We need to talk: Conversational hospitality and the guest experience - phocuswire
In 2016, Chris Messina, the inventor of the hashtag, published a post on Medium dubbing a new trend called "Conversational Commerce."
It highlighted Uber's new Facebook Messenger integration, allowing Uber's customers to order rides conversationally within the messenger thread. He further suggested that 2016 would be "the year of Conversational Commerce."
At the same time, Messina noted that the big four over-the-top (OTT) messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp had surpassed the big four social networks in 2015, while WhatsApp removed its fee for all users, further reducing the barrier to entry.
This marked the beginning of Conversational Commerce, which paved the way for Conversational Hospitality.
Following the success of the Facebook Messenger API for third-party developers, WeChat and WhatsApp quickly followed, along with others.
This provided ubiquitous access to billions of global travelers who can be reached conversationally via their preferred messaging channel, without having to download yet another app.
