In the lodging industry, inventory is on a 24-hour sales cycle. Any revenue lost from an unoccupied room is money that can’t be earned back; you simply have to try again the next night. So hotels are by nature very interested in anything that can keep those rooms as full as possible, even if that requires discounting the standard price.

And the current economy is making that ability to market quickly even more crucial, with so many companies cutting back so drastically on travel and conference attendance.

Mobile marketing firm Ping Mobile believes it has the answer, in the form of its Ping Wizard SMS customization technology.

Ping Wizard is an online consumer-facing platform that gets around the problem of holistic, system-wide integration with a hotel or chain’s database. “The challenge with the hotel industry in general is that any time you propose integration with their reservation system, you’re talking basically a year-long development process,” says Shira Simmonds, co-founder and president of Ping Mobile. “We found pretty early on that that wouldn’t work.”

Instead, using the Web-based Ping Wizard, hotel desk personnel ask guests checking in if they’d like to provide their cell phone numbers to receive next-day premiums such as a coupon for the hotel restaurant or the in-house spa. If the customer opts in, their check-in and check-out dates are entered as well.

“So the hotel now knows the guest and their number, plus when they will be on and off the property, and they can communicate with them,” Simmonds says. The notices can be anything from reminders that the pool closes at 8 o’clock to alerts about new video on demand movies.

Ping has been working to implement the Wizard with participating units in the Days Inn Business Alliance Group, a fifty-unit division of the Days Inn properties that handles primarily business meetings and conferences. Naturally, that means dealing with guests who to a large extent are more reliant on their mobile phones to receive e-mail and offers than they are on laptops or PCs.

That makes them a major target of opportunity for mobile marketing, and Simmonds says the results of the Ping integration so far show that the targeted guests are responding to these efforts.

The system is built on a double opt-in so that consumers have a sense of control over their messaging. Once their number has been entered by the check-in clerk, they receive a thank you SMS asking if they would like to get further offers from Days Inn during or after their stay.

Opt-in rates are surprising consistent across the chain and across the range of offers, Simmonds says: about 29%. The SMS service is also being promoted with mailings to the Days Inn house list and with a sweepstakes offer on the Business Alliance Web site http://www.daysinnbiz.com. Until May 24, visitors who text “DAYSINN” to a short code are eligible to win a two-night, three-day stay at any Business Alliance hotel in the U.S. with airfare.

In the hotels themselves, the sweepstakes is also promoted on keycards and with point-of-sale materials.

For those who agree to opt in, the offers can be highly tailored to the hotel’s needs. For example, the Ping Wizard was used to send out an offer to opted-in guests at the Days Inn in Boston earlier this year. Morning business at the hotel’s restaurant, an Asian-themed eatery, was suffering because guests were largely unaware that it served a morning buffet. So the hotel offered a mobile coupon for a $3 discount on breakfast in its restaurant to guests who texted “BOSBACON” to a short code set up via Ping.

The result, according to Simmonds, was an immediate increase in early-daypart business for the restaurant, unlike anything it had seen before.

“We’re working with each hotel in the group to customize their offers,” she says. One Days Inn in San Diego is offering discounts on admission to nearby Sea World. “Each hotel defines what it has to offer, what partnerships it’s running.” For example, the property I college-heavy Boston has taken the initiative to send messages to students during Parents Weekends reminding them of discount offers on bookings.

And once guests have departed, the Days Inn units working with Ping have a mobile database of past customers who have agreed to receive offers from the chain. So a hotel that finds itself with a block of 200 rooms coming vacant on a weekend can push out a 50%-off discount offer that can substantially take the sting out of those vacancies.

Individual hotels can also customize their remarketing efforts, so that a property can target offers only to customers who have stayed over a weekend, for example.

“From our perspective, the mobile phone should be the main communication link between our clients and their customers,” Simmonds says. “It’s valuable for remarketing, not just when these guests leave, but getting them to spend additional revenue during their stay.”

In the lodging industry, inventory is on a 24-hour sales cycle. Any revenue lost from an unoccupied room is money that can’t be earned back; you simply have to try again the next night. So hotels are by nature very interested in anything that can keep those rooms as full as possible, even if that requires discounting the standard price.

And the current economy is making that ability to market quickly even more crucial, with so many companies cutting back so drastically on travel and conference attendance.

Mobile marketing firm Ping Mobile believes it has the answer, in the form of its Ping Wizard SMS customization technology.

Ping Wizard is an online consumer-facing platform that gets around the problem of holistic, system-wide integration with a hotel or chain’s database. “The challenge with the hotel industry in general is that any time you propose integration with their reservation system, you’re talking basically a year-long development process,” says Shira Simmonds, co-founder and president of Ping Mobile. “We found pretty early on that that wouldn’t work.”

Instead, using the Web-based Ping Wizard, hotel desk personnel ask guests checking in if they’d like to provide their cell phone numbers to receive next-day premiums such as a coupon for the hotel restaurant or the in-house spa. If the customer opts in, their check-in and check-out dates are entered as well.

“So the hotel now knows the guest and their number, plus when they will be on and off the property, and they can communicate with them,” Simmonds says. The notices can be anything from reminders that the pool closes at 8 o’clock to alerts about new video on demand movies.

Ping has been working to implement the Wizard with participating units in the Days Inn Business Alliance Group, a fifty-unit division of the Days Inn properties that handles primarily business meetings and conferences. Naturally, that means dealing with guests who to a large extent are more reliant on their mobile phones to receive e-mail and offers than they are on laptops or PCs.

That makes them a major target of opportunity for mobile marketing, and Simmonds says the results of the Ping integration so far show that the targeted guests are responding to these efforts.

The system is built on a double opt-in so that consumers have a sense of control over their messaging. Once their number has been entered by the check-in clerk, they receive a thank you SMS asking if they would like to get further offers from Days Inn during or after their stay.

Opt-in rates are surprising consistent across the chain and across the range of offers, Simmonds says: about 29%. The SMS service is also being promoted with mailings to the Days Inn house list and with a sweepstakes offer on the Business Alliance Web site http://www.daysinnbiz.com. Until May 24, visitors who text “DAYSINN” to a short code are eligible to win a two-night, three-day stay at any Business Alliance hotel in the U.S. with airfare.

In the hotels themselves, the sweepstakes is also promoted on keycards and with point-of-sale materials.

For those who agree to opt in, the offers can be highly tailored to the hotel’s needs. For example, the Ping Wizard was used to send out an offer to opted-in guests at the Days Inn in Boston earlier this year. Morning business at the hotel’s restaurant, an Asian-themed eatery, was suffering because guests were largely unaware that it served a morning buffet. So the hotel offered a mobile coupon for a $3 discount on breakfast in its restaurant to guests who texted “BOSBACON” to a short code set up via Ping.

The result, according to Simmonds, was an immediate increase in early-daypart business for the restaurant, unlike anything it had seen before.

“We’re working with each hotel in the group to customize their offers,” she says. One Days Inn in San Diego is offering discounts on admission to nearby Sea World. “Each hotel defines what it has to offer, what partnerships it’s running.” For example, the property I college-heavy Boston has taken the initiative to send messages to students during Parents Weekends reminding them of discount offers on bookings.

And once guests have departed, the Days Inn units working with Ping have a mobile database of past customers who have agreed to receive offers from the chain. So a hotel that finds itself with a block of 200 rooms coming vacant on a weekend can push out a 50%-off discount offer that can substantially take the sting out of those vacancies.

Individual hotels can also customize their remarketing efforts, so that a property can target offers only to customers who have stayed over a weekend, for example.

“From our perspective, the mobile phone should be the main communication link between our clients and their customers,” Simmonds says. “It’s valuable for remarketing, not just when these guests leave, but getting them to spend additional revenue during their stay.”