Altek
FOR CENTRAL RESERVATIONS

More bookings arrive here than anywhere in the group. And more get lost.

Central reservations receives the mail that is genuinely about a booking. It is also where a guest is most likely to get a question instead of an offer, wait until Monday for an answer, or never hear anything back after a quote.

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Guest inquiryIn the inbox you already use

“Do you have a double room for the 14th to the 16th, and what’s the rate?”

Prepared, waiting for approval
  • Live availability and rate for the 14th to the 16th
  • Reply drafted in your hotel's voice
  • The reservation staged in your PMS
Review and approve in about 30 seconds.
2M+inquiries handled
100+languages
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Four reservations agents in headsets working at screens across a shared desk in a central reservations office.

The queue is busiest when the desk is empty.

Central reservations is where a group's demand actually lands. It is also the one desk with nobody in the building out of hours: a property has a night porter and a front desk, a central team has office hours. So the mail with the highest booking intent in the group waits the longest, and it waits on the evenings and weekends when guests do most of their planning.

The fix is not a bigger team or a faster one. It is cover for the hours nobody is there, a first reply that carries options and prices instead of a question, an owner for corporate demand, and a follow-up rule that does not depend on anyone remembering.

What we find in central inboxes

Patterns from the inbox assessments we run before a deployment, across groups of different sizes. Every one of them is about the central mailbox specifically, and none of them is about how hard the team works.

  1. The most commercial mail in the group arrives here

    Of every inbox in a group, the central mailbox carries the highest share of mail that is actually about a booking. Property inboxes carry more of everything else: suppliers, invoices, deliveries, staff. The central desk is where demand lands.

  2. And nobody is there when a lot of it arrives

    Central teams have office hours. Guests do not. The gap is not that central teams are slow at their desks, it is that a weekend inquiry waits for Monday, while a property desk has somebody physically in the building. This is a cover problem, not a performance one.

  3. The first reply is often a question, not an offer

    A guest writes to the group without naming a hotel, and the reply asks which one they mean. Property desks never do this, because a guest writing to a property has already chosen. It costs a round trip, though we cannot prove the round trip is what loses the booking rather than the guest simply being less decided. Either way the better first reply is two or three options with prices.

  4. Corporate demand has no owner

    The best-converting segment in most groups arrives structured, arrives at the central address, and joins the same queue as everything else. No routing rule, no owner, no follow-up if it goes quiet.

The same four inquiries, already answered

One for each finding above. This is what is sitting in the queue when your team next opens it.

Guest inquiry

Hi, do you have anything for two people the weekend of the 14th? Somewhere central would be ideal.

Prepared, waiting for approval
  • Live availability checked across the properties that fit what they asked for
  • Two or three options built with photos, what is included and the real price
  • A clear next step in the reply, so the guest can act without writing again
  • Ready in the queue, either sent under the rules you set or waiting for Monday's approval

The weekend stops being a hole in the group's coverage without anybody working the weekend.

Free. No commitment.

Start with your own numbers

We will read your central mailbox against your property desks and show you where the two differ: the hours demand arrives, what gets answered when, which threads were quoted and never followed up. You decide anything else afterwards.

Analyze my inbox

Hotels that responded faster
and got more bookings

Hotel Mayfair property.

How Hotel Mayfair Reduced Email Reply Time to 30 Seconds

Lydinge Resort property.

How Lydinge Resort freed up many hours a month for real hospitality

The Well Spa & Hotel property.

How The Well Automated 16,000 Guest Conversations and Responds to Emails Up to 3.5x Faster with Altek AI

See it on your central inbox

Thirty minutes on your own guest inquiries, and a look at how the central desk would run with the work already done. Pick a time that suits you.

  • 30 minutes, no preparation needed
  • We use real inquiries from your central mailbox
  • No commitment and no follow-up spam

Central reservations FAQ

What commercial and reservations leaders ask before changing how the central desk runs.

Why is our central reservations team slower than our front desks?
Usually it is cover, not capability. Central teams work office hours while guests write at all of them, so a weekend or evening inquiry waits until someone is back at the desk. A property has somebody physically in the building overnight. In inbox assessments the central mailbox also carries the highest share of genuinely booking-related mail in the group, so the slowest answers land on the most commercial inquiries.
How do we cover weekends and evenings without weekend staff?
Altek reads the inquiry when it arrives, retrieves live availability and rates, and prepares the reply and the work behind it. You decide what happens next: the routine cases you have chosen can go out on their own, and everything else is waiting, already done, when someone is next at the desk. Nobody works the weekend and nothing waits until Monday untouched.
Should hotel groups centralise reservations?
It is not the question that decides the outcome. A central team gives a group consistency and one place to see demand; property desks give presence and local knowledge. What actually separates them is whether an inquiry is answered with options and a price at the hour it arrives, and whether anybody comes back to it when it goes quiet. Altek makes that true of either shape, which is why groups run it both centrally and per property.
Who should own corporate and negotiated-rate inquiries?
Somebody named, with a follow-up rule. Corporate demand converts better than almost anything else in a group and arrives structured, which makes it easy to identify and easy to route. In most central mailboxes it is neither: it sits in the general queue with no owner and no chase. Altek identifies those threads, routes them to whoever owns the segment, and follows up when they go quiet.
Does each property keep its own inbox?
Yes. A central team can work the whole estate from one place while every hotel keeps its own mailbox, its own voice and its own approval rules. Permissions are set per property and per action type, with an audit trail on every action.