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.
Printer routing when one property has six printers
Which slip comes out where is a function of the terminal, the role and the station — not of the printer list alone.
A kitchen screen that tracks items, not tickets
Per-item lifecycle, station routing, and the difference between saving an order and firing one.
Why your POS should refuse to print twice
Double-tapping Fire on a laggy tablet is the most ordinary thing a waiter does. Here is what has to happen underneath so it costs nothing.
A restaurant till that knows about rooms
Charging a dinner to a room is trivial when both live in one system, and a nightly reconciliation chore when they do not.
Running private rooms and dorms in one property
Mixed inventory on one board, and the one setting you cannot change after the fact.
Selling a bed instead of a room
Six travellers who have never met, one eight-bed dorm, six separate bills. What that requires of the inventory model.
What a "party" is, and why your bill depends on it
The billing primitive underneath dine-in, room service, spa and stays — and how a group of rooms bills as one.
Recording an allergy so it actually protects someone
Coded allergens, free-text qualifiers, and why the warning is advisory rather than blocking.
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.