Walk-in guests: selling a room to someone at your door

Set tonight's walk-in price before the evening, not at the desk. The guest in front of you can look your hotel up on a booking site or on Google in a minute, so a price above the lowest one online loses them, and a price bargained down by tired staff loses you money.

• Start from your own price for tonight, the one on your website.
• Check what the booking sites show for tonight. If one sells your room for less, the guest will find it: match it, and you still keep what the site would have taken in commission.
• Set a lowest price for late arrivals, below which staff don't go, and change it night by night with how full you are.
• Your rack rate, the full published price, is the most you should quote, and on a quiet night it will rarely be what you sell at.
• Price the extras plainly: breakfast, an extra bed, an early or a late check-out.

1. 1Ask every adult for a valid photo ID, as you would any guest, and record it the way your local police and your own policies require.
2. 2Apply the same house rules you set on the booking sites: the IDs you accept, whether you accept IDs from your own city, and your rules for couples.
3. 3Take payment for the room before handing over the key, and a deposit if you allow extras on the bill.
4. 4Enter the guest in your register or property management system at once.
5. 5For a foreign guest, if you aren't sure what you must report and by when, ask your local police station or Foreigners Regional Registration Office.

MakeMyTrip suggests hotels say in their policies that a valid photo identification is mandatory at check-in, and shows a hotel as couple-friendly only when it allows unmarried couples and accepts IDs from the same city. Decide these rules once, for every guest: a walk-in should meet the same ones as a guest who booked.

A walk-in buys a room that may still be on sale on every site you use. If it isn't closed at once, the same room can be booked online while the walk-in guest unpacks, and the guest who booked online becomes an overbooking.

• With a channel manager: enter the walk-in in it, or in the property management system it reads, before handing over the key, so the room count falls on every site together.
• Without one: lower tonight's room count on each site's extranet yourself. On MakeMyTrip and Goibibo, it is in the “Rates & Inventory” tab of the InGo-MMT extranet.
• Calendar links between sites aren't instant: Booking.com says its calendar sync can take up to two hours to refresh. On a nearly full night, close the room by hand as well.
• Keep one list at the desk of the rooms that can be sold tonight, updated with every booking from every site.

• Be easy to find on Google Maps tonight: your phone number, your hours, recent photos and tonight's price on your Google listing.
• Make sure guests can book for tonight on your own website and on the sites. On Booking.com, a minimum advance reservation stops bookings too close to arrival: check you haven't set one by mistake.
• Booking.com's credit card exceptions can let last-minute bookers, booking for the same or the next day, book without a card. Booking.com says those bookings then become free to cancel at any time, and that bookings without a card carry a higher risk.
• MakeMyTrip and Goibibo's Last Minute Promotion is aimed at guests booking up to two days before check-in.
• If guests arrive in the day wanting a few hours' rest, think about selling day use rooms, such as MakeMyTrip's Hourly Stays.
• Ask every walk-in how they found you, and write it down.

• A guest you know nothing about: insist on ID and payment first, and back your staff when they say no because something feels wrong.
• Cash at night: record every walk-in sale in the system with its price, so the takings and the rooms sold match in the morning.
• Discounts given at the desk: a lowest price set in advance, and written down, means no one has to bargain.
• A booked guest who hasn't arrived yet: before selling your last room to a walk-in, check for bookings still to arrive, and their arrival times.

• Record walk-ins as their own source in your bookings, so you can see what share of your rooms come this way, and on which nights.
• Count a walk-in in your occupancy and room nights like any other night sold. Count rooms sold for a few hours in the day apart.
• Compare the price walk-ins pay with what the same night sold for on the booking sites, after commission.
• Watch the trend. Fewer walk-ins on a busy road can mean guests are booking on their phones before they arrive, which makes being found there matter more.