Example scenario. The guest house, the people and the times below are made up, to show the order of events. They are not a real client and do not show a result.
Imagine a guest house with six rooms in a small mountain town. The owner is called Maria, for the sake of the example. In the evening she is with the guests in the yard, serving and chatting, and afterwards she will prepare breakfast for the morning. At 22:00 her phone is in her apron pocket, while the person looking for a guest house for the weekend is on the sofa at home, comparing three websites.
What most often happens without preparation
The person searching has five or six pages open. They write to or call the first one they liked. If they get no answer, they do not wait until morning but open the next one. It is not malice. That is how a holiday is chosen: by comparing with whatever is to hand.
Maria sees the message at 23:30, is tired and replies late with a brief “Yes, there is availability”. Or she does not see it until the morning. In both cases the person has already decided, and she is not sure whether there was an enquiry worth chasing at all.
The same evening, with a prepared routine
Now suppose the guest house has a website with an ISKA Assistant widget and well filled-in approved information about the property.
22:00 — the guest asks
The person writes on the website to ask whether a room for two is free next Friday and Saturday, whether there is breakfast, whether a dog is accepted and whether they can arrive after 20:00.
22:01 — what the guest receives
The assistant answers only from the information the property has approved: what breakfast includes, what the pet policy is and until what time check-in is possible. For a question it has no data on, it does not make anything up but directs the guest to the property’s phone.
If the guest wants to book a room, the assistant collects a request: dates, number of guests, preferred room, meal plan and contact details. Then it says honestly what comes next: this is a request, not a confirmed reservation, and a member of staff will confirm it. By default, confirmation is by phone.
22:02 — what the team sees
The request is recorded as “new” and the team is notified. The conversation is in the Inbox, so in the morning Maria sees not an isolated message but the whole exchange: what the guest asked, what answer they received and what contact details they left.
22:03 — what does not happen
Nobody pays, the room is not held for this person, and nobody has promised a price or availability that Maria has not checked. The assistant does not replace reception, and there is no live chat with a person. If the room is already taken for Friday, that is something a person has to see, with the records in front of them.
In the morning: what is left for a person
At 8:30, after breakfast, Maria opens the Inbox. She does four things:
- reads the request and checks in her own calendar whether the room is free;
- decides whether to offer another room if the chosen one is taken;
- phones the guest, confirms or offers an alternative, and clarifies the price;
- notes in the request what has been decided, so that nobody phones twice.
The decision is hers. The assistant has done the preparation: the guest got an answer on the spot, and Maria starts the day with an enquiry gathered in one place.
What to prepare so that an evening like this works
The evening routine is only as good as the information behind it. Before you rely on it:
- write down clearly the check-in and check-out times, breakfast, parking, and the rules for pets and children;
- decide who looks at the requests in the morning, and at what time; if the answer is “when I have time”, the whole benefit is lost;
- pin down what you say on the phone when confirming: the price, the conditions, how the stay is guaranteed;
- go through a few conversations and fix whatever the assistant did not know.
If the questions your team gets are of a different kind, not room enquiries, see how repeated questions are reduced in the guide to repeated questions at reception. If you are wondering how the assistant differs from a static page of answers, there is a separate comparison with a hotel “Frequently asked questions” page.
When it is NOT suitable
If the property has no website where guests can ask, or nobody reviews the requests the next day, the assistant has nothing to prepare. In that case a clear internal procedure matters more than the technology: who answers, by when and in what words.
What to take from the scenario
The owner does not need to be awake at 22:00. What is needed is for the person searching to get a quick and honest first answer, and for the team to have a recorded request with everything needed for the morning decision. The confirmation, the price and the last word are left to a person.