If you find yourself in a situation where you need to walk someone pretty quick, here are some helpful tips.
- If you have an operator or a spare staff member, and it's not busy, ask them to do a call around.
- Try to find the best property for their walk rate closest to the rate the guest paid you, closest to your property.
- Make sure you are closed out with all ota's, booking engines and internal systems. Anything that sells rooms for you. Make sure everything is set to zero unless you want to play the wash game!!
- Try to do this the earliest you can.
- If you know ahead of time
- Look for single travelers. It's much easier.
- A personal reach out to the guest will be warranted. Managers, don't make your agent handle it!
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One nights are the best. There are some upsides.
- Hopefully you got them a nice room equal to yours and close to things.
- They wont have to move.
- There are ample ways to salvage the situation. The degree and style with which you respond will be varied.
- For the Future.
- Download HotelTonight on your phone. Even though you may have a call around list, you can't call everyone. It'll tell you who has rooms left that night.
- Implement a cell phone number prompt in your operator script, online booking engine, OTA listings, etc. This is to insure moving forward we have that information and can place calls directly if needed.
