How a Sri Lanka hotel could run mid-stay and post-stay guest surveys on WhatsApp
An illustrative scenario: a boutique beach hotel in Sri Lanka uses WhatsApp surveys to check in with international guests mid-stay, collect post-stay ratings at checkout, and route happy guests to a public review, with per-country WhatsApp pricing in mind.
Illustrative scenario, not a customer story. The business is hypothetical, and no results are implied.
Picture a boutique beach hotel on Sri Lanka's south coast with a few dozen rooms and guests arriving from Europe, India, the Middle East, and Australia. The front desk already confirms airport pickups over WhatsApp, but post-stay feedback is a paper card at checkout.
The hotel wants to catch problems while guests are still on property, and to turn its happiest guests into public reviews, without sending yet another email to someone on holiday.
The surveys, in rollout order
- 1. The morning after arrivalUtility
Mid-stay check-in survey
A one-tap "how's everything with your room?" tied to the current stay. A low rating opens a reply box and alerts the duty manager while there's still time to fix it.
- 2. At checkoutUtility
Post-stay satisfaction survey
Star ratings for the room, the restaurant, and the staff, plus an open-ended question about the highlight of the stay.
- 3. After departureMarketing
Online review request
Guests who rated the stay highly get a one-tap link to leave a public review; anyone who didn't is routed to the guest-relations team instead.
Utility or Marketing is the template category we'd expect; Meta assigns the final category during review and can re-file a template.
Setting it up
- Opt-in happens at booking or check-in, where guests agree to hear from the hotel on WhatsApp. That consent, and STOP handling in every template, covers the stay surveys.
- International guests mean international pricing: Meta charges per message based on the recipient's country code and the template category, so a survey to a guest with a UK number is priced differently from one to a local number.
- Templates start in English; adding another language is a separate Meta approval for each template.
- On Pro, a CSV from the property-management system personalizes each survey with the guest's name, room, and dates, and AI response analysis surfaces recurring themes across stays.
What they'd measure
- Mid-stay issues caught and resolved before checkout
- Post-stay ratings by department: rooms, restaurant, front desk
- How many high scorers follow the review link
- Recurring themes in open-ended guest comments
Start from these templates
Common questions
- How much does it cost a Sri Lanka hotel to send WhatsApp surveys to foreign guests?
- It depends on each guest's country. Meta prices WhatsApp business messages per message by the recipient's country code and the template category, and your messaging provider may add a fee, so surveys to guests with foreign numbers are priced by those countries' rates.
- When should a hotel send a WhatsApp survey during a stay?
- Once mid-stay and once at checkout. A quick check-in the morning after arrival catches problems while they can still be fixed, and a short post-stay survey at checkout captures the full experience while it's fresh.
- Can a hotel ask for online reviews through WhatsApp surveys?
- Yes, as a Marketing template sent to guests who opted in. A common pattern is to send the review link only to guests who rated the stay highly and route lower scores to the guest-relations team.