit numbers. Hotel and venue texting runs on A2P 10DLC registration, which has two parts: a brand (your business) and a campaign (what you send).
On Ready, registration is done in the app. Costs:
- The first month, $25, is charged when you submit. There is no setup fee.
- After that, it's $25/mo for registration and $2 per number each month.
- Most approvals take 2 to 7 days.
For the full fee breakdown, see 10DLC cost: every fee explained.
Pick a use case that matches what you send
Stay logistics (codes, checkout times, replies to requests) are customer care. Review requests and "come back in the fall" offers are closer to marketing. If you register for one use case and send the other, carriers can throttle you. Matching your use case to what you actually send explains how to choose.
Before registration is approved
The first 20 texts are free. They must be one-to-one texts, not a campaign. Use them to test your templates before you register, because the free texts end once a registration is paid for.
An account can send up to 500 texts a month before registering, at the normal rate. To send, you add a card and get a number, which is $2 a month with the first month charged when you get it.
Templates for each stage of a stay
Each template below stays under 160 plain characters, so each is one segment. Each starts with the business name. The first text a guest gets should include the opt-out line.
Pre-arrival (two to three days out)
Harbor Inn: Hi Dana, we're ready for you Fri. Check-in from 3 PM, parking in the lot behind the lobby. Questions? Just reply here. Reply STOP to opt out.
Arrival and check-in code (day of arrival)
Harbor Inn: Room 214 is ready. Side door code 4821, valid until checkout Sun 11 AM. Wifi: HarborGuest / seaside22. Reply here anytime.
Send codes on arrival day rather than at booking. Rotate them per stay, and set them to expire at checkout.
During the stay
Harbor Inn: Hope the room's comfortable. Need towels, a late checkout or a dinner spot? Reply here and the front desk will answer.
Checkout (evening before)
Harbor Inn: Checkout is 11 AM tomorrow. Leave keys in the room, no need to stop at the desk. Want a later time? Reply LATE and we'll check.
A reply of "LATE" is just a message that staff read and answer. It doesn't trigger anything automatically.
Review request (day after checkout)
Harbor Inn: Thanks for staying, Dana. If you have a minute, a review helps a small inn a lot: harborinn.example/review. Reply STOP to opt out.
Use a link on your own domain. Public link shorteners are a common reason messages get filtered, even on an approved campaign. Content-level blocking covers that and other causes.
Venue variant
Pier 9 Hall: Doors open 6 PM Sat. Vendor load-in via the north gate from 2 PM. Day-of contact is this number, reply with any questions.
Avoid emoji
A hotel bell or key emoji switches the text to unicode. That lowers the limit to 70 characters per segment (67 per part in a multipart text). A 150-character arrival text with one emoji becomes 3 segments instead of 1. Ready swaps curly quotes and long dashes for plain ones before sending, but it does not remove emoji.
Concierge requests through a shared inbox
The mid-stay text only works if someone answers. Guest replies on Ready go into an Inbox the whole team can see. Whoever is at the desk can pick up the thread, and the next shift sees the full history.
If the property runs on GoHighLevel, the native integration syncs messages both ways. Replies show up in GHL, with each sub-account kept separate. That matters for a management company running several properties.
Two practical notes:
- Replies are billed. A reply you receive is billed like a sent text: the per-segment rate plus the carrier fee. Include replies in your cost estimate.
- Replies are written by people. Ready's AI message writer and spam-filter check help you draft templates. Ready does not offer an agent that answers guests on its own. A guest asking "is the pool open?" at 10 PM gets an answer when a staff member sends one. Plan staffing around that, or tell guests your reply hours in the pre-arrival text.
Consent and quiet hours
Consent belongs to your booking system
A guest who gives a mobile number at booking, next to clear wording like "we'll text you about your stay," has consented to stay-related texts. Keep that record (the wording, the time, the page) in your booking or property system.
Ready records the sender's attestation for each bulk send and each API send that sets consent_attested: who sent it, to how many people and when. That gives you an audit trail of your sends. It is not a per-guest consent record, and it doesn't replace the record your booking system keeps.
Marketing texts, such as return-visit discounts, need consent that covers marketing. Numbers from third-party booking channels follow that channel's terms and whatever the guest agreed to there, so check both before texting them. TCPA exposure runs about $500 to $1,500 per text. Ready includes:
- Automatic STOP handling
- Optional litigator and DNC scrubbing
- Quiet-hours holds
These lower your risk, but they don't make you lawsuit-proof. Compliance is still the sender's responsibility.
Quiet hours can delay late door codes
The permitted hours are based on the recipient's area code, not your hotel's time zone. A campaign text outside them is held until the window opens, but an inbox or API text is held only if sending reopens within 6 hours. A guest with a home area code three time zones east could have an 8 PM door-code text refused with the reopen time rather than held, so send door codes before quiet hours, or resend once the window opens. A reply to a guest who texted you in the last 24 hours goes right away.
To avoid that, send arrival texts at midday on the arrival date. For late arrivals, give the code in the pre-arrival text or by phone.
What it costs: a worked example
Assume a 40-room inn with 300 stays a month and these numbers:
- 4 outbound texts per stay, each one segment: 1,200 segments.
- About 1 guest reply per stay, one segment each: 300 segments.
- Total: 1,500 segments a month.
On Ready Standard, that's $0.0075 per segment plus a $0.0045 carrier fee per segment:
- Rate: 1,500 × $0.0075 = $11
- Carrier fees: 1,500 × $0.0045, itemized separately on the bill
- Registration and a number: $25/mo registration plus a $2/mo local number = $27/mo
That all-in figure excludes the compliance surcharge. Scrubbing and landline validation are off by default. If you turn either on, it adds $0.003 per segment.
Billing is prepaid credits via Stripe. The rate is the same at any volume.
Some messaging tools cost less per text, and if your property system already includes guest messaging, that may be enough. Compare tools on what's included: registration handled for you, the shared inbox, and the compliance features above. See pricing.
Blue line: iMessage for guest texting
A blue line sends your texts as iMessage, so iPhone guests see a blue bubble with your property's name and photo. It needs no 10DLC registration, so you can start texting once the line is set up.
Pricing:
- $99 a month per line, plus 6 cents a segment for each text sent.
- Replies are also 6 cents a segment. Reactions are free.
- Texts to Android guests go from your regular number. If you already had a number they bill at the regular text price; if the blue line came with its green number, your account's texts bill at 6 cents a segment once you register.
Limits that matter for hotels:
- Each line can start up to 50 new conversations a day. A hotel with 80 arrivals a day needs two lines. "Add lines automatically" can add a line when the day's new conversations are used up.
- You can send up to 2 texts to a guest until they reply.
- Photos can only be sent after the guest replies.
- Campaigns and drip campaigns send from regular numbers, not the blue line.
For details, see blue bubble texting for business and the blue line guide.
If you build hospitality software
If you build a property management system or booking software, you can add guest texting through the API. Each property gets its own sub-account, with its own numbers and its own carrier registration. Here is a check-in text:
POST https://api.tryready.com/v1/messages
X-API-Key: <key>
Idempotency-Key: 3f1c9a2e-7b4d-4e8a-9c21-5d6f0a1b2c3d
{"to": "+12125550199", "body": "Harbor Inn: Room 214 is ready. Side door code 4821.", "consent_attested": true}The Idempotency-Key header means a retried request never sends the same door code twice. Texts to opted-out numbers and known landlines are refused before sending and not charged.
For who registers each property's brand, see 10DLC for SaaS platforms and the messages API docs.
The practical takeaway
To get started:
- Use your free one-to-one texts to test the five templates above.
- Register a campaign that matches what you send.
- Keep consent records in your booking system.
- Send door codes before quiet hours start.
- Assign someone to answer the inbox.
If you want to try it, you can sign up and send a test pre-arrival text to your own phone.
FAQ
Can motels, inns and lodges use text messaging?
Yes. Any lodging business can text guests who gave their number and agreed to texts at booking. It needs the same registered number and shared inbox as a hotel.
What is hotel guest text messaging?
It's SMS tied to a booking: pre-arrival details, the check-in code, replies to guest requests, checkout instructions and a review request. Guests answer in the same thread.
Do hotels need 10DLC registration to text guests?
Yes, for texts from a regular 10-digit number. Carriers filter unregistered business texts. A blue line is the exception: it sends iMessage and needs no 10DLC registration.
Can I text door codes by SMS?
Yes. Send them on arrival day, rotate them per stay, and set them to expire at checkout. Send them before quiet hours, because a late-evening inbox text is refused, not held, when sending reopens more than 6 hours later.
Are review requests allowed?
Generally, yes, if the guest consented to texts and your registered use case covers the request. Return-visit discounts are marketing and need marketing consent.
Does Ready answer guest texts automatically?
No. Ready helps you write and check templates, but your staff answer guests from the shared inbox.
What does one stay cost to text?
In the example above, a stay averages 5 segments, including the guest's reply. That's 5 × $0.0075 plus 5 × $0.0045 in carrier fees. The $25/mo registration, the $2/mo number and any compliance add-ons you turn on are extra.