You Got the Bookings. Now Comes the Part Nobody Budgeted For.
Demand isn't the problem. Coordination is. And operators like you pay the difference.
3-minute read. One audit. One pattern you’ll recognize immediately.
You got the bookings. That should be the hard part.
Instead, you’re spending 20 minutes per guest explaining why the dive shop isn’t running, which trails are actually open, and whether the restaurant down the road takes reservations this time of year.
You’re busy. Just not with the work you budgeted for.
That’s not hospitality. It’s unpaid coordination work for someone else’s broken promises.
The more demand you generate, the more broken systems you inherit.
I’m sure you’ve lived some version of this. It’s Friday, 7pm. The guest just arrived, they’re starving, and they’re positive the bistro down the road is open because the AI said so. It closed for the season on Tuesday.
Now you’re apologizing for information you never gave, scrolling for alternatives on your phone, and watching the stay start with disappointment instead of arrival.
They haven’t unpacked yet, and they’re already wondering if they made the right call.
Every correction puts that little question in the guest’s head: who do I believe? And somehow you’re the one paying for it. With your time, your team’s energy, and trust that took a long time to earn.
Where the Time Goes
Every season has its version of this problem.
In high season, it’s the restaurant that stopped taking walk-ins three weeks ago. But Google still says “No reservation needed.” In shoulder season, it’s the trail that closed early. In low season, it’s the guest who drove 40 minutes to find a locked door.
The details change. The pattern doesn’t.
Guests arrive with a story they were told somewhere else. When that story’s wrong, trust takes the hit before you’ve even said hello.
Why This Is Getting Harder
Guests are planning trips with AI now. Those tools pull from the same outdated tourism board pages and old travel blogs you’re already answering questions about.
When the AI gets it wrong, guests don’t arrive curious. They arrive certain they’re right.
Here’s what’s actually happening: destinations market aggressively, platforms aggregate carelessly, and AI summarizes it all with confidence.
This is the part nobody talks about.
The places guests get their expectations from keep multiplying, and nobody can keep up. Stack that onto every arrival and a “great season” starts to feel exhausting fast.
The Audit: What Guests Thought Was True
This week, try this. Pull up your last five arrivals and ask yourself:
What story did they arrive with?
Where did that story come from?
How long did it take you to undo it?
You’re not looking for blame. You’re listening for patterns, because that’s where you see what keeps breaking trust before guests even walk in.
This isn’t about fixing everything. It’s about taking care of what actually lands at your door.
Prompt to try
Paste your last 10 guest messages into your AI tool and ask:
“Review the guest messages and identify any that show a mismatch between what the guest expected and what was actually true.
For each relevant message:
– Describe the expectation the guest arrived with (in plain language)
– Note what was actually true
– Identify the most likely source of that expectation (e.g. destination website, Google listing, blog, OTA description, AI trip planner, assumption)Then:
– Group similar expectation gaps together
– Identify the top 1–2 sources that appear most often
– Flag which expectation gaps required the most explanation or staff timeIgnore minor complaints. Focus only on expectations that required clarification, correction, or reassurance.”
What to Watch for This Week
When a guest mentions something that turns out not to be true, I’ll take two minutes to note what they expected and where that came from.
If you want to go a step further, update one line in your pre-arrival message about what’s different right now. Not a disclaimer, just useful information.
That’s not operations. That’s care made visible.
This Is Really About Trust
Hospitality starts long before arrival.
The moment a guest starts imagining their stay, reading a blog post, scanning a destination site, asking an AI what to expect, trust is already forming.
When that information’s wrong, you don’t just inherit a logistics problem. You inherit a crack in the relationship before you’ve even had a chance to earn it back.
The operators who do this well aren’t working longer hours. They’re choosing not to let broken systems eat away at what they’ve built.
Clarity helps your guests. It helps your staff. It protects your margins. And more than anything, it protects the belief that makes people come back.
I believe the best operators don’t just fill rooms. They protect the experience before a guest ever walks through the door.
This newsletter is for operators who don’t want to spend their time correcting bad information from the internet.
Run the 10-minute audit before your next check-in.
Hospitality wasn’t supposed to include fact-checking the internet.
Kay
Fantastic framing of the coordination tax nobody budgets for. The assymetry is brutal - platforms generate demand without maintaining accuracy, and operators absorb the friction. I run into this constantly where AI tools confidently cite outdated info, and fixing it eats time that should go into actual hospitalty. The audit prompt is gold because it surfaces the patter that's otherwise invisible until burnout sets in.
Technology is still lagging in hospitality; and this creates a real disconnect. On my recent trip (where this DID occur) I wondered - how is the team empowered to handle these disconnects? To me - service recovery is still a huge part of the equation.