A guest portal for your B&B or hotel: what is it and what goes in it?

Short answer: a guest portal is a single personal web page per booking. Your guest opens it from a link in the confirmation email or a WhatsApp message, with no app and no account. Before arrival they complete their details, choose an arrival time and pay what is still open. During the stay it shows the house info, the wifi, the breakfast time, the invoice and, if you have a smart lock, the button to open the door. After the stay the invoice stays available and the guest is asked for a review. Then the page closes by itself.

The difference with a separate digital guidebook or an online check-in form: a guest portal brings those things together in one place that follows the stage of the stay.

Why a guest portal instead of emails back and forth?

Anyone running a B&B or small hotel knows the pattern. A week before arrival you ask for the invoice address, two days before you ask for the arrival time, on the day itself you send the door code, and in the evening someone still asks for the wifi password. Each of those questions is a separate message, and every answer has to be copied somewhere.

A guest portal turns that around. The guest gets one link and finds everything there. What they fill in lands directly on the booking and the guest record. You don't have to ask for it and you don't have to retype it.

What goes in it? By stage of the stay

Before arrival

• Completing their details. Name, address, country and mobile number, plus a company name and VAT number for an invoice in a company's name. Guests from Booking.com or Airbnb often arrive with little data, so this is where you fill the gaps.
• Guest registration. If you have to register guest details with the police or a government portal, let the guest enter them here. More on why in online check-in: let guests fill in their details in advance.
• Arrival time. The guest picks a time. If it falls within your check-in hours it can be confirmed straight away. If not, it becomes a request you approve or decline.
• Payment status. Total, paid and outstanding, with a button to pay online. Leave it out for bookings where the channel collects the payment.

During the stay

• House info. Wifi, parking, house rules, your own tips: what used to sit in a folder in the room. How to write it is covered in creating a digital guidebook.
• Breakfast. If you serve breakfast, let the guest choose a time for each morning. That way you know the evening before how many tables to lay and when.
• Opening the door. With a smart lock, a button or a PIN code appears here, only after check-in.
• Invoice and extras. The running bill with the outstanding balance. With an honesty bar, the guest taps what they took and it goes on the bill.
• Restaurants nearby. A short list of places you recommend yourself, ideally with their closing day.

After the stay

• The invoice as a PDF, so the guest doesn't have to ask you for it.
• A request for a review, with a link to where you want reviews to land.
• And then: closed. A guest portal shouldn't stay open forever.

What to look for in a guest portal

No app, no account. A guest who first has to install an app or choose a password drops out. A personal link that simply opens in the browser works for everyone.

Also for Booking.com and Airbnb guests. Those are the guests you know least. The link has to be in your messages to OTA guests too, not just in direct bookings.

In the guest's language. A German or French guest who gets a page in Dutch reads half of it. Let the page open in the language of the booking, with a switch.

Personal and temporary. The link must not be guessable, and the page closes after the stay. A door button that still works for someone holding last month's link is a security problem.

Your name, not your software's. The guest portal is your welcome. Your logo, your colour, your contact details and your terms belong on it, not your vendor's brand.

Connected to your PMS. A separate tool where the guest enters details that you then retype only does half the job. The gain is that what the guest fills in appears straight away on the booking, the invoice and the arrivals list.

How it works in BedFlow PMS

In BedFlow PMS every booking automatically gets a guest page. The link is in the confirmation emails, the pre-arrival email and the WhatsApp messages, also for guests who booked through Booking.com or another channel. The page opens in the guest's language, carries your own property's branding and closes one day after the departure date (or 15 minutes after check-out). What's on it and in which order, you set in the guest page editor. Everything is explained in the manual on the guest page.

The editor is included from the Starter plan up; every guest gets the guest page itself on every plan. Compare the plans on the pricing page.

Want to see what it looks like for your own property? Try BedFlow PMS free for 30 days, no card details needed, and open the guest page of a test booking on your phone.