Whistle Joins Tech Companies Supporting the Hospitality Industry and Travelers During Pandemic
Hotel and guest messaging company Whistle™ is working with its hospitality industry partners around the world to continue guest communication and services as hotels navigate through the uncertainty of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
Whistle helps hotels stay in touch with guests via messaging from the moment a reservation is made through checkout, while simultaneously minimizing face-to-face interactions. With hotel occupancy down dramatically, Whistle is offering messaging services to hotels that don’t have this service for a period of peak COVID-19 activity as a way to help hotel staff around the globe.
“We want to help. So today, Whistle is declaring that all hotels who need our services can register for an extended free trial at trywhistle.com,” said Christopher Hovanessian, Whistle’s CEO, “While occupancy continues to plummet, property owners and managers need to maintain excellent communication for their remaining guests. Achieving this goal while tackling difficult staffing changes is the main quality control issue we see right now. Whistle can help in instances of reduced hotel staffing by making each employee more efficient. More importantly, we recognize the tremendous benefit to staff and guests of reducing contact and implementing social distancing measures as recommended by the CDC.”
Locale, which offers furnished apartments for short or long stays, states, "We are actively encouraging guests to text instead of call. Whistle is helping relieve our call volume increase and guest communications with proactive automated messaging. Whistle's SMS and email capabilities are also helping us keep our guests informed about procedural changes and property updates during this unprecedented time due to the virus."
The Whistle messaging platform works with SMS, WhatsApp, and other messaging services. It allows guests to ask questions, request services, or anything else they may need. The added ease with which guests using Whistle can choose to postpone their stay -- an important preference to outright cancellations -- is a compelling benefit.
Stephen Gross, owner of Clarendon Square Inn in Boston says, "Never before has it been necessary to communicate with our guests on an hourly basis by text, which is a channel that they have immediate access to already. With Whistle we can show that we care about our guests’ personal safety and are flexible in meeting their needs. We can inform guests of changes to onsite services and to offer suggestions to guests on where they can buy food and groceries. We’ve used Whistle to customize housekeeping in order to limit the interaction between guests and our cleaning staff, managed guest questions remotely, which allows us to relocate most of our management offsite, and used Whistle to efficiently manage expectations regarding cancellations.”
Whistle is now available in thousands of hotels worldwide. For more information on how Whistle can help your hotel during this time, visit www.trywhistle.com.