By business type
What a hotel can answer without seeing the booking system
A hotel gets two kinds of question and they need opposite handling. The first kind is about the property: what is in the rate, when the rooms are ready, whether the car park is free, whether there is a lift to the second floor. Those never change between guests and are ideal to automate. The second kind is about a date or a booking, and that lives in a system the assistant cannot see.
What people actually type
Not the questions on your FAQ page. These are the phrasings that arrive in a chat window, lowercase and unpunctuated, and the material has to answer them in those words rather than in yours.
- is breakfast included in the rate
- what time is check in
- can i check out late
- do you have parking and is it free
- do you have any accessible rooms
- is there a lift
- can i cancel my booking for free
- do you allow dogs
- do you have family rooms
- is there a bar or restaurant on site
- do you have rooms free next weekend
- can we hire a room for a meeting
What to feed it
In rough order of how much work each one takes off the front desk. Every one of these is a document you almost certainly already have.
| What each rate actually includes | Breakfast, parking, any resort or facility fee, city or tourist tax where it applies, whether the rate is refundable, and what a non refundable rate means in practice. Rate confusion is the single biggest driver of front desk friction and almost all of it is answerable from your own rate descriptions. |
|---|---|
| Arrival and departure information | Check in from, check out by, whether early arrival or late departure is possible and what it costs, whether bags can be left before and after, and how a late arrival works if reception is not staffed all night. |
| A room type matrix with accessibility detail | For each room type: bed configuration, maximum occupancy, floor, whether it is reachable by lift, whether the bathroom has a bath or a walk in shower, whether there is a wet room, door widths where you know them, and whether connecting rooms exist. Guests with access needs ask precise questions and are usually met with a vague yes. |
| Parking, transport and location | Whether parking is on site, how many spaces, whether it can be reserved, the charge, height restrictions for a van or a roof box, electric charging, the nearest station and how long the walk is. |
| Cancellation, deposit and payment terms by rate | The notice period for each rate type, when a card is charged, whether a pre authorisation is taken at arrival and how long it takes to drop off. That last point generates more angry emails than almost anything else at a hotel. |
| Facilities and their real hours | Pool, gym, spa, bar, restaurant, room service, and the hours each actually runs including days it is closed. A facility listed without hours reads as always available, and a guest arriving to a closed pool remembers it. |
What has to reach a person
Availability on a specific date
The assistant cannot see the rate and availability system unless you connect one, so it does not know whether a room exists next Friday, what it costs tonight, or whether the last twin has gone. Anything it says about a specific date is a guess with a booking attached to it.
The right handling is to say it cannot check availability, link the booking page, and take an enquiry for anything the booking engine will not handle.
Anything about a guest's existing reservation
Whether a booking came through, whether the room can be changed, whether a cot was added, whether a refund has been issued. All of that is guest data in a system it has no access to, and confirming any of it to an anonymous visitor would be wrong even if it could.
Group bookings, weddings and events
Room blocks, function space, catering minimums and a contract. These are commercial negotiations with real money in them, and they should reach the sales or events contact quickly with the dates and the party size captured.
A specific accessibility requirement
The assistant can and should state the published facts about each room type. Whether a particular room works for a particular guest, their equipment and their needs deserves a person who can measure a doorway and confirm it, and the guest should be offered that rather than left with a generic yes.
The wording when it cannot help
This is the message the assistant returns when nothing in the material covers the question. It is written by you rather than generated, which matters here more than anywhere: it is the sentence a stranger reads at the worst moment.
I cannot check availability or look up a booking, because I have no access to the reservation system. Please use the booking page for dates, or leave your name and email and the front desk will come back to you. I can help with what is in the rate, arrival times, parking, room types and access.
It names what it cannot do, gives the route that can, and offers to take a message. A refusal that only apologises leaves the person exactly where they started.
Rules and duties that shape the answer
Accessibility information has to be accurate, not encouraging
Accessibility duties apply to accommodation providers in most markets, and a guest who books on the strength of an overstated description arrives to a room they cannot use. That is a worse outcome than losing the booking, and it is also the outcome most likely to become a formal complaint.
Index the honest description, including what is not accessible, and let the assistant quote it rather than soften it.
Cancellation terms differ by rate and must not be merged
A flexible rate, an advance purchase rate and a booking made through a third party site often carry three different cancellation positions, and the third party booking is usually not the hotel's to cancel at all. Consumer cancellation rights in many markets carve out accommodation booked for specific dates, so the contract terms really do govern.
Write them as separate documents keyed to the rate name, and make sure the assistant says which rate it is describing.
Taxes and fees are part of the price question
Where a city or tourist tax applies, or where a facility fee is charged at the property, a guest quoted only the room rate has been told the wrong number. Price transparency rules in many markets expect unavoidable charges to be visible, so index them alongside the rate rather than as a footnote.
Never, whatever the documents say
Out of bounds
- Whether a room is available on a particular date.
- A price for a specific night or a specific stay.
- Anything about a named guest's reservation.
- That a room is suitable for a described access need without a person confirming it.
- Cancellation terms for a booking made through a third party site.
Playbooks for this trade
One page per recurring question, written for a hotel rather than in general. Each carries the phrasings, the material that answers them, a reply worth copying, and the line where it has to stop.
- Can I get a van in there, and other arrival questionsHeight barriers, charges, reservable spaces and how far the station really is. All published, and all asked late at night.
- Which rate did they book, and why the answer changesFlexible, advance purchase and booked through an agent give three different answers. Merging them promises refunds you do not owe.
- Precise access questions deserve precise room factsGuests ask precise questions about doorways, wet rooms and lifts. Quote the honest room description, then offer someone who can measure.
- Room blocks, function space and the enquiry that goes coldTen rooms and a function room is a contract, not a booking. Capture the dates, the numbers and the space, then get it to sales fast.
- The booking nobody in the chat window can look upA named reservation is invisible here. Say so, take the details, and let the front desk look up what only they can see.
- The hold on the card at check in is not a chargeThe hold taken at the desk is not a payment, and what happens to an empty room overnight depends on which rate plan it was sold on.
- Same room, same night, two rates and a tax on topTwo rate plans on one room, a city tax added at the desk, and a figure on a travel site that is not the hotel's to explain or match.
- The guest is upstairs and the duty manager is downstairsNoise at two in the morning, a room not made up, a shower running cold. Somebody is on shift, so the reply's job is to reach them fast.
- You booked a room type, not a room numberCheck in from three, a room type booked rather than a room number, and early arrival as a request. Published answers shorten the desk queue.
- Changing the dates buys a new price, not the old oneA date change reprices at whatever the new night is selling at, an advance purchase rate usually cannot move, and an agent booking is not ours.
- Whoever took the payment is the only one who can send it backA prepaid agent booking is refunded by the agent, a released hold was never a charge, and a folio adjustment is not the same as money going back.
- The folio, the invoice and the booking somebody else paid forFinance wants the company name on it and the tax on its own line, and the desk can only invoice for money the hotel actually took.
- Sold out tonight is not sold out on ThursdaySold out is a moment rather than a verdict: cancellations and a group release date reopen rooms, and none of it is visible from a chat window.
- Is anybody on the desk at three in the morningWhether the desk is manned all night, whether the door locks at eleven, and what a guest can get at three when the kitchen shut at ten.
- Housekeeping found a charger, and the store keeps it for a monthHousekeeping logs what it finds against a room and a date, the store holds it for a stated period, and a damage charge is the manager's call.
- Three separate diaries and none of them is the room systemThree diaries the hotel runs, none of them the room inventory, each with its own notice period and its own cancellation position.
- Whose problem is the car, and whose problem is the cancelled tripWhether a cancelled trip is claimable sits between a guest and their insurer, and a car park notice is not the hotel accepting liability.
- Where is the tray, and will the shirt be back by sixA guest waiting on a tray or a shirt back by six needs the kitchen or housekeeping, not a chat window that can see neither.
Questions
- If it cannot check availability, what is it actually doing?
- Answering everything that comes before and after the booking engine. What the rate includes, when check in is, whether the car park has height restrictions, whether the lift reaches every floor, what the cancellation notice is. Those are the messages that reach a front desk during a check in rush, and none of them need the reservation system.
- Can it handle enquiries in other languages?
- It answers from the material you index, so the coverage follows your content. If your access and rate information exists in more than one language, index all of them and the assistant can answer in the language the guest wrote in with citations back to the right page.
- How do we stop it giving a soft yes on accessibility?
- Write the room descriptions with the limitations in them, then set the caution level so it refuses rather than reaching for an approximate match. A guest who is told plainly that the accessible room is on the ground floor with a wet room and no bath can decide for themselves, which is what they wanted.
Keep reading
- For a restaurantHours, last orders, deposits and dietary options are safe ground. Confirming a dish is free of an allergen never is.
- For a holiday rentalWhat is provided, deposits and cancellation terms answer well. The exact address and the door code stay back until a booking exists.
- For a gymContract length and cancellation terms cause most gym complaints. Timetables, inductions and joining fees are worth automating.
- Every business typeWhat an assistant has to know before it can answer for a trade.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.