I would like to add a button to our website that allows hotels to go to our website text people our website url. How can we do this?

Question

I would like to add a button to our website that allows hotels to go to our website, click on button (a cell phone icon) and individually text their guests (as guests come up to the front desk) our website url. Our website has a page with coupons guests/tourists can use at local establishments. How can we do this? Is there a widget or code we can put on our website to accomplish this?

Answer 1

Here is another option and you don't need any widget on your website.

Create an account with Twilio and purchase a phone number. Configure that number's SMS webhook with a TwiML Bin with a response that contains the url for your website.

<Response>
    <Message>Hi from the hotel. Visit our website at www.someaddress.com</Message>
</Response>

When guests come up to front desk, give them the Twilio number and ask them to send a message (like "yes" or something) and they will automatically get back a text with the website url.

About TwiML bins: https://www.twilio.com/blog/2016/05/introducing-native-twiml-bins-powered-by-the-twilio-cloud.html

If you really want the button on your website, you'll need to do some programming related with some SMS sending API.

Answer 2

I found an earlier Stack Overflow question about this and decided to test things out on my Android phone. Nothing I could think of or find on that page worked. I imagine direct links will work on some phones, but there's such a high chance of your hotel employee not having one of those phones (or not a phone at all) that it's barely worth it.

What you will need to do is create some sort of web control that will send a client phone number to a background service that will send the text message for you. Twilio is one such service, though I have never used it and can't make any recommendations.