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.
Why the room QR is the only thing we trust
An unauthenticated in-room surface has exactly one credential, and every safety property follows from how it is treated.
An in-room concierge that refuses to guess
Retrieval grounding, an explicit confirmation step, and why the model is never allowed to spend a guest's money.
Choosing which messages belong on WhatsApp
Not everything should go to the app a guest keeps on their home screen. A per-event opt-in is the point.
Every message on one channel
What it takes to move a property's whole notification catalogue onto WhatsApp without rewriting any of it.
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.
Loyalty points that behave themselves
Tiers keyed on spend, expiry that is forward-only, and why an existing balance is treated as goodwill.
Feedback tied to the stay it is about
A review request that knows which visit it follows is worth more than a generic one, to you and to the guest.
What happens to a booking from your own site
A direct request is checked against the same availability guard as everything else — and lands on the same board.
A booking site in an afternoon
A public site that shows the rooms you are actually selling, on your own domain, without a developer.
Routing staff alerts away from guest messages
The same event often needs to reach a guest and a team, differently. Per-event routing is what keeps them apart.
Messages guests actually read
Confirmations and requests on the app people already have open, sent from your own number.