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.
When a translation is wrong and nobody notices
The failure mode of automatic translation is silence. Verifiability is the feature.
How accurate is an estimated calorie count?
An honest answer about what a recipe-derived nutrition figure is, and what it is not.
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.
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.
Where an agency prepayment actually goes
Merchant-model bookings arrive already paid. Getting that onto the guest bill without double-counting takes one rule.
Loyalty points that behave themselves
Tiers keyed on spend, expiry that is forward-only, and why an existing balance is treated as goodwill.
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.
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.
Selling direct without abandoning the OTAs
Direct booking and channel distribution are not opposites. What has to be true for both to run off one set of inventory.
Exporting a report somebody else will read
Every report exports, and the export carries the same figures the screen did — including the caveats.
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.
Clock-in that suits a property, not an office
Split shifts, self-serve punches and the difference between one working day and two.