The questions guests ask after the desk closes

In many small hotels, the front desk closes at night. Guests keep asking anyway: by message, by email, through the website. These notes ask two questions. What do guests ask in those hours, and which of those questions should an assistant leave to a person?

Large hotels can keep someone at the desk all night. Small hotels often cannot, so questions wait until morning, or someone answers from home. That gap is what an assistant is meant to close.

The answer decides what an assistant is for. If most night questions are simple, a clear written answer settles them, and the guest is not left waiting. If many need judgment, an assistant that answers alone will get things wrong at the worst hour. We want to know which is true before a hotel relies on one.

We expect a few topics to cover most questions: check-in and check-out times, breakfast, parking, and room changes. The owners we have spoken with named the same few. They also told us that most guest questions arrive after the desk closes. That is what they remember, not what anyone has counted.

The second list matters more. It holds what needs a person, even at two in the morning: refunds, complaints, requests the house rules do not cover. The rule we are testing is simple. If an answer needs judgment, money or an apology, the assistant hands the guest to a person.

Two examples show where the line falls. “What time is breakfast?” has one right answer, and it is in the house rules. “Can I get a refund for last night?” needs a person who can look at the booking and decide.

How the assistant hands over matters as much as when. A good hand-over tells the guest that a person will reply, and when. It passes on the whole conversation, so the guest does not have to repeat it. We think an assistant that guesses, or goes silent, is worse than a closed desk with a clear note.

We also expect guests to trust an answer more when it shows its source. The source can be as small as one line from the house rules. We have not tested this yet. It is why the assistants we build show a source beside each answer.

A good answer at night is short and names its source. It ends with a next step, such as who to call if the answer is not enough.

Here is how we will count. With each hotel's permission, we will collect the questions guests sent after the desk closed during an agreed period. We will remove names and personal details, then sort each question by topic and note the hour it arrived. For each one, we will mark whether a clear written answer could settle it, or whether it needed a person.

We will also note the language each question was written in. An assistant that answers in one language only leaves some guests waiting, and we want to know how many.

Guest messages are personal, so we will publish only topics and totals, never a guest's own words. Until the count is done, every “most” on this page is an expectation, not a finding.

You do not need our count to begin. Take one week of guest messages. Write each question on its own line, with the hour it arrived and who answered it.

Then split the list in two: questions a clear written answer could settle, and questions that need a person. The first list is where an assistant's knowledge starts. The second is its hand-over list, and it deserves the same care.

These notes will change as we count. When the numbers are in, we will update this page, show the figure, and say where our expectations were wrong.