Inside Arrival Briefs: How Pre-Arrival Notes Improve the Guest Experience

It is 7:42 in the morning. The front office manager is looking at a printout of today's arrivals (forty-three rooms, twelve of them in by 3pm) and trying to decide which ones need to be flipped first. One of the arrivals is a couple celebrating their tenth anniversary. The room is on the third floor, facing the parking lot, with a king bed and no bathtub. None of that is wrong on paper. All of it is wrong for the stay.

The information that would have prevented this exists. Your guests have it. They have shared it before, with online travel agencies, with credit card concierge services, with travel agents you will never meet. They have never shared it with you, because there has never been a clean way to do that.

That is what an Arrival Brief is for.

What an Arrival Brief is

An Arrival Brief is a single-page, structured document that arrives in your hotel's inbox between two and five days before a Roomza guest checks in. It is sent automatically, in plain email, formatted so a front desk agent can read it in under fifteen seconds.

It is not a CRM. It does not require a login. It does not ask your team to learn a new system. It is a per-stay document, written specifically for the room the guest has booked, that captures the things your guests would have wanted you to know.

What is in it

The fields are deliberately small, because the goal is operational clarity. Every Arrival Brief contains:

Guest. Name, party size, contact preference.

Arrival and Departure. Dates, arrival window, departure preferences (late checkout, early breakfast, transfer arrangements).

Room Request. The specific room the guest has asked for, by number when applicable, with a fallback preference if that room is not available.

Standing Preferences. The repeating things. Feather pillows. Extra towels. Quiet floor. Firm mattress. Temperature set to 68. The items your guest would have told you the second time they stayed, except they have never stayed before.

Loyalty. Programs and status levels that overlap with your property (your own program, brand status, Amex FHR, Virtuoso, independent collection partnerships).

Occasion. The reason for the trip, when there is one. Anniversary. Birthday. Honeymoon. Business with a personal extension.

Upgrade Preference. This one matters. The guest tells you, in advance, whether they want a complimentary upgrade if one is available, whether they would rather stay in the specific room they booked, or whether they never want to be moved. This single field eliminates the most common front-desk misstep in the industry, which is moving a guest who chose their room on purpose.

Special Requests. Free text. The things that do not fit anywhere else. "Please do not put a rollaway in the room." "We are bringing a dog." "I propose at 6pm Friday, please time the champagne accordingly."

Roomza Notes. Context from us, on the guest's behalf. Allergy alerts captured during onboarding, accessibility needs, prior stays at sister properties.

What it looks like

A representative Arrival Brief, formatted the way your front desk sees it. Names are made up. Structure is real.

ROOMZA ARRIVAL BRIEF
Sent: May 24, 2026
Property: The Vendue, Charleston SC

GUEST
Margaret and David Chen, party of 2
Contact: margaret.chen@example.com, prefers text

ARRIVAL / DEPARTURE
Arrival: Friday, May 29, expected window 3pm to 5pm
Departure: Monday, June 1, late checkout requested (2pm if available)

ROOM REQUEST
Room 412, harbor-facing king with soaking tub
Fallback: any 4th floor room with soaking tub, harbor or
historic district view preferred

STANDING PREFERENCES
- Feather pillows (4 if available)
- Extra bath towels
- Robe in size M and L
- Room temperature set to 68F at arrival
- Sparkling water in the minibar

LOYALTY
- Amex Platinum (FHR eligible)
- No brand loyalty status at this property

OCCASION
10th wedding anniversary

UPGRADE PREFERENCE
Complimentary only. Guest specifically chose room 412
and prefers to stay in it unless the offered upgrade
includes a soaking tub and harbor view.

SPECIAL REQUESTS
- Champagne and two glasses in the room at 5pm Friday
- Dinner reservation at Husk Saturday 7:30pm (confirmed
  separately, no action required)
- No turndown service Sunday night

ROOMZA NOTES
First stay at the Vendue. Guest stayed at Planters Inn
in 2024 and rated the experience 9/10. No allergy or
accessibility flags.

That is the entire document. Your front desk can read it during the elevator ride from the back office.

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What changes at the desk

The operational shift is smaller than people expect, and larger in effect than people expect.

The room is set up correctly before the guest arrives. Housekeeping has the pillows, the towels, the temperature setting. The front desk has the occasion noted. The bell stand knows to expect champagne service at 5pm. The reservations team has confirmed the late checkout, or noted that it is conditional on the Sunday arrival count.

At check-in, the conversation is different. The agent says, "Welcome back, Mr. and Mrs. Chen. We have you in 412 as requested, and the champagne will be up at five. Happy anniversary." That is the entire exchange. Three sentences. No "do you have any requests?" because the requests have already been honored.

The Arrival Brief is not new information. It is the same information you would have collected at the desk, delivered four days earlier, in a format you can act on.

The guests who experience this almost always remark on it. They use words like "thoughtful" and "personal." They are not wrong, but the more accurate word is "prepared." You had time to prepare. They could tell.

The data philosophy

Your guests already share this information. They share it with Expedia and Booking.com in the special requests field your team may or may not see. They share it with their Amex concierge. They share it with their travel agent. They share it in the review they leave after the stay, when it is too late for any of it to matter.

The reason they do not share it with you directly is that there has never been a structured place to put it. Roomza is that place. The Arrival Brief brings the information back to the property, on a per-stay basis, in the operational window where it can still be used.

This is the inversion that matters. For two decades, hotels have been the source of guest data and the OTAs have been the consumers of it. The Arrival Brief flips that. The data flows toward the property, not away from it, and it arrives in time for you to do something with it.

Honored versus not honored

We measure both, and it is worth being direct about how.

When an Arrival Brief is honored (the room request is fulfilled, the standing preferences are in place, the occasion is acknowledged), the guest's post-stay review tends to reflect it. The numbers are not subtle. Honored briefs correlate with a meaningful lift in both score and the likelihood of a repeat stay.

When a brief is not honored, we see that too. That information does not become a public negative review. It becomes part of how Roomza recommends the property going forward. Properties that consistently honor briefs surface higher in Concierge recommendations. Properties that consistently do not, do not.

This is not a punishment system. It is a signal system. The hotels that treat the brief as useful operational information tend to be the hotels guests want to return to.

What this is not

It is worth ending on what the Arrival Brief is not, because the category is genuinely new.

It is not a CRM. There is no profile to maintain on your side. No enrichment workflow.

It is not a guest messaging platform. It does not replace your pre-arrival email or your in-stay communication tools. It sits before all of them.

It is not a marketing channel. We do not insert offers into it. It is operational information, sent to be acted on.

The simplest way to think about an Arrival Brief is as a note from your most prepared guest, delivered four days early. The one who walked up to the desk with the right room number, the right context, and the right ask, before you had to ask them anything at all.

That is the moment the Arrival Brief is for.