Before arrival

The building works you know about and the guest finds out at seven

A hotel knows the pool is closed for repairs, that a wedding has the ballroom on Saturday, that scaffolding covers the sea-facing rooms, or that the road outside is being resurfaced from six in the morning. Each of those is known weeks ahead and discovered by the guest on arrival, and that discovery - not the disturbance - is what produces the review.

The damage is in the discovery, not the disturbance

Guests tolerate a closed pool. They do not tolerate having booked a hotel for its pool and finding out at check-in. The same fact disclosed a week earlier produces a guest who either chose it anyway or moved - and both of those outcomes are better for the hotel than the one where they arrive and feel deceived. This is the whole argument, and it is worth stating internally because disclosure always feels like it costs bookings.

Decide what counts as known, before someone decides case by case

Scheduled works, a known closure, a large event with amplified music, a lift out of service, a restaurant shut on the guest's only night. Write the list once and the question stops being a judgement made by whoever is on duty. The alternative is inconsistency, which is worse than either policy, because some guests are told and some are not and both compare notes online.

Say it precisely, and say what you are doing about it

"Some noise may occur" is the wording that loses trust twice - once for vagueness and once when the reality is worse. Give the hours, the location, the end date if there is one, and what the hotel is offering: a room on the other side, a rate adjustment, free cancellation, earplugs and an apology. A specific disclosure with a remedy reads as competence.

An assistant can disclose what it is told, and nothing else

This is the clearest case for a maintained list rather than a clever model. If the hotel keeps one short record of current disturbances with dates, the assistant tells every guest who asks, in their own language, at any hour. If it does not, the assistant will cheerfully describe the pool. The limitation is not the software; it is whether anybody writes the list.

Frequently asked questions

Will disclosing works cost us bookings?
Some, and fewer than the alternative costs. A guest who cancels after a disclosure has not been lost in the way a guest who arrives, complains, demands a refund and writes a review has been. The second case costs the rate, the goodwill and the forward bookings of whoever reads it.
Can the assistant proactively mention a disturbance?
It should, when the dates overlap the stay and the hotel has recorded it. That is a better use of an assistant than answering questions: it tells the guest something they did not know to ask, at a point where they can still act on it.
What if we do not know how long the works will last?
Say that, with the information you have and the date you last checked. "Scaffolding on the north side, expected until the end of the month, confirmed on the fourth" is credible. An open-ended apology is not, and a confident end date you then miss is worse than both.
Should this go in the booking confirmation?
Yes, and it is the single highest-value place for it, because the guest reads that email and does not read your news page. If the disturbance begins after a booking is made, a short message before arrival is the same conversation held in time.
How do we stop the assistant describing a closed facility?
By giving it a list it can read, and by testing it against that list before trusting it. Ask it about the pool while the pool is closed. If it describes the pool, the list is not reaching it, and no amount of instruction about honesty will fix a missing input.

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