The automatic hotel morning briefing: arrivals, housekeeping and open balances before 7:00

The first 30 minutes of every shift

At 6:45, the morning reception shift starts the same way in most hotels. Print the arrivals list. Check departures. Ask housekeeping which rooms are ready. Look for guests with open bills who might leave early. Read the night shift’s notes.

That is half an hour of clicking and comparing every day, 365 days a year. With Steward and ASA HOTEL, the briefing is already waiting when the shift begins.

What the briefing contains

A good morning briefing answers five questions:

1. Who is arriving today, and when?
2. Who is leaving today, and are their accounts settled?
3. Which rooms must be turned first for early arrivals?
4. Which guests need attention, such as VIPs, special requests or dietary notes?
5. What did the night shift leave open?

Steward reads the first four from ASA using methods such as getReservations, getInHouseRoomReservations, getHousekeepingStatus and the room-account reads. The hotel operations guide lists which ASA permissions and modules each one needs.

Set it up once

1. Create a project called Reception, enable the ASA connection and give the reception team Read access to the connection.
2. Open Scheduled → New task. See Create a scheduled task.
3. Name it Morning briefing. Set it to run Daily at 06:30 in your hotel’s time zone.
4. Select the ASA connection and choose Read only.
5. Write the instructions:

Prepare today’s reception briefing using the hotel’s local date.

1. Arrivals: guest name, room, number of guests, expected arrival time if known. Mark arrivals before 14:00.
2. Departures: guest name and room, with the current room balance. Highlight balances above €200.
3. Housekeeping: departure and arrival rooms that are not yet clean, ordered by expected arrival.
4. Notes: arrivals and in-house guests with dining or kitchen notes.

Keep it to one screen. Use tables. Do not change anything.

Select Run now once to see the result and refine the wording.

Why Read only

The briefing runs at 06:30 without anyone watching. Read only ensures that it can read ASA but never post a charge, change a status or touch a reservation, whatever the instructions say.

Add house rules once

Put hotel-specific knowledge in the Reception project’s shared instructions:

Rooms 401–410 are suites; always mention suite arrivals first. Late check-out until 13:00 is free for returning guests. Treat any note containing “VIP” or “GM guest” as a VIP.

The scheduled briefing and every reception chat follow these rules.

Open balances before departure

A second, smaller task saves real money. It runs Daily at 18:00, in Read only mode:

List guests departing tomorrow with their current room balance and estimated bill. Highlight balances above €300.

Reception can then speak to guests in the evening, not at the desk during the morning rush. Estimated bills can change and some billing data disappears when an account closes, so treat the figures as a working list, not a final invoice.

From briefing to action

The briefing is read-only, but the conversation does not have to be. A receptionist with the right access can follow up in a normal chat:

Housekeeping has confirmed room 214. Update its housekeeping status to clean.

Routine housekeeping updates follow the chat’s permission mode. Charges and other consequential changes always require approval.

Who sees the briefing

Everyone with access to the Reception project sees each run’s result. That includes the night shift, the front-office manager and seasonal staff during the season. When the season ends, remove seasonal staff from the team. Nobody’s ASA password needs to change. See Offboarding and AI access.

Get started

Connect ASA HOTEL, create the Reception project and set up the morning briefing in Read only mode. For charges, read Minibar charges without double charges.