The person at the front desk has a guest in front of them, a key card to cut and a phone ringing. The guest in the lobby comes first, as they should. The caller, who may have been ready to book, waits, gives up, and calls the next property on the list.
Calls are missed in predictable places: during the check-in rush, in the evening when the desk is down to one person, and overnight. These are also the hours when travellers are making plans.
Two kinds of cover
After-hours cover takes all calls in a set window, such as evenings and nights. Overflow cover takes calls at any time when the desk does not pick up within a few rings. Many properties need both: overflow during the day, full cover at night.
What a remote reservations agent needs
- Access to your booking system, with the ability to check availability and make, change and cancel reservations
- Rates, room types and policies for each property
- Clear rules on what they can decide and what goes to the property
- A way to leave notes the morning team will see
- An escalation contact for emergencies
Agents practise in a sandbox version of the booking system before they take live calls. For a group, each call is tagged to the right property so one team can serve every location.
Routine calls and exceptions
Most calls are routine: availability, a new booking, a change of date, directions, check-in time. A smaller share are not: a complaint, a billing dispute, a guest in difficulty. The two need different handling. Routine calls can be resolved on the spot. Exceptions are logged in full and passed to the property, or escalated at once if they cannot wait.
For smaller operators, the routine overnight calls can be taken by an AI line that answers immediately and books straightforward stays, passing anything unusual to a person. This keeps the phone answered at hours when call volume would not occupy a member of staff.
Card details
Any call on which card details are taken brings payment-card security requirements with it. The simplest approach, and the one we recommend for a pilot, is not to take cards by phone at all: hold the reservation and send a secure link, or let the property collect payment. Where phone payment is needed, the guest can enter the digits on their keypad so the agent never hears or sees the number.
Recording
Recording calls supports quality and settles misunderstandings. Some states require every party's consent to record. The dependable practice is to say at the start of every call that it is recorded.
Go-live
Start with inbound cover alone and let it settle before adding anything else. In the first weeks, compare calls answered with the missed-call figures from before. That comparison is the clearest evidence of what the cover is doing, and it produces the data needed to size the desk properly.