Pre-arrival Email Tips for Independent Hotels • WebRezPro

For a soon-to-be guest, the pre-arrival stage is filled with anticipation and a desire to make sure their upcoming stay meets their expectations, so booking confirmation, pre-stay, and check-in emails typically have high open rates.

Pre-arrival emails offer great potential for building a relationship with the guest and driving incremental revenue before they even set foot through the door.

Use these tips to make the most of this crucial part of the guest journey to generate more revenue and loyalty!

The very first step is to ensure that your online booking form includes a mandatory field for your guest’s email. None of these other tips work without this crucial piece of data! You will also need the guest’s mobile number to send them their digital keys if you offer self check-in (see below).

Reservation confirmation emails are necessary for a number of reasons, the first of which is to reassure the guest that the reservation was successful. Don’t make them reach out to you to confirm their booking! 

Reservation confirmations should be sent to guests immediately after their booking is made. This is easy with a property management system that can be set to automatically email the guest as soon as the booking is created. Ensure that your branding on this email matches your website and other channels to demonstrate professionalism and build trust.

Confirmation emails are also a great opportunity to:

• Thank the guest for choosing your property. This shows that you value and appreciate their business.
• Find out more about the guest. Finding out more about guest preferences enables you to personalize their stay. While you don’t want to bombard them with questions, simply inviting them to contact your property with any enquiries or requests is often all the encouragement a future guest needs. If your property makes use of pre-stay surveys or a mobile concierge, enable guests to start personalizing their stay by linking to these platforms directly from the confirmation email.
• Upsell. As of 2023, upsell revenue from North American confirmation emails rose 26.7 percent to $73 per booking, so it’s worth your while to include upsell opportunities here as well as in your pre-arrival emails (see below). 

The stage between booking and arrival is one of the best times to reach out to guests, catching them when they are excited about their trip and receptive to opportunities for enriching it.

Pre-arrival emails are typically most effective a week or two before a leisure guest’s arrival, while corporate guests appreciate pre-arrival information and options closer to their check-in date. Determine the right timing for your property and guests.

• Remind guests about their upcoming stay (not that they’re likely to have forgotten!) by letting them know that you look forward to welcoming them to your property. You can include helpful details, such as dates, check-in time, room type, and directions. 
• Upsell. Including relevant upsell options in your pre-arrival email enhances the guest’s stay and boosts incremental revenue. Revenue from pre-arrival emails rose 23.6 percent as of 2023.
  In addition to room upgrades, you can upsell amenities like spa services, in-room extras, and restaurant reservations. The more targeted the offer, the better. Include a strong call to action and links to where the guest can add those options to their booking. Make it as easy as possible for them to enhance their stay.
  Consider discounts for products and services booked before arrival. After all, if they order now, it means you can plan ahead, and those services become simpler to deliver. Time-limited discounts create urgency and increase the likelihood of conversion. 
• Be helpful. Inform guests about onsite amenities as well as local events and attractions. Again, the more targeted, the better. Creating guest segments in your property management and customer relationship management systems is helpful here. Families traveling with kids need to know about your pool and playground, not your meeting rooms.
  Link to relevant information on your website and digital guide and again invite your guests to get in touch with any questions or special requests.

Whether guests check in digitally or at the front desk, give them a heads up where to go and what to do. Self check-in is increasingly popular; 40 percent of guests would like to use a hotel’s kiosk, website, or app to check in. 

However, for self check-in to work, you need to let guests know about it and provide instructions, which is where your check-in email comes in. WebRezPro comes with email templates for online registration and check-in approval that can be customized and automated so that they’re always sent at the right time, either the day before check-in or the morning of. 

• Collect the information you need. At minimum, you should have a photo identification from your guest to protect against fraud. However, it may also make sense to require a credit card and signed policy agreement. (If the guest insists that they are a very special snowflake that rules don’t apply to, you can show them that signed agreement.) 
• Provide step-by-step instructions. These instructions should include where to park, Covid protocols, and any key code/digital key download information. Assume that your guest is not a techy and make the instructions as simple as possible. You don’t want someone standing outside their room, swearing a blue streak because they pressed the wrong button again. 

In general, the email open rate for smartphones and tablets is 42 percent, compared to 18.2 percent for desktop. Therefore, it’s imperative that your emails appear properly formatted on mobile devices, or you’ll make a poor first impression on a significant portion of the market. 

WebRezPro’s email templates are responsive, meaning they adapt automatically to the screen they are viewed on, covering both mobile and desktop users. 

WebRezPro also connects to specialist email marketing solutions, such as Cendyn, ConstantContact, and Mailchimp, that provide customizable, mobile-friendly email designs and take communications to the next level. 

Automate your email campaigns to save time and ensure that no guest is missed. A property management system like WebRezPro allows you to configure emails to send automatically, triggered by arrival date and other parameters like room and rate codes. This enables you to target relevant communications and offers to the right guests. 

If you work with an email marketing solution (see above), integration between that platform and your PMS makes professionally designed email campaigns that are automatically timed, targeted, and tracked even more effortless. 

The main purpose of a pre-arrival email campaign is to build a relationship with the guest, which is bound to be more successful if it’s personalized. The first step is using their name. WebRezPro’s email templates allow you to insert keywords into template text that are replaced with information from the guest’s reservation, for example, the guest name, stay dates, room type, and so on. Be sure to also make it clear who the email is from, preferably signing off as an actual person—and use a relevant, official reply-to email address.

Targeting email content and offers to guest segments by setting parameters or conditions based on reservation data (as mentioned above) takes personalization to the next level. Remember that personalization isn’t a fad; it’s here to stay. Seventy-one percent of customers expect personalized communication with businesses.

Include buttons that link back to your social pages on all email communications with guests. This gives them an easy way to connect with your property on social channels, opening up more opportunities for you to build a loyal relationship.

Take full advantage of your pre-arrival email campaign to get a head start on engaging guests. And don’t forget: guest responses to pre-arrival emails—from questions about your property to upgrade requests—should be recorded in their profiles and used to personalize the guest experience and future offers.

Editor’s note: This post was last updated in January 2025.