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.
Reading a Z-report and believing it
What has to be true underneath before a shift-end figure is worth reconciling against.
A shift change that does not close the drawer
Hand-over counts the cash, attributes the variance to the right operator, and leaves the till open for service.
Routing a charge to the right payer, automatically
Standing rules that decide which sub-account a future charge lands on, evaluated at the moment it posts.
One ledger per guest, not one per department
Every charge, every tender and every tax on a single folio — and what it takes to split it the way guests actually ask.
Blocks, allotments, and who each one binds
A stop-sell binds your own front desk. An OTA allotment must not. The asymmetry is deliberate and worth understanding.
Reading an availability grid instead of a yes or no
Why "is this room free" and "can this room type be sold" are different questions, and what happens when a system only answers the first.
Rate plans, restrictions, and who they bind
Stop-sell, CTA/CTD and length-of-stay rules bind the whole house. Channel allotments do not. Confusing the two is how rooms get oversold.