While fancy amenities, special packages, and added extras bring in bookings, it’s important not to lose focus on the essential elements of running your property. Think of your extras as the frosting and your basics as the cake. The frosting may be most delectable, but if the cake tastes funny, no one will eat it—or stay at your hotel. 

Here are the basics your hotel has to do well and how to get them right. 

Clean Rooms

This one is obvious and the most important. According to the American Hotel & Lodging Association’s 2024 State of the Industry Report, cleanliness was the highest determining factor for a positive guest experience. No one wants someone else’s floss in their sink. 

A streamlined, integrated approach to housekeeping is key to maintaining the standards demanded by today’s guests.

WebRezPro includes housekeeping reports and checklists that ensure no step is skipped and room quality is consistent across the property. Housekeeping notes and maintenance alarms can be added on the go. In convenient mobile format, our housekeeping reports can be viewed and updated by housekeepers as they work, and updates are automatically available to the front desk in real time. No accidentally checking a guest into a dirty room!

Check-in

Check-in is your first on-property impression, so make it a good one. Long lines, counterintuitive tech, and grumpy staff all lead to frustrated guests. You want guests to breeze in, then breeze to their rooms. 

To ensure a seamless check-in experience, communicate your check-in procedure in your pre-arrival messaging so that guests know what to expect. Once they arrive, a warm welcome and efficient registration is key. With an automated property management system (PMS), you can look up their reservation and check them in in just a few clicks. With an integrated payment processor, accepting card payments is faster and easier as payments can be processed directly within the reservation folio. Integrating your PMS with your room access system makes encoding keycards or generating keycodes and mobile keys simpler too. And an ID scanning integration speeds things along by scanning the guest’s ID and auto-filling guest information in your PMS. 

More and more properties let guests check themselves in. Self check-in enables guests to pay, complete registration requirements, and receive their keys online, without stopping by the front desk at all! It super streamlines guest arrivals and prevents those long lines. However, it’s important that the technology involved is user friendly for both guests and staff. If you choose to use a dedicated self-check-in app, make sure it integrates with your property management system for a seamless experience. 

Customer Service

If guests feel like they’re on the set of Fawlty Towers, you’re doing something wrong! Staff should be friendly, collected, and knowledgeable about the property’s products and services. 

Provide them with customer service training and roleplay different scenarios. They should know when it’s okay to bend the rules and when to stand firm. If the guest’s toilet backfires, a free upgrade may be in order.

Help your staff feel motivated to do their best (and prevent staff burnout!) by supporting them with tools to perform their job efficiently and effectively. Being constantly reachable and ready to go is difficult work. Having the right technology is crucial for streamlining routine tasks and accessing information when needed. 

In the hospitality industry, personalized customer service is an expectation. With the data in your property management system, you can individualize the guest experience and, at the very least, address them by name, keep track of any special requests, and recommend relevant services. The couple on their honeymoon should get the notification about the chocolate strawberries, not the kids’ club (it’s a little early for that!). 

An important part of good customer service is being reachable quickly, whenever and wherever. Guest messaging applications such as Akia, Duve, and Revinate enable you to send and receive texts to and from guests all over the property. You can even automate messages for routine communications and frequently asked questions.

Safety

You don’t want guests to wonder if they’ve checked into The Bates Motel either. If a guest doesn’t feel safe, it will be a short stay. Implement robust guest room locks, and consider installing security cameras in public areas. Don’t give out room information to anyone other than the guest. 

Conduct regular building maintenance and have an emergency plan ready. If you cater to international guests, have emergency instructions in their language. Alarms and instructions for guests with disabilities—for example, braille signs—are important as well. 

Not all safety issues initially seem catastrophic but nonetheless need to be covered. Ensure that germs are minimized and food preparation protocols are followed. Your staff should know what cross-contamination is. 

Safety includes protecting your Wi-Fi networks. Staff and guest networks should remain separate and use the latest security measures. Educate your employees about phishing scams. 

Accessibility

Your safety protocols aren’t the only aspect of your property that needs to adapt for guests with disabilities. From guest rooms to food prep to your website, make sure your property and services are inclusive. Your property management system is an excellent place to record your guests’ accessibility needs. And your online booking engine should enable guests to search for accessible rooms.

Your website and marketing should make it clear what accessible services you offer. Guests can’t take advantage of them if they don’t know that they’re there! 

Lastly, don’t upcharge unless you absolutely have to. A guest with a service animal can be placed in one of your pet-friendly rooms, but they shouldn’t be charged a pet fee. 

Pricing

The right pricing is key to obtaining bookings. Room rates should be dynamic, based on current data from both the property itself and the wider market. Factors such as seasonal patterns, competitor rates, and the perceived value of your rooms all come into play.

A good property management system allows you to implement a dynamic pricing strategy with immediate rate and availability overrides, channel management integration, and yield management that changes rates automatically depending on occupancy based rules. 

To up your game, consider using an automated revenue management system, which uses sophisticated algorithms to determine a property’s best pricing, taking into account the factors mentioned above and much more. Integrated with your PMS, a revenue management system has live access to your property’s data for more accurate analysis, and accepted pricing recommendations are automatically updated in your PMS and across all connected online distribution channels. 

Today’s travelers are savvy online consumers, so make sure your rates are bookable online—on your property’s website and on relevant OTAs to expand your reach. Ensure all your online booking channels are integrated with your PMS so that reservations are automatically sent to your PMS and your rates and availability are always up to date everywhere. That way, you can maximize revenue while avoiding double bookings.

Wi-Fi

Guests need Wi-Fi, whether it’s to send their boss an email or catch up on the latest cat TikToks. It should be free, fast, and dependable everywhere in the hotel. Select a provider with good tech support and quick response times. Having someone get back to you in a day won’t help when your guest needs to jump on a conference call now.

Like any other guest-facing technology at your property, your Wi-Fi must be easy to access. Security is important as well, including data encryption, firewall maintenance, and separation between guest and staff networks.

If you don’t have Wi-Fi, for instance, if you’re in a remote mountain range where communication is via messenger bird, then market your property as a chance to disconnect. Say it’s a feature, not a bug. 

A Good Night’s Sleep

At its core, a hotel is a place to sleep, so make sure guests can actually do that. Walls should be soundproof, and beds should be comfortable. Provide quality bedding and spare blankets, and ensure curtains are thick enough to block out the light. How about trying it out yourself by spending the night in one of your rooms? 

Respond to any noise complaints promptly…or your guests may demand a refund in the morning. It’s wise to put something about noise levels in your guest agreement. Pro tip: If you go above and beyond, you can market your hotel as part of the sleep tourism trend.

Getting the basics right ensures a solid foundation for earning satisfied guests and good reviews. From there, you can surprise and delight guests with added extras and fancy amenities that result in rave reviews and more bookings!