Field notes for people who run properties
Guides, reports and working practice from the team building Vestibel — written about behaviour that ships, not roadmap.
The answer your AI should refuse to give
A guest asks about the pet policy at midnight. The confident wrong answer is worse than no answer at all.
The restaurant charge that never reached the room
The single most common piece of lost revenue in a hotel with a restaurant, and the two-system seam that causes it.
The Tuesday that quietly costs you a thousand pounds
A single ordinary day at a twenty-room property, and the six places money leaks when the systems do not talk.
The OTA payment that never reconciled
A prepaid booking, a net remittance two weeks later, and a bill that does not foot for anybody.
Two reports, one month, two different answers
The revenue figure on the dashboard and the revenue figure in the export differ by four percent, and both are defensible.
The shoebox in February
Twelve months of receipts, a weekend lost, and a set of accounts built from whatever survived a coat pocket.
The shortfall that landed on the wrong cashier
A £40 discrepancy discovered at eleven at night, attributed to whoever happened to be holding the drawer.
The company that would only pay for the room
Four consultants, one corporate account, and a bar tab nobody agreed to cover. How the bill is meant to come apart.
The stop-sell that only stopped the OTAs
Six rooms are closed for re-plastering. Your own front desk sells one of them anyway, because the rule was applied to the wrong population.
Where an agency prepayment actually goes
Merchant-model bookings arrive already paid. Getting that onto the guest bill without double-counting takes one rule.
Keeping rates in step with the agents
Allotments per channel, reservations onto your board, and settlements that reconcile without a spreadsheet.
Exporting a report somebody else will read
Every report exports, and the export carries the same figures the screen did — including the caveats.
The numbers owners actually ask for
Occupancy, ADR, RevPAR, guest ledger and a day that closes once. Where each figure comes from and why it agrees with the others.
Attaching the receipt while you still have it
The cheapest moment to record a cost is the moment it happens. Everything after that is archaeology.
Expenses without becoming an accounting system
Categories you define, receipts attached, and a deliberate boundary around what this is not.