Setting up Yesoma for a hotel or guesthouse

Yesoma helps hotels, guesthouses, and boutique B&Bs manage the direct-relationship inquiries that booking engines and OTAs don't handle well — direct booking conversations, group blocks, event venue rental, pre-arrival concierge, and service recovery. It is not a PMS (property management system) and does not replace your booking engine; your room inventory, reservations calendar, and payment processing stay in those tools. Yesoma is where the relationship lives: the DM that leads to a direct booking, the complaint that needs a manager's voice, the pre-arrival email that turns a first-time guest into a loyal repeat.

1. Applying the hotel playbook — and what it covers

When you select Hotel / guesthouse / B&B during onboarding, Yesoma creates eight pre-configured inquiry types in your workspace:

• Direct booking inquiry — a guest reaching out for availability and a rate, often preferring a real conversation over a third-party site
• Group block reservation — 10+ rooms for weddings, corporate retreats, or family reunions; custom-quoted with a Group Booking Agreement
• Event venue rental — conference room, lawn, rooftop, or private dining for non-overnight events
• Special-occasion package — honeymoon, anniversary, or birthday upgrades and in-room amenities added to any stay
• Corporate / extended-stay inquiry (LRA) — long-term arrangements for relocating employees, consultants, or interns; 14+ nights at a negotiated rate
• Pre-arrival concierge — complimentary service sent 3–5 days before check-in to arrange transfers, dining, and activities
• Gift card / experience gifting — physical or digital gift cards in custom denominations
• Complaint / service recovery — in-stay and post-stay issues handled directly by a named manager

What stays in your existing systems: room availability, pricing calendars, OTA channel management, payment processing, housekeeping schedules, and guest folios. Yesoma handles the conversation layer on top.

2. Direct booking conversion — beating OTAs on relationship

OTAs give guests distribution and convenience. Direct booking gives you margin, flexibility, and a real conversation. Yesoma's direct booking templates are built around that pitch.

When a guest messages asking about availability, your first reply template asks five things: check-in and check-out dates, number of guests, room preference, any special occasion, and accessibility needs. This is intentional — you need all five to give a meaningful reply, and asking them together signals that you're responsive and attentive, which is exactly why someone chose to message you directly instead of clicking through a booking engine.

The template language explicitly acknowledges the choice: "we always match or beat against the OTAs." Whether or not you offer a discount, the gesture of recognizing that the guest reached out directly earns goodwill and sets the tone.

After a direct inquiry, Yesoma tracks the case. If you've sent a rate and haven't heard back in three days, a follow-up reminder appears in your inbox so you don't let a warm lead go cold.

Tips for getting more from the direct booking flow:

• Add your property's unique selling points to the Business Brain description — Yesoma's AI reply drafts will reference them when composing suggested responses
• Include a "book direct for best rate" message in your signature or auto-acknowledgment
• If you offer early check-in or late check-out as a direct-booking perk, note it in your services so the reply template can mention it

3. Group block and event venue workflow

Group bookings and event venue rentals are the two inquiry types that most properties mishandle — either by being too slow to respond or by giving a generic quote that doesn't feel tailored.

For group blocks, the first-reply template collects: event type, arrival and departure dates, room count, any comp room expectations, and billing preference (master folio vs. individual cards). With those five inputs, you have everything needed to send a real Group Rate Proposal rather than a "we'll get back to you." Yesoma's three-day follow-up cadence after the quote is sent is intentionally shorter than for standard inquiries because group blocks are competitive — the couple booking hotel rooms for their wedding is almost certainly talking to two or three properties at once.

Deposit and cancellation terms for group blocks are pre-loaded as a policy: full refund 30+ days out, 50% refund 14–29 days, deposit forfeited inside 14 days. This is the standard convention and it's visible in the inquiry thread from the first reply. If your actual terms differ, update the policy text in Settings → Policies before your first group inquiry.

For event venue inquiries, the first-reply template collects: event date, headcount, event type and setup style, AV or catering needs, and whether any guests are staying overnight. The "overnight guests alongside the event" question is there for a practical reason — a corporate off-site that fills five rooms has a very different total yield from a cocktail party where no one stays.

4. Pre-arrival concierge as a loyalty engine

The pre-arrival concierge template is one of the highest-return touches in the playbook. A message sent 3–5 days before check-in — asking about airport transfers, dietary preferences, restaurant interests, and accessibility needs — does several things at once:

• It reassures the guest that a real person knows they're coming
• It surfaces needs you can actually address before arrival (a ground-floor room, a high chair, a dietary note to the kitchen)
• It positions the property as locally knowledgeable, not just a place to sleep
• It dramatically increases the likelihood that a first-time guest becomes a repeat

The template in Yesoma is written as a warm prompt, not a form. It opens by expressing that you're looking forward to their arrival, then lists the areas where you can help — transfers, restaurant recommendations, activities, dietary notes — without being transactional. The framing matters: "we have a few local favorites we genuinely love and can book on your behalf" reads differently from "do you need restaurant reservations (y/n)."

To use it effectively, Yesoma's follow-up cadence fires the pre-arrival concierge template 3–5 days before the check-in date recorded on the inquiry. Make sure check-in dates are captured accurately when you create or import the inquiry. The template is tagged booking category, so it will show up in your Sent queue alongside other booking confirmations.

Guest responses to the pre-arrival template go straight back into the same inquiry thread — no context switching, no separate emails to lose. The response is there when your front desk or concierge team opens the case on the morning of arrival.

5. Service recovery — the 6-hour standard

Hotels live and die on public reviews, and the review a guest leaves after a bad experience is almost always a response to how the complaint was handled, not the original problem. A guest whose issue was acknowledged quickly and resolved thoughtfully will often leave a positive review despite the problem. A guest who was ignored, dismissed, or given a form-letter response will describe exactly what happened.

Yesoma's service recovery template is built around three rules:

1. Empathy first. The template opens with a genuine apology and acknowledgment — "what you've described is not the experience we want for our guests." It never explains, justifies, or deflects.
2. Ownership explicit. The template names the person responding — "I'm looking into this personally" or "I'm escalating this to our manager on duty." Anonymous responses feel like PR; named responses feel like people.
3. Timeline committed. The template closes with a specific next step: "I'll be back to you within [timeframe]." An apology without a follow-up plan is incomplete.

The 6-hour response standard is the playbook default — not because it's legally required, but because a complaint that sits overnight escalates to a public review overnight. In-stay complaints especially: if a guest messages at 9 PM about a noisy neighbor, a response at 7 AM is too late. Set your notification settings in Yesoma so complaints tagged service_recovery reach the duty manager in real time.

After the resolution, the case stays open in Yesoma's inbox until you close it. Do not close a complaint case the moment you reply — check back 24–48 hours later to confirm the guest is satisfied. Premature closure leaves the impression that you replied and forgot.

6. What your reply templates look like in action

All eight templates use the same placeholder conventions: {{customer_first_name}} for the guest's name (auto-filled from the inquiry), [bracket] placeholders for things you fill in at send time ([checkin_date], [checkout_date], [room_type], [price]), and {{review_link}} for the review request link configured in Settings → Review Requests.

A typical inquiry thread looks like this:

1. Guest messages asking about availability for a long weekend in October
2. Yesoma tags the inquiry as direct_booking_inquiry and queues the first-reply template
3. You open the draft, fill in [checkin_date] and [checkout_date], and send — 90 seconds of work
4. Guest replies with their preferences and guest count
5. You reply with availability and your direct rate
6. Guest confirms; you note the check-in date on the inquiry
7. Pre-arrival concierge template fires automatically 3–5 days before arrival
8. Guest checks out; 3 days later, the post-stay review request fires

Every step lives in one thread. If a team member needs to pick up the case mid-stream, the full conversation history is there.

Common questions

Does Yesoma connect to my PMS or booking engine? Not directly. Yesoma is a customer communication and relationship layer, separate from your reservation management system. You can reference the PMS details in your replies, but the systems don't sync. If you want to track a booking reference number, add it as a note on the inquiry.

What if a guest books through Booking.com and then messages us on WhatsApp? Treat it as a new inquiry and connect it manually to the guest record in Yesoma. The inquiry can be tagged with the booking source so your team knows the context.

Can I customize the cancellation policy wording before it goes out? Yes — go to Settings → Policies and edit the policy content before your first inquiry. The policy is referenced by templates but not auto-appended; you include it by filling in the relevant placeholder in your reply.

Who should handle service recovery replies? Ideally a named manager, not a generic "The Team" signature. The template is written for a person to own. In practice: assign service-recovery tagged inquiries to a specific team member so it never sits unread.