Guests messaged through the booking sites, WhatsApp and the website at all hours: parking, late checkout, allergies, a taxi at six. The owner answered from bed or the guest waited until breakfast. Cancelled rooms went unsold and the review request never got sent. They wanted every guest answered, every room sold and the owner asleep.
Three things kept going wrong, and each cost the business time, money or a customer.
Three agents working from the hotel's house notes and property management system, with anything that needs a decision, a refund or a complaint routed to the duty manager.
We started with the house notes: two pages the owner had written for new staff, which became the reception agent's knowledge. The property management system gave it live availability and each guest's booking. For the first four nights the owner read every reply before it went, from bed as before; by the fifth night she stopped, because the replies were the ones she would have written. The waitlist agent was allowed to confirm rooms from day eight, after a week of proposing them for approval.
Guests get an answer within a minute at 2am, in the hotel's voice, and the owner sleeps. Cancelled rooms on Friday and Saturday nights are refilled more often than not, and the channels stay in step so there are no double bookings. Reviews are asked for every morning, and the two unhappy guests a month who used to go straight to a public site now reach the manager first.
'I ran this place from my phone at midnight for six years. Now I find out what happened overnight from a summary at breakfast.'
Owner
One in eight bookings didn't turn up on a Friday or Saturday, and the team had no time to confirm them or work the waitlist. Reviews were left to chance. They wanted full tables and a steadier reputation.
Weekend bookings came by phone while the front desk was checking guests in, and gift-voucher enquiries piled up before Christmas. Rooms sat empty after late cancellations because nobody had time to work the waitlist.
A free 45-minute call. Tell us where the time goes; we'll tell you honestly whether an agent would help and what it would save.
Book a call