What to put in a confirmation message, and templates you can copy.
The reservation confirmation is the first message a guest gets after they book. Most hotels treat it as a receipt. It can do a lot more than that. A good confirmation cuts pre-arrival questions, lowers no-shows, and sets the tone for the stay before the guest has packed a bag.
It is also one of the easiest things to improve. The booking already happened, the guest is paying attention, and the message goes out anyway. You are just deciding what to put in it.
Start with the essentials. These are the details a guest will go looking for, so make them easy to find:
That covers the receipt job. The next section is where most hotels stop, and where they should not.
Add the things guests message you about anyway. Parking. WiFi. Breakfast hours. Whether they can check in early. Whether they can leave bags before the room is ready. Every detail you include is a message your front desk does not have to field later.
One confirmation that answers the common questions can quietly remove a stack of phone calls and emails. If you want to know which questions to pre-empt, our list of the top pre-arrival guest inquiries is a good starting point.
Keep it short and skimmable, though. A wall of text gets the same treatment as the terms and conditions. Lead with the booking details, then the practical notes, then the policy.
A simple, copy-ready structure. Subject line first, then the body:
| Email · Transactional |
|---|
| From: [Hotel Name] Subject: Your booking at [Hotel Name] is confirmed for [dates] Hi [First name], you are booked. Here are the details. Confirmation: [number] Check-in: [date], from [time] Checkout: [date], by [time] Room: [type], [rate with tax] Address: [address and map link] Getting here: [one line on parking or transit] Good to know: breakfast runs [hours], WiFi is [detail], reception is open [hours] Need anything before you arrive? Reply to this message or text us at [number] Cancellation: [policy in one sentence] |
It is deliberately plain. The guest is scanning for dates and the confirmation number. Give them that first, then the rest.
Send both, but do not expect the email to be read. The two channels do different jobs:
If you run confirmations over WhatsApp, they need to be approved message templates. Viqal ships a pre-approved set for booking confirmation and pre-arrival as part of WhatsApp Business for hotels, so you are not waiting on Meta to start sending.
A no-show is often just a guest who forgot, or who could not reach you to cancel or change. A confirmation that lands on a channel they read, with an easy way to reply, gives them the chance to tell you. So does a short pre-arrival reminder a day or two out. You would always rather know about a change than hold an empty room.
This is also where the confirmation connects to the rest of the guest journey. The same trigger that fires the confirmation can fire the pre-arrival message, the check-in details, and the in-stay touchpoints. Set up well with WhatsApp campaigns, the confirmation is step one of a sequence, not a standalone receipt.
If your guests book from more than one country, the confirmation should arrive in their language. A guest who cannot read the check-in time is a guest who will message you to ask. Detecting the language from the booking and sending the confirmation localised removes that whole category of question before it starts.
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At minimum: guest name, confirmation number, check-in and checkout dates and times, room type and rate with taxes, the cancellation policy, the hotel address, and a fast way to get in touch. Adding parking, WiFi, and breakfast details is optional but it removes a large share of the pre-arrival questions your front desk would otherwise answer one by one.
Both. Email is the formal record but is often unread, with open rates near 25 percent. WhatsApp confirmations get opened almost every time and give the guest a thread to reply on. Many hotels send the email for the record and the WhatsApp message for the one that actually gets seen and acted on.
No-shows are often guests who forgot, or who could not reach the hotel to change a booking. A confirmation on a channel the guest actually reads, plus a short pre-arrival reminder, gives them an easy way to confirm or change. That turns silent no-shows into manageable changes you can plan around.
Yes. They use pre-approved WhatsApp message templates triggered by the booking in your PMS. Transactional templates like booking confirmation do not need the lengthy Meta approval that marketing templates do, so they can go live quickly. Once set up, the confirmation sends itself the moment the reservation is created.
Long enough to cover the booking details and the common pre-arrival questions, short enough to skim in about ten seconds. A wall of text gets ignored. Lead with the dates and confirmation number, then the practical details like parking and breakfast, then the cancellation policy in one plain sentence.
If you take bookings from more than one country, yes. A guest who cannot read the check-in time will message you to ask, which defeats the purpose of the confirmation. Detecting the language from the booking and sending the confirmation localised removes that question before it is asked.
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