Free hotel launch guide
Before the first guest clicks Book.
Eight practical checks for a hotel’s direct-booking launch. Work through them with your team and provider—before moving real reservations, and after changes to important connections.
Free CSV download. No email required. Never put guest records or passwords in a public enquiry form.
Collect the hotel facts once.
Download the versioned worksheet before setup. It gives the hotel and its launch owner one place to confirm room identity, rates, policies, media rights, inventory authority, guest contact and recovery ownership. Duplicate the room-type and exact-room rows for every sellable unit; keep internal fields out of public copy.
- Booking and exact-room identifiers
- Public facts and internal ownership separated
- Recovery dates and source owners included
Decide who controls availability
Name the system that decides which rooms can be sold: your property-management system (PMS), channel manager or booking database. Every direct and third-party booking must update that source before another guest can buy the same room.
- Match room names and IDs across systems
- Check the hotel timezone and sellable dates
- Test each channel connection separately
Try to book the last room twice
Use a test room and ask two testers to book the same dates at the same time. Only one should succeed. Then test overlapping stays and repeat a request after a network interruption. The same room must remain available for every night of a confirmed stay.
- Overlapping stays cannot claim the same room
- Retries create one reservation, not two
- Rooms closed for maintenance stay unavailable
Make the final price final
Show currency, taxes, inclusions, supplements and cancellation terms before payment. The stored reservation keeps the rate version used at checkout.
- Total matches confirmation
- Rate changes are traceable
- No automatic add-ons
Keep card data with the provider
Use hosted payment fields and let the hotel receive the funds through its approved provider account. Store references and status — never raw card numbers.
- Provider fee shown separately
- Failed and abandoned payments tested
- Refund responsibility agreed
Give the stay one identity
The guest, hotel team, payment record and support workflow must use the same stable reservation reference from confirmation through cancellation.
- Reference is unique and readable
- Confirmation can be retrieved
- Guest and hotel views agree
Change and cancel a test booking
Try date changes, cancellation windows and refunds before the first real guest books. Repeat the same cancellation request and interrupt the connection. The booking and availability must still agree afterwards.
- Repeated cancellation does not repeat the refund
- The room becomes available only once
- The hotel can see what happened
Test delivery and recovery
Confirm that hotel and guest messages are delivered, failures are visible and bookings remain recoverable if email, a provider or the application is temporarily unavailable.
- Delivery status is recorded
- Independent backup restores
- Incident owner is named
Measure the website journey
Test the path from the hotel’s Book button to confirmed reservation on real mobile and desktop connections. Measure starts, errors and confirmations without advertising profiles.
- Dates are the first action
- Core pages stay fast
- Drop-off has a clear owner
Questions before go-live.
Can an independent hotel launch without a channel manager?
Only when the hotel has one controlled source of sellable inventory and a safe operating process. Hotels selling the same rooms through several channels normally need a verified PMS or channel connection before direct booking goes live.
Should the booking page be cached?
The presentation shell can be cached, but live availability, holds, price checks and reservation writes must use current data and fail safely.
What is the most dangerous launch mistake?
Allowing more than one system to sell the last room without an atomic reservation or verified synchronisation path.
Does a successful payment mean the booking is complete?
Not by itself. Payment and reservation status must reconcile so the guest is never charged without a recoverable booking, and the hotel never confirms an unpaid stay unintentionally.
Your next useful step
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