Let's Be Clear... What does the modern guest arrival experience look like?

If you think a guest's arrival begins the moment they step through your front door, you’re already behind. The first impression is no longer a single event at the front desk. It is a series of experiences that start the instant a traveller begins engaging with your brand, the moment they decide to book with you over anyone else. This modern arrival timeline is a continuous conversation, and understanding its key moments is the only way to make a lasting first impression.

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The five modern milestones of the digital arrival experience:

• Booking: This is the first handshake. It's the moment a traveller sifts through their accommodation options, weighing your property against competitors and home rental services, and chooses you.
• Excitement: Immediately after a traveller books their stay, they start "flirting" with the potential of their trip. They're scrolling through social media, reading reviews, and asking friends about the destination and what your property offers beyond the room.
• Pre-Arrival: In the days prior to the trip, the connection should deepen. Too often, this is when hoteliers bombard guests with generic marketing emails, trying to get them to spend more on ancillary services, instead of providing the right offer at the right time and on preferred channels.
• Property Arrival: This is the traditional moment of truth when the traveller physically arrives at your hotel to check in, conventionally becoming your guest.
• Room Arrival: Once check-in is complete, the guest makes their way to the room to settle in before attending to their vacation or business events.

Each of these stages is a critical opportunity to build a relationship or create a point of friction. Recognising that the "arrival" is the entire journey, not just a single touchpoint, is the first step toward getting it right.

The Anatomy of a Disconnected Arrival

A guest books a car service through the concierge, but upon arrival, the front desk has no record of it. A special request noted by the reservation agent during booking fails to reach the housekeeping staff. Sound familiar? The result is a frantic scramble for your team and a frustrating first impression for your guest, forcing staff to contend with existing systems that ultimately require the guest to do more work just to begin their stay.

A disconnected arrival often isn't a staff failure either; it's a systems or data failure. Over half of hotel executives already say that creating more resilient integrations between legacy systems is their top challenge.  Departmental silos and fragmented digital guest information define the anatomy of a disconnected arrival. Context about a guest's preferences and history gets trapped in separate software systems for marketing, sales, and operations. When these systems don’t talk to each other, your team is left flying blind, unable to provide the proactive, personal service they want to deliver.

From the guest's perspective, these gaps make the travel experience feel hollow and inhuman. They are forced to repeat themselves, ask the same questions to different staff members, and wonder why the hotel seems unaware of them or the context of their stay, especially if this isn’t their first stay at your property. This initial friction can easily set a negative tone that permeates the entire stay.

Communication Gaps From Booking to Pre-Arrival

This is where the first gaps appear. Various systems, such as your PMS, CRM, or Concierge tools, contain fragments of guest data, but they don't communicate effectively with marketing or guest messaging platforms. The result is generic, impersonal emails that only contain a first name but don't acknowledge guest history or preferences. Furthermore, hotels often lack collaboration tools, such as content management systems in digital itineraries, which stifles a key opportunity to build a relationship before the stay even begins.

Disconnected Context For Every Guest

This is a classic failure point. A guest shares why they are visiting or makes simple requests (e.g., extra pillows, a specific room location, car service) during booking or via a pre-arrival form in your marketing or booking automation systems. This information is frequently stored in isolation, but is never fully transferred to the other systems that property staff use to engage with guests. Furthermore, there is often little to no engagement with additional guests who may be part of the room or travel experience.  For instance, let’s say you have a repeat guest who always travels with their significant other as an additional guest on the room reservation. The significant other is always the one who visits the spa or typically books the F&B experiences for the group.  How often are you marketing to the significant other versus the primary guest?  Context is really your best friend because almost three quarters of consumers simply expect personalised interactions that go above and beyond just a first name.

Fragmented Identity & Loyalty Recognition

83% of travellers can identify hotels that truly know them versus those designed for mass appeal. Why? Travellers are more informed than ever before and are tired of the same generic marketing spin. They know the difference between seeing their first name on a generic pre-arrival email and being called out that their pet’s birthday is coming up, with a treat bag waiting in their room upon arrival. Even if their purchasing behaviours and past preferences are stored in systems, such data exists in fragmented isolation, only available to marketing and sales teams. Still, they aren't visible or integrated into the systems that on-premise staff use on a day-to-day basis. This forces the guest to reintroduce themselves and their needs, making them feel unvalued and disillusioned.

Clunky or Inflexible Check-in Options 

Many hotels offer a single, rigid path for digital check-in, typically by requiring guests to download a branded app or visit the front desk. This creates a barrier for guests who prefer a more straightforward, web-based process that most airlines have already successfully implemented. The technology ultimately dictates the experience, forcing the traveller to react rather than offering them a choice, leading to immediate frustration and disengagement.

Integration Failures Between Key Systems 

The most technical but critical issue is the poor integration between:

• The Property Management System (PMS)
• Payment Systems
• Digital Keys
• Concierge/Engagement Tools
• Messaging Tools

When these systems aren't deeply connected, it leads to errors in billing, exposes you to fraud or chargebacks, delays the issuance of digital keys, or can result in a complete failure of the check-in process. Then you’re back to the analogue days of forcing the guest to go to the front desk, defeating the entire purpose.

The harsh truth is that this friction directly impacts your bottom line. A poor digital arrival experience can jeopardise opportunities for ancillary revenue, generate negative online comments, and significantly reduce the likelihood of a guest returning. It’s a high price to pay for a problem that starts with broken internal processes.