One person is running the whole property at 3am
An independent hotel overnight is a single night auditor doing reception, security, the books and the phone. Every call they take is a call they are not at the desk for, and every call they miss at that hour is either a direct booking that went to an OTA or a guest who has been on hold from their room.
From $99 a month · Robocalls are never billed
Incoming callEleni Papadaki“Do you have anything for tonight and tomorrow? Two people.”
Booked: 2 nights direct, late arrival flagged, accessible room
- 0%
- commission on a direct booking taken at 3am, against 15–20% through an OTA
- One person
- is running reception, security, the audit and the phone overnight
- Never on hold
- A guest ringing from a room is not queued behind a booking enquiry
This is what your callers hear
The same receptionist a hotel gets, answering as the trades we already run. Yours is in the middle — press play.
One hotels call, and what it left behind
Answered on the second ring. Every field below was captured during the call — nobody typed it in afterwards.
“Do you have anything for tonight and tomorrow? Two people.”
Classified: direct booking · 2 nights · late arrival0:15
Captured: accessible room · arrival after 01:00 · 2 guests0:39
Booked: direct · accessible king · night desk notified0:57
Booked: 2 nights direct, late arrival flagged, accessible room
Read the whole hotels call, line by line
- 0:02Eleni Papadaki: Do you have anything for tonight and tomorrow? Two people.
- 0:06Vandial: We do. Can I ask roughly what time you'd be arriving?
- 0:12Eleni Papadaki: Late. Probably after one in the morning, our flight's delayed.
- 0:15Classified: direct booking · 2 nights · late arrival
- 0:20Vandial: That's fine, the desk is staffed all night. Our king rooms are $189 plus tax. Do you need step-free access?
- 0:36Eleni Papadaki: Yes, my mother uses a walker.
- 0:39Captured: accessible room · arrival after 01:00 · 2 guests
- 0:47Vandial: I've held an accessible king for two nights and flagged the late arrival so the desk expects you.
- 0:57Booked: direct · accessible king · night desk notified
Answered, understood, booked
One number, picked up on the second ring — at 2am, on a Sunday, while you're already working. By the time the caller hangs up, it is in your calendar.
It answers
The call is answered overnight without pulling the night auditor away from the desk, by something that already knows your rates, your parking and your pet policy.
- 0:00Incoming call
- 0:02Answered by Vandial2 rings
- 0:05“Hello, Marlow Plumbing.”
It understands
It separates a direct booking from a guest request from a safety call, takes the booking with the late arrival and access needs flagged, and escalates anything that needs a person.
- Job
- Water heater — leaking
- Where
- 14 Marlow Street
- Access
- Side gate, dog in yard
- Urgency
- Today if possible
- Still on
It books
The booking is written into your system and the night desk is notified, so the guest arriving at 1am is expected rather than explaining themselves at a locked door.
Text to Dave · 13:01
You’re booked for today, 1–2pm. Reply R to move it.
It asks what you would ask
These are the questions the agent runs for hotels, and the operational reason each one exists. Change them, add your own, or take them out — they are configuration, not code.
How many nights, and how many guests?
Rate and availability both depend on it, and a two-adult booking and a family of five are different rooms at different prices.
Roughly what time will you arrive?
A late arrival that nobody flagged is the commonest overnight failure at an independent property: a held room released, or a guest at a locked door.
Do you need step-free access, or any other accommodation?
Asked at booking rather than discovered at check-in, when the accessible room has already gone to somebody who did not need it.
Is this a direct booking, or are you calling about an existing one?
The first branch. A new booking is revenue with no commission on it; an existing reservation made through an OTA has different modification rules and a different record.
Are you calling from a room in the hotel?
It separates a guest request, whether towels, the air conditioning or a noise complaint, from an enquiry, and routes it to the night desk rather than to the booking flow.
Parking, pets, or an early breakfast?
The three things people ring to check before booking, and the three most likely to be answered wrongly by somebody guessing.
More than a hotel answering service
An answering service takes a message and charges you for it. Vandial knows your prices, your patch and your diary — so it books the job, or puts a real emergency straight through to you.
It picks up out of hours, and while your line is busy
Direct bookings taken overnight carry no OTA commission, which makes them the highest-margin reservations in the building, and they arrive in the exact window your desk is least able to take them.
It knows your prices, your patch and your hours
Guest requests from inside the hotel stop competing with booking enquiries for the same person's attention. Towels, air conditioning and a noise complaint are handled or routed without a guest listening to a phone ring in an empty lobby.
What it knows
King room
$189 + tax
Check-in
3pm, desk staffed 24h
Pets
$40 per stay
Parking
Free, on site
What matters reaches you. The rest waits
Late arrivals and accessibility needs are captured at booking and flagged to the desk, which removes the two commonest overnight failures at an independent property.
Your rule: if they say gas, flood or no heat — ring Sam, then me.
Every call written up, tagged and searchable
Weather events and flight disruptions are answered at the speed they arrive. A storm that strands travellers fills the hotels whose phones get picked up, and empties the ones whose do not.
Dave Whitfield · Sunday, 4m 12s
Water heater, leaking
Leaking from the base. Booked for Tuesday 1–2pm. Side gate open, dog in the yard. Asked whether the service call fee applies — told $99, waived on repair.
Midnight to six, and every weather event
The overnight window is when one person is doing five jobs and when the calls are most valuable: a delayed flight producing a same-night booking, a guest locked out, a group whose coach broke down. Layered on top is weather. A storm that closes an airport fills an airport hotel in ninety minutes of phone calls, and the properties that answer are the ones that fill.
When it happens · Midnight–6am, and any weather event that strands travellers
A normal month, then a surge month
- Billed per minute
- Your baselineTriples with the calls
- The bill peaks in the same week your phone does.
- Billed per call, like a human service
- Per call, every callEvery extra call, billed
- Including the robocalls and the wrong numbers.
- Vandial
- From $99 a monthThe same
- Call flows are unlimited on every paid rung, and there is no per-minute billing. The rungs differ only in how many unique customers you answer for — and a surge is mostly more calls from the same people.
Robocalls and sales calls are identified and zero-rated on every plan. They never count toward your included customers and never create a customer record.
What it will never do
You are handing your phone to something that talks to your customers when you are not there. These are the lines it does not cross in hotels, and the words it uses instead.
It won't invent a rate or an availability
Rates and inventory come from what you have configured. Where a rate is not set it says the desk will confirm, and it does not improvise a number that a guest will hold you to at check-in.
What it actually says
“I don't want to quote you the wrong rate for that one. Let me have the desk confirm it and call you straight back.”
A safety or security call goes to a human immediately
A guest reporting a smell of smoke, an intruder, a medical problem or a fire alarm is not a request to be logged. It escalates to the night auditor and to your protocol at once, and where the answer is 911 it says so.
What it actually says
“I'm getting the front desk to you right now. If anyone's in danger please call 911 first.”
It won't confirm who is staying
Not to a caller who says they are a relative, an employer or a police officer. Whether a named person is a guest is not something an answering service establishes at 3am, and a wrong disclosure there is the kind that ends up in a newspaper.
What it actually says
“I'm not able to confirm anything about our guests. If you'd like, I can put a message through to the front desk.”
The job lands where you already work
Google, Outlook, Apple, Exchange, CalDAV — whichever calendar you already keep. Then your payments, your CRM, and whatever you automate with.
…and a lot more besides
- Warm transfersWarm transfersAnnounced — who is calling and why, before you take the line.
- Spam never billedSpam never billedRobocalls are spotted, zero-rated, and never become a customer.
- A number per sourceA number per sourceVan, yard sign, Google listing — see which line brings the work.
- Team & on-callTeam & on-callTries you, then a second number, then whoever is on call.
- Run it by textRun it by textReply to a text to move a job, block a morning, clear a day.
- Clear a day, everyone toldClear a day, everyone toldCall off a wet Tuesday; every customer is told and re-offered.
- Never invents an answerNever invents an answerNo price or slot it was not given. It takes a message instead.
- Any trade, no codeAny trade, no codeGoal, questions and guardrails are settings, not a rebuild.
What hotels say before they say yes
Three objections, in the words they are usually put in. Where the objection is right, it says so.
“Our night auditor answers the phone.”
While also running reception, security and the audit. The question is not whether they answer. It is what happens to the second call, the call that comes while they are walking a floor, and the call at the moment somebody is checking in. Each of those is either a direct booking or a guest already in the building.
“Guests can just book online.”
The ones who ring at 1am usually cannot: a delayed flight, a cancelled booking elsewhere, an older traveller, a group. Those calls are also the highest-margin bookings you take, because nobody takes a commission on them.
“Hospitality is about the human touch.”
It is, and it happens at the desk with the person standing in front of you, which is precisely what the phone has been pulling your night auditor away from. Where a call needs a human, this escalates to one rather than trying to be one.
Hotels questions, answered
What hotels ask before handing over their phone number — and what a hotel answering service can and cannot do for you.
Can it take a booking and a payment?
It takes the booking and captures what your policy requires to hold a room. Where a card is needed it follows the flow you have configured rather than improvising one, and it will not quote a rate you have not set.
What about guests calling from their rooms?
It identifies them as in-house and routes accordingly, logging a request for the desk, or escalating immediately where it is a safety, security or medical matter.
Does it work alongside our PMS?
It books into the calendar the property keeps and notifies the desk. How deeply that connects to a given property management system is worth establishing before you buy anything in this category, from anybody.
Will it confirm whether someone is staying with us?
No, to anyone, for any stated reason. It can put a message through to the front desk, which is the correct answer to that call at any hour.
Does it speak Spanish?
English and Spanish on the same number, switching mid-call when the caller does, which in hospitality is a routine occurrence rather than an edge case.
What does it cost?
Three paid rungs. Starter, Professional and Business differ only in how many unique customers you answer for in a month, with unlimited call flows. The night a storm closes the airport does not produce a bill.
Already decided you want AI to answer it?
Then the question is which one, and that is a different page: what a generic AI receptionist gets wrong on a hotels call, and what is configurable about this one.
Not your trade?
The agent's questions, urgency rules, escalations and vocabulary are all configuration. Nothing about a trade is hard-coded, which is why there are 31 of these and not one.