How automation helps with hotel online reservation processes?

Find out which 3 automation elements your hotel needs for business management and how they will help you not only to prospect, but also to automate and improve online booking processes.

There are many challenges currently facing the hotel and tourism industry. One of these challenges has clearly been the huge loss of visitors due to the pandemic. But this problem is not isolated. When countries allowed tourists to enter their territories, many hotels lacked the workflows to reach out to people. 

The automation of the booking process has become a key factor for efficiency and profitability in the hospitality and tourism. As travelers seek more agile and personalized experiences, hotels need to adopt business models that allow them to optimize their management and improve customer satisfaction. Implementing an automated reservation system not only facilitates day-to-day operations, but also reduces operating costs and minimizes errors in managing availability and rates.

Automation-based business models enable hotels to improve their competitiveness by integrating tools such as online booking engines, secure payment gateways and hotel management systems (PMS). These solutions not only streamline the booking process, but also provide valuable data on guest preferences and habits, facilitating the personalization of offerings and the development of more effective loyalty strategies.


This article explores how booking automation impacts the hospitality and tourism industry, highlighting operational benefits, service optimization and increased profitability. Hotels that adopt innovative business models will be better prepared to respond to traveler expectations and position themselves strategically in a highly competitive market.


It is at this time that many hotels have seen the opportunity to consider the adoption of automating business processes, including, specifically, within the commercial areas.

In this blog we will address the following topics: 

• The importance of process automation in the hotel industry.
• How to automate your online booking processes.
• The 3 main elements that every hotel needs to automate and improve customer management.
  
  

The importance of process automation in the hotel industry

The most obvious reason is because marketing today is not just about creating channels or digital islands to handle requests. It is about automating customer management and business processes through workflows that optimise these flows.

It makes a lot of sense to automate a process in any company, in the case of the hotel industry, one of these that can be very important is online booking. This is due to the fact that there has been a high loss of customers.

How to automate your online booking processes?

When considering the 3 previous elements of automation, in the case of reservations, it is important to think about the flow of actions that the customer performs with our hotel. Let's focus on these three important aspects:

• The Customer Journey of our customer.
• The areas for improvement within the process, in this particular case, reservations.
• The development of automation in the process chain.
  
  
  

The 3 main elements that every hotel needs to automate and improve customer management.

Automation is not an extremely difficult process, but it requires understanding first, which business rules apply. To understand the sequence of processes, it is required to develop a line of automated actions. These are as follows:

• Implementation of an omnichannel CRM within your digital business architecture: By unifying the different points of contact with customers, this influences their experience, by being able to manage their requests through an omnichannel platform, the traceability of the contact maintained with the hotel, their reservation requests, information provided, among other areas of interest, is not lost.
  
  
  

• Creation of personalised email templates: These are directed as an automatic response to customers, prior to booking and at the time of making a reservation.
  
  
  
• Creation of workflows for the management of reservations: When a reservation is made, usually the customer contacts the executive by phone or email. But if this process loses traceability, this is when using workflows becomes a solution.
  
  
  

Here are two real-life examples of workflow automation for hotels created within the HubSpot platform, examples of check-in reservation and check-out confirmations.

Check-In Reservation:

Check-Out Confirmation:

When creating workflows, your conditions may vary depending on the type of platform. Not all of them have automation, so this is an important aspect to consider.

Within HubSpot, as can be seen in the image above, there is the possibility of generating workflow automation.  For this, the following conditions must be defined: 

• The workflow trigger: The initial triggers are in charge of establishing the initial criteria that will trigger the workflow. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out a process of analysis of the areas to be automated. For this case of reservations, the contact property is entered and confirmation of the customer's check-in and check-out is sought.
  
  
• Establish next step tracking: Apply customised email templates, scheduled time delays, internal notifications to the team and to simplify steps, enrol within an active simultaneous workflow to manage customer check-in and check-out actions.
  
  

If you are interested in learning more about how to automate your hotel's business processes and improve the customer experience, schedule a meeting with our team.

The implementation of a business model based on reservation automation represents a competitive advantage for hotels seeking to improve their efficiency and offer a higher quality service. In the hotel and tourism industry, where the guest experience is a key differentiator, having an automated system reduces waiting times, minimizes errors and provides a more intuitive and secure booking process.


In addition to optimizing operations, automation allows hotels to collect and analyze strategic data about their guests, which facilitates the personalization of the experience and the development of more effective marketing strategies. Integrating tools such as artificial intelligence, chatbots and advanced analytics can make all the difference in customer engagement and loyalty.


As the hospitality and tourism industry evolves, technology adoption will be critical to ensure business growth and sustainability. Hotels that embrace innovative and automated business models will not only optimize their internal processes, but also strengthen their relationship with guests and increase their competitiveness in the market.

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