Booking Notes: Capturing Guest Needs Before Arrival

Why Pre-Arrival Information Matters

The period between booking and arrival is where guest expectations are set — and where service failures begin if information is lost. A guest who mentions a severe nut allergy during booking expects that information to reach the kitchen before they sit down to dinner. A couple celebrating an anniversary expects the room to reflect the occasion they mentioned when reserving.

Booking notes are the mechanism that carries this information from the moment of reservation through to the operational team that needs to act on it. When notes are structured and visible, nothing falls through the cracks.

Types of Booking Notes to Capture

Dietary and Allergy Requirements

Dietary notes are not preferences — they are safety requirements. A missed allergy note can result in a medical emergency, not just a disappointed guest. Capture dietary information with specific categories:

• Food allergies (nut, shellfish, dairy, gluten)
• Dietary restrictions (vegetarian, vegan, halal, kosher)
• Medical dietary needs (diabetic, low-sodium)

These notes should be flagged for kitchen visibility, not buried in general comments.

Accessibility and Mobility Needs

Guests with accessibility requirements need room assignments that match their needs — ground floor access, wheelchair-accessible bathrooms, visual alert systems for hearing-impaired guests. These assignments cannot happen at check-in. They require advance preparation based on booking notes.

Celebrations and Special Occasions

Anniversaries, birthdays, honeymoons, and proposals are moments where small gestures create lasting impressions. A note that says "30th wedding anniversary — arriving 6pm" gives your team time to prepare a room decoration, complimentary champagne, or a personalized card.

How Notes Travel Through the Booking Lifecycle

A booking note is only useful if it reaches the right person at the right time. The note attached at reservation time should be visible to:

1. Front desk — at check-in, for room assignment and guest greeting
2. Housekeeping — before arrival, for room preparation
3. Kitchen/F&B — before first meal, for dietary requirements
4. Concierge — for special occasion arrangements

TacTech.ai's Booking Management attaches notes directly to reservation records, ensuring they travel with the booking through every lifecycle stage and are visible to any team member who opens the record.

Staff Handoff Best Practices

Even with great systems, staff handoffs can lose information. Establish these practices:

• Daily arrival briefing — review all incoming reservations and their notes each morning
• Department-specific views — kitchen sees dietary notes, housekeeping sees room preferences, front desk sees everything
• Acknowledgment workflow — staff confirm they have read and actioned critical notes
• Post-stay review — after checkout, note whether special requests were successfully fulfilled and feed the results into the Survey & Feedback module to track fulfillment rates over time

Using Notes to Personalize the Guest Experience

Booking notes become even more powerful when they feed back into the guest profile. A preference captured during one booking should carry forward to the next. If a guest requested extra pillows this visit, the preference should appear on their profile so future bookings automatically include it.

Over time, this creates a rich preference record that allows your team to anticipate needs rather than react to requests. That shift — from reactive to anticipatory service — is what separates good hospitality from exceptional hospitality.

What special requests should hotels capture before arrival? At minimum: dietary restrictions and allergies, accessibility and mobility needs, celebrations or special occasions, room preferences (bed type, floor, view), and arrival/departure timing. Safety-critical notes like allergies should be flagged with high priority.

How do booking notes improve guest satisfaction? Notes ensure that guest needs communicated at booking time are acted on before arrival. When a guest arrives to find their requests already fulfilled without having to repeat them, satisfaction and loyalty increase measurably.

Capture every detail. Talk to our team about structured booking notes.