Free playbook · PDF
The hotel guest journey playbook
Six stages, from booking to the review, and what to fix at each one. Most hotels improve the stay and leave the rest of the journey as it was. This playbook walks through the six stages a guest goes through, what goes wrong at each one, and what to change first. It is written for owners, general managers and front-office managers, and it needs no particular system.
A name and an email. The PDF arrives in a few minutes.
The six stages
Where guests wait, and what to change.
Each stage below is a summary. The PDF has the full checklist and what to measure.
1. Booking
The confirmation is the first thing you send. Make it do more than confirm.
The guest has chosen you. What happens next decides whether the stay starts with confidence or with questions.
First change: Send the confirmation within minutes, from your own name, with the dates, the room and the total in the first lines.
2. Before arrival
Collect what the desk needs before the guest is standing at it.
Everything you ask for at the desk, a guest could have given you the week before, from their own phone.
First change: Send a pre-arrival message a few days before the stay with a link to register: details, ID where your country requires it, arrival time and requests.
3. Arrival and check-in
Where most queues come from, and how to remove them.
A queue at the desk is usually not a staffing problem. It is the same forms being filled, the same ID being checked and the same card being taken, one guest at a time, at the same hour. MKL Hospitality Group, which runs GMS at 9 of its 10 properties, reports 80% shorter front-desk queues.
First change: Let registered guests check in on their own phone and go straight to the room, or collect a key without the paperwork.
4. The stay
Make it easy to ask, and close the loop on every request.
During the stay, guests rarely complain. They quietly decide whether to come back.
First change: Give guests one way to ask for things, such as a message to the hotel's number, and answer it within a time you can keep.
5. Checkout and billing
The last thing the guest sees is the bill. Make it right first time.
A wrong bill undoes a good stay. A checkout queue undoes a good morning.
First change: Send the folio to the guest's phone the evening before departure, so questions are settled before checkout.
6. After the stay
The journey ends with a review and, if you earn it, a direct booking.
A guest who booked through a booking site once can book directly next time, if you give them a reason and a way.
First change: Ask for feedback within a day of checkout, with a short survey on the phone the guest checked in with.
A little clarity
Before you download it.
Who is it for?
Owners, general managers and front-office managers of independent hotels and small groups. It needs no particular system.
What is in the PDF?
All six stages, with 30 specific changes and one thing to measure at each stage. This page shows the summary of each.
What are the five follow-up emails?
If you tick the box, we send 5 short emails over the next two weeks, each on one part of the journey. Every one has a link to stop them, and they are separate from our newsletter.
Does it name hotel software?
No. The advice works with whichever PMS and lock system you run. Where it mentions our own products, it says so.
Is it really free?
Yes. You give a name and an email. Our team sees the request and may reply once; nothing else follows unless you ask for the follow-up emails.
Start wherever you are
Want to talk through your own guest journey?
We build GMS, guest check-in on the phone beside your PMS, and hotel systems you own outright.
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