Why Facebook Messenger is actually a travel app

If you’re like most of us, when you think of Facebook Messenger, only one thing comes to mind: chatting with friends and family.

Sure, it’s a great way to stay in touch with the people you care about, whether it’s via text, video calls, or just turning up their jealousy levels with a gorgeous beach picture, but these days, there’s so much more to the app. than that.

Many of Messengers’ features are geared toward travelers, and some of them are worth trying out on your next trip. These are some of the best.

Flights and Hotels

Did you know that several large travel companies are using Facebook Messenger to communicate directly with their customers? Major travel brands like KLM and Hyatt have jumped on board, as well as booking agents like Kayak.

If you book a flight directly with KLM, you have the option to receive booking confirmations, flight updates and boarding passes on Messenger, as well as chat directly with customer service agents.

Start a chat session with Kayak and a bot will take your requirements (flights to New York tomorrow, for example), ask a few questions, and then search a variety of sites for the best results. You can also provide vacation suggestions within a particular budget and, if you integrate your Facebook account with Kayak, send real-time updates on gate changes and flight delays.

Hyatt was one of the first big travel organizations to start using a Messenger bot, which answers questions and helps customers book rooms at its hotels around the world. The bot makes the process easy, but if you get stuck (or just prefer the human touch) you can still choose to speak to a real person on Messenger if you prefer.

If you’ve ever traveled with a group, you already know that the only thing more difficult than agreeing on where to go for dinner is meeting again after being separated for a few hours.

The Messengers Live Location feature allows you to share your real-time location with one person or a group, so they can see at a glance how far away you are and how long it would take you to drive there. The feature is available on both iOS and Android, and has a default duration of one hour. Live Location can be turned on or off with a single tap from any chat window.

Sitting alongside the ability to share a static location on a map, it means no more frantic where are you? misunderstood messages or addresses. Practical!

Expense Division

Speaking of group travel, it’s not always easy to keep track of who paid for what or to share combined expenses fairly among a group. Messenger helps there too, making it easy for people to pay each other or for a group to split costs among all.

If they haven’t already, your fellow travelers can add their Visa or Mastercard debit cards to Facebook’s secure payment system in a minute or two. After that, just tap on the “+” symbol in a group chat window, then tap on “Payments”.

You can choose whether you want to request money from all members of the group or only from certain people. Once this is done, request an amount per person or divide the total among all, specify what it is for and press the Request button.

You can see at a glance who has paid and who has yet to cough, making it easy to apply subtle or not-so-subtle pressure on the slow ones.

request a ride

While buses, trains, and rickety tuk-tuks are part of the travel experience, sometimes you just want the ease and comfort of an air-conditioned car. If you’re in the US and want to call Lyft or Uber, you can do so without even leaving your Messenger chat.

Sure, it only saves a few seconds, but not having to interrupt your conversation is a small but welcome benefit. Just tap the “+” symbol in any chat, then tap “Travel”. Choose your favorite service and follow the easy instructions.

Anyone else in the chat will see a notification that you’ve called a ride, and get driver information and progress in the same window. If you’ve never used Uber before, your first ride will be free, a nice bonus.

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