Playbook, hotel
You booked a room type, not a room number
Somebody who has not stayed here before is assembling a picture of the day: when they can drop bags, whether the room will be ready if the train gets in at eleven, what time breakfast stops, whether they can walk into the restaurant in what they are wearing. Nearly all of it is published somewhere on the site and almost none of it is in one place, which is why it arrives at the desk as six questions during a check in queue.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for first visit questions holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- What a guest bought is a room type rather than a room. The floor, the view, the position on the corridor and the number on the door are allocated at check in from whatever is free that afternoon, and no request is a promise. This is the commonest first stay surprise in the trade.
- Early check in and late checkout are requests, not entitlements, because both depend on a departure and a housekeeping round that have not happened yet, and neither is knowable until the morning of the day.
- Half of these questions are really about a facility with its own hours. Breakfast stops, the bar has last orders, the pool has an adults only period, the gym needs a key card. A facility listed without hours reads as open all day.
- A first time guest wants to know whether reception is manned overnight, and the honest answer decides their travel: a hotel with somebody on the desk and a hotel that locks the front door at eleven require completely different arrival plans.
How it arrives
- what time can we get into the room
- can we leave our bags before check in
- do we get to pick which floor we are on
- what time does breakfast finish
- is there someone on reception all night
- is there a dress code in the restaurant
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Arrival and departure as hours, with what happens either side | Check in from, checkout by, whether bags can be left before and after, where they go and whether the store is staffed or a corner of the lobby. Write them as times. A guest is booking a train around them and an approximation is no use. |
|---|---|
| The room type matrix, plus the sentence that a room is not booked | Bed configuration, maximum occupancy, the floors each type sits on and whether any of them are reached only by stairs. Then the plain statement that a preference for a floor, a view or a quiet side is noted and worked with rather than guaranteed. That sentence prevents more disappointment than any other on the site. |
| Every facility with its real hours and its rules | Breakfast service on weekdays and at the weekend, last orders in the restaurant and the bar, pool and gym hours, any adults only period, treatment hours, whether anything closes on a particular day, and any dress expectation in the restaurant. Guests plan an evening on this and get it wrong when it is written as available. |
| Early check in and late checkout written as a process | The hour rooms typically become ready, whether an early arrival can be requested and how, whether either carries a charge, and what happens on a busy changeover Saturday. Publish the version you can defend in August rather than the one that works in February. |
The reply
Check in is from the published time and the desk will hold bags for you before that if you get in early [1]. Worth knowing for a first stay: the booking is for a room type rather than a particular room, so the floor, the view and the number on the door are allocated at check in from whatever is free that day. You can note a preference and the desk will do what it can with it, but nobody can promise it in advance. Breakfast is served between the hours on the restaurant page, and last orders in the bar come earlier at the weekend than most people expect [2]. Reception is staffed overnight, so a late arrival is not a problem.
The room type sentence is placed early, because it reads as helpful when it arrives before check in and as defensive when it arrives at it. Preferences are described as noted rather than granted, which is exactly what the desk does with them. Overnight staffing is volunteered, since a first time guest planning a late train is about to ask and the answer changes their evening.
Where it stops
The trigger. The guest asks for a specific room, a specific floor, a connecting pair, or wants an early check in confirmed for a named date.
I can tell you how rooms are allocated but I cannot request one, hold a floor or confirm an early arrival, since none of that is visible from here. Leave your name, the email on the booking and your arrival date and reception will note what they can.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never promise a floor, a view, a quiet side or a particular room, because allocation happens at the desk from whatever is free that afternoon.
- Never confirm an early check in or a late checkout for a date, since both depend on a departure and a housekeeping round that have not happened yet.
- Never say a facility is open without the hours from the material, as a pool listed with no hours reads as available all day to the guest who turns up at seven.
- Never say a room will be ready at a particular time, which only housekeeping knows and only on the morning itself.
Questions
- Can it request a quiet room for somebody?
- No. It cannot write into a reservation or flag anything. It can explain that preferences are noted at the desk and pass a message with the arrival date on it, which achieves the same as an email and nothing more than one.
- Which of these is worth writing down first?
- The room type point and the breakfast hours. One prevents a disappointment at the desk in front of a queue, and the other prevents a guest coming down at half nine to a cleared restaurant, which is the complaint people remember longest.
- Our check in time is flexible in practice. Should we publish the real one?
- Publish the time you can defend on a full Saturday. Guests plan around whatever is written, and a generous figure that collapses in August produces a queue in the lobby and a run of reviews about waiting for a room.
Keep reading
- Everything for a hotelRate inclusions, check in times, parking and room accessibility answer well. Live availability and a named reservation do not.
- Handling first visit questions in generalWhat to wear, where to park, how long it takes, whether they can bring somebody. Cheap to answer and disproportionately valuable.
- 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.
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.