[Home](/) / [Industries](/industries/) / Hotels AI front desk for hotels # The AI front desk for hotels that takes the reservation at 11pm. Room inquiries, late arrivals and in-house requests, handled by phone and text in the voice of your property.[Book a demo](https://cal.com/vidhaniai/30min)[How pricing works](/pricing/) Boutique hotelExample call - Caller: Do you have a room for Saturday, two nights? - Front desk: Yes. A king room on the garden side is open for both nights. Shall I reserve it? - Caller: Please. And is there parking? - Front desk: Yes, parking is free on site. Reserved: Saturday and Sunday, king room. Confirmation is on its way to your phone. - ✓ Reserved: 2 nights, king room Who phones a small hotel ## Shoppers, stragglers, guests, planners and the rest A hotel AI front desk answers the property phone the way your best desk clerk would: it quotes the room, takes the booking, sorts the late arrival and knows when to wake the manager. It is built for boutique hotels, inns and bed and breakfasts, where the person at the desk is also the person carrying luggage. The callers are more varied than owners expect, and each wants something different from whoever picks up. - **The shopper.** Asks whether a weekend is open, what the room costs and whether a dog may come. Rings the next inn on the list when the line is busy. - **The traveler on the road.** Rings from a car to say the flight was late and arrival will be after midnight. - **The guest in the building.** Wants a later checkout, an extra pillow or a dinner suggestion within walking distance. - **The planner.** Needs eight rooms for a wedding weekend and wants to know what you can hold. - **The existing booker.** Needs to move a date, add a night or fix the spelling of a name. - **The vendor or neighbor.** Delivers linens, asks about a loading dock or reports a light that is out on the sidewalk. The first five can bring revenue, and the first four can be decided in a single phone call. The sixth still deserves a polite answer and a note to the right person. The rate call ## The rate and availability call, step by step A shopper asks for dates. The front desk looks at the dates against your open rooms, names the room types that fit and quotes the rate you have set for that night. Then it answers the questions that tip a decision: parking, breakfast, pets, accessible rooms, bed sizes, the distance to the town square. Here is an example of how a call goes. The names are made up. - **Caller:** Hi, I need two rooms for the weekend of the fourteenth, three nights, and we have a small dog. - **Front desk:** Two rooms for three nights is fine. I have a queen and a king garden room open. Dogs are welcome in garden rooms. May I take a name for the reservation? - **Caller:** Alex Sample. Is there a pet charge? - **Front desk:** The pet fee is per stay, and I will include it in the total I text you. Would you like both rooms on one reservation? - **Caller:** Yes, please, under Alex Sample. - **Front desk:** Reserved: both rooms for three nights. Your text has the room details and pet fee. The quote on the call comes from the rates you load, so a seasonal rate or a minimum stay is applied the way you wrote it. If a date falls outside what you have opened for sale, the desk says so and offers the nearest dates that work. Rate rules, deposits and cancellation terms are read aloud in your wording, and the guest gets them in writing by text. Late arrivals ## Late arrivals, and the guest who is lost in the dark The late arrival is the call that costs small properties the most sleep. A guest is an hour out and nobody is in the lobby. You tell us your cutoff time, and the desk plans each arrival around it. Example rules you set for arrivals: - **Before your desk closes.** The guest is told the desk hours and the earliest door code time. - **After the desk closes.** The desk records the expected arrival time. It is set up to match the guest to the booking before texting private entry instructions. - **Past a time you choose.** A guest who may arrive later than your cutoff is flagged on the morning list, so the room is not released and nobody is surprised. - **No booking found.** The desk checks spelling and dates, then offers a room if one is open. It is set up not to hand out entry details to someone it cannot match. That last rule matters. We set the desk up to share door codes and room numbers only after the caller matches a booking. See [how the checks work](/how-it-works/) for the general mechanism. Guests in house ## In-house calls: routine, urgent and everything between Guests call the desk from the room phone or their own phone. Most of those calls are small. A few are not. Which requests count as urgent is your call, and the desk works from your list. | Request | Example rule you set | |---|---| | Late checkout | Offer it until a time you choose, if the next arrival allows; otherwise route to the manager. | | Extra towels or pillows | Log it as a housekeeping task with the room number for the next shift. | | Noise complaint | Take the room and a short description, then alert the on-call manager. | | Locked out | Set up to match the guest to the booking before giving private door-code steps. | | Smoke, injury or no heat | Treat as urgent: call the on-call number you gave us, and tell the guest to dial emergency services where it applies. | | Extending a stay | Check the room is free for the extra nights, quote the rate and update the booking. | The urgent row is written by you, in your words, with the phone numbers of the people who should be woken. A guest in distress goes to the urgent row, not to a queue of routine tasks. Groups and events ## Weddings, teams and reunions need a person, and the person needs the facts A planner who asks about ten rooms is not ready to book on the call. They want to speak with your sales lead. What they also want is not to repeat themselves. The desk gathers the event date, the number of rooms and nights, the arrival pattern, whether a block is needed and a contact number. It then books a time for the sales lead to call, from that person's real availability. The summary lands on the morning list, along with the planner's own words about what the event is for. Contract terms and discounts stay with your people. The [after-hours answering service](/after-hours-answering-service/) page covers planners who ring at night. The night desk ## What a night auditor gets back At a small property one person may be on at night, checking in guests, closing the books and fielding the phone at once. The AI front desk does not take over that job. It takes the phone out of it. Calls during the audit are answered without a hold. Booking requests are taken while the auditor finishes the reports. Anything that needs a person comes through with the details written down. The day team reads who booked overnight, who changed dates and which guests are still on the road. A typical week looks like this. Monday and Tuesday are mostly business travelers asking about corporate rates and parking. Thursday and Friday bring the leisure shoppers, with questions about rooms, pets and nearby dining. Sunday evening brings extensions and last-minute stays. Holiday weekends, local festivals and graduation season bring the groups and the early-morning rush of inquiries. Seasons and rushes ## Peak weekends, shoulder weeks and the storm that cancels a flight Call patterns follow the calendar. Festival weekends, graduations, leaf season, ski openings and county fairs fill a town in days, and the phone rings from the first morning. The desk can quote a different rate, apply a longer minimum stay and say plainly when a weekend is sold out, all from the rules you load before the season starts. Weather and travel disruption bring a different surge. Guests stranded by a cancelled flight ring around for any room within a few miles, and the first property to answer may get the booking. Early checkouts, a closed road or a power cut bring a wave of questions that your staff would otherwise answer one at a time. Tell us about the event and the desk repeats your answer consistently, call after call. In the quiet weeks the same desk answers the calls that fill them: midweek getaways, corporate stays and the shoppers comparing your rate with the one down the road. Change a rule on a Monday and it applies to the next call. What you tell us ## What we ask a hotel owner at setup Setup is a conversation about your property, and most answers are already on your website. You bring them, and we write the rest. - **Rooms.** Types, bed sizes, accessibility, view or floor, and which are held back. - **Rates.** Seasonal and weekend rates, minimum stays, taxes and fees as you want them spoken. - **Policies.** Pets, smoking, check-in and checkout times, deposits, cancellation and children. - **Arrival.** Desk hours, the cutoff for late arrivals and the steps you want guests to follow. - **People.** Who is on call, who owns groups and who handles complaints. - **Local color.** The places you send guests for dinner, coffee and a walk, so recommendations sound like yours. Booking works from the calendar and tools you already use, read and written during the call. Room availability, rates and reservations stay in step with your property system. What it will not do ## What it will not do at the desk - **It does not invent a rate.** If a date is not loaded or a price is not in your list, the guest hears that and is passed to your team. - **It does not settle a dispute.** Refund requests, damage claims and billing disagreements go to a person, with the details taken. - **Built to protect room details.** The desk is set up to withhold another guest's room number, whatever the story. - **It does not decide a group contract.** Terms, blocks and discounts belong to your sales lead. - **It does not act as emergency services.** It tells the guest to call for help and rings your on-call manager at once. What shapes the quote ## What moves the quote for a hotel Hotel quotes depend on a few things, which we confirm with you on the call. These are the ones that matter for a property. - **Hours covered.** Nights only, nights plus overflow, or every hour the phone rings. - **Call volume.** A thirty-room inn in a ski town sees a very different spread than a roadside motel. - **Number of properties.** Each one has its own rooms, rates and rules. - **Channels.** Phone only, or phone with guest texting and the website chat box. - **Booking depth.** Taking the details only, or reading and writing reservations during the call. Nothing here is a price. The [pricing page](/pricing/) explains how a quote is built, and [the cost guide](/guides/ai-receptionist-cost/) gives the wider view. Questions ## What hotel owners ask before they switch on the AI front desk ### What is an AI hotel receptionist? It is software that answers a hotel's phone, takes the reservation, answers guest questions and passes real problems to your staff. It stands in for the person at the desk when that person is busy or off shift. ### Can it answer the hotel phone on its own? Yes. It handles the call from greeting to confirmation. What it cannot settle, it hands to someone you name, with the details already written down. ### Does it replace the night staff? No. It takes the phone off their plate. A person is still the one who handles a guest at the door, a broken lock or a late-night emergency. ### Will guests know they are talking to an AI? The voice is natural and speaks in your property's tone. If a guest asks, it answers honestly. ### Can it speak to guests who do not use English? It switches to the caller's language when the caller does. Guests can ask about rooms and complete their reservation in their own language. ### What if two people try to book the last room? It books from the live openings, so a room taken on one call is not offered on the next. If your systems cannot confirm availability, it takes the request and tells the guest your team will confirm. ### Do you take payments by phone? Yes. It sends a payment link for the reservation and applies your deposit terms. Payment information is set up to stay within the access limits you approve. ### Can it cover only the nights and weekends? Yes. You can start with nights and weekends, or with the dinner rush and the checkout hour. ### Does it work for inns and bed and breakfasts? Yes. A property with a handful of rooms and an owner who lives upstairs is a good fit, because the owner's evenings are the part it protects. ### How do I hear it before I commit? Book the demo. You call a front desk set up for a property like yours and push it with your own questions. Related ## Other trades where the phone decides the booking[Property ### Residential property manager](/industries/property-managers/)[Parking ### Parking operator](/industries/parking-operators/)[Salon ### Hair salon and spa](/industries/salons-and-spas/) ## Hear it answer for your business.[Book a demo](https://cal.com/vidhaniai/30min)