From stressful to streamlined: How to manage hotel peak season successfully

A day in the life of an independent hotelier or B&B owner during peak season is often highly demanding. Dealing with stiff competition, drowning in emails, compiling spreadsheets manually… These common peak-season struggles can keep you from maximizing revenue, providing a smooth guest experience and maintaining a healthy work-life balance. However, with the right automated processes in place and user-friendly software tailored to your needs, it doesn’t have to be so inefficient, overwhelming or chaotic.

In this guide, you’ll discover how Lighthouse can help you overcome each of your biggest challenges for a smoother and more profitable high season next time around.

Key takeaways: 9 ways to make peak season more profitable and efficient

1. Reduce repetitive manual tasks by automating reservation management, online check-ins and booking channel updates.

2. Implement a modern solution for processing guest payments and refunds to save time, reduce friction and protect revenue.

3. Simplify the handling of complex billing requests and group bookings with a tool to simplify the billing process.

4. Streamline breakfast planning, housekeeping and other daily operations by using automated lists and reports that staff can easily access.

5. Instead of spending hours a day answering repetitive questions, set up automated emails throughout the guest journey.

6. Use a smart dynamic pricing tool to ensure you never price too high or too low, resulting in lost bookings and revenue.

7. Balance your channel mix and reduce OTA commissions with Smart Distribution.

8. Understand your market and competition better to achieve a more effective data-driven strategy.

9. Avoid using disconnected systems. Make sure your hotel software is fully integrated to minimize manual work and errors.

Managing daily planning and administrative tasks

The admin avalanche: Too much manual work for each reservation and guest

When your hotel is almost fully booked, it's easy to feel like you're drowning in a sea of admin tasks. Even for properties with 10 rooms or less, manually keeping track of reservations in a spreadsheet or agenda quickly becomes complicated and overwhelming. It’s hard to keep a clear overview, especially when bookings are cancelled or modified. One small human mistake can have big consequences for the guests involved.

Not only does this way of working lead to double work, disorganization and errors, but it produces a high risk of overbooking. No matter how much time you spend manually updating availability across platforms, a double booking can happen in the blink of an eye.

And it doesn’t get any easier once these guests arrive. They need to be checked in and out without delay, receive all the key information, get room access, and you have to record any additional requests they might have – all while new bookings are still coming in. On top of the admin tasks, you need to keep in mind that today’s guests are impatient and expect a personalized approach. That means you simply don’t have time to look through papers with the client in front of you: you need to be prepared and instantly welcome your guest with the right name and room.

Lighthouse offers a user-friendly, centralized platform to combat this chaos. Reservation Manager serves as a central hub for all front desk duties and behind-the-scenes operations, replacing manual spreadsheets with one clean view of your rooms and reservations. It allows you to manage all bookings in one place, as well as related reception tasks.

From the system, you can easily access, edit and add details for reservations, guests and folios. The online check-in feature lets you collect and store guest details in advance with no manual effort, significantly reducing friction and wait times at arrival. And your booking platforms? The integrated channel manager automatically synchronizes prices and availability across all connected platforms in real time, eliminating the risk of overbookings while saving you hours of time. No more logging into different extranets multiple times a day.

The payment problem: Time-consuming and error-prone payment processing

Handling payments and refunds can be a major headache for independent hoteliers. Especially when running a full hotel, you don’t want to waste time verifying credit card details, sending payment requests to international guests and chasing unpaid reservations from no-shows through OTAs. Even without errors, refusals or fraud involved, each payment collection still involves many manual steps when you don’t have a modern solution in place to automate transactions.

Lighthouse’s integrated payment solution simplifies and automates the entire process for direct and indirect bookings. It allows you to automatically verify, pre-authorize, charge and refund regular credit cards, and process virtual credit cards from OTAs. Direct bookers also enjoy a seamless online payment process on your website, using their preferred method. Alternatively, they can approve the transaction in advance, with payment guarantee, thanks to the system’s compliance with the latest regulations like PSD2. When it’s time to pay – a few days before arrival or after check-out – simply send them a secure automated payment request to settle the outstanding balance.

With this solution in place, you can ensure a credit card is on file for every reservation, guests can pay without any friction and you are always certain of your money, even in case of no-shows and late cancellations.

Reservation riddles: Group bookings and special billing requests

When you already have a line of guests waiting to check out, the last thing you want to do is spend half an hour dealing with a special billing request. Corporate guests often want to split the costs and have the company pay for the room, while the guest is responsible for extras and drinks. Group reservations can also get quite complex, like when you’re asked to separate charges for certain extras on one bill. These situations not only cause hold-up, but can lead to administrative errors and make the invoicing and accounting process a logistical nightmare.

Reservation Manager by Lighthouse is designed to handle these complex scenarios. You can put down the notebook and calculator, because splitting folios and payments becomes a matter of clicking a button. You can choose to:

• Use one folio for the entire reservation

• Use one folio per accommodation (room)

• Use one folio for all accommodations and create a separate folio for extras

The system also allows for manual additions of expenses to a guest's folio during the stay, so you can very easily create a final itemized invoice at check-out that is both accurate and discreet. Do you have a bar or restaurant on site, a spa or gift shop? With the POS (Point of Sales) system integration, all these extra services can be instantly added to the room bill for a smooth guest experience.

This level of control ensures your receptionist comes across as professional, avoids errors and saves precious time during the busiest parts of the day.

The workflow whirlpool: Complex planning and inefficient operations

From manually compiling daily or weekly reports to coordinating breakfast, housekeeping and staffing, planning is crucial to successfully managing a hotel. When reservations are scattered and managed manually, that planning process also becomes time-consuming. Not only that, once you have your daily cleaning list ready, those tasks still have to be communicated effectively to housekeeping, including any additional needs or requests. Nothing is more painful than having to turn away early arrivals or make guests wait, because the room isn’t ready or you can’t see the live status.

Lighthouse streamlines your planning and scheduling with Reservation Manager, giving you a clear view of your operations in one place. The centralized dashboard contains all the necessary lists for daily tasks, including arrivals, departures, in-house guests, breakfast lists and housekeeping lists that can be accessed by cleaning staff from a mobile device. Save time by automatically generating daily reports, like breakfast lists with dietary notes, and send them directly to the kitchen staff.

The platform shows the live status of room cleanliness, who is leaving and how many people are staying. To communicate any special guest requests or preferences, it offers the option to add notes from the reservation, which can be viewed by your housekeepers. Configure the desired user access rights, so you can grant employees access to only the necessary information, while protecting sensitive information and restricting their ability to change critical details.

Automated reporting removes the burden of creating daily or weekly summaries, letting you focus on delivering excellent service. With one system to manage your operations, the entire team can work together more efficiently, and guests will take notice.

Communication chaos: Inconsistent and tedious guest emails

Do you ever feel like half your day is spent answering emails from guests? You’re not alone. Many hoteliers spend multiple hours a day replying to the same questions, like “Are beach towels provided?” or “Where should I park?”. This repetitive back-and-forth communication can take away from the time you spend on more productive tasks or meaningful interactions with the guests in front of you. All too often, guest communication is limited to a single booking confirmation, because sending additional emails proactively is simply too much work for busy hoteliers.

Lighthouse automates guest communication to help you save time and provide a more seamless guest experience. Customize the necessary email templates once and schedule them to be sent out at various stages of the guest journey, from pre-arrival to post-stay. Any guest details or reservation info is automatically filled out for each message. To give you even more peace of mind, the email history tab shows you when emails have been delivered and opened by the recipient.

The automated email feature allows you to send out essential information, online check-in links, key codes, upsell offers and review requests without lifting a finger. No more ad hoc answers – every guest receives the right message at the right time.

Achieving a profitable pricing and distribution strategy

The price puzzle: Misaligned prices that hurt profitability

When hotel demand peaks, setting the right price for your rooms can feel like a guessing game if you don’t have the right data at your fingertips. Manually checking competitor prices on Booking.com and entering them in a spreadsheet to inform your pricing decisions? It’s a reality for many independent hoteliers. However, on top of being far too time-consuming to do consistently, this approach relies on outdated information and rarely produces the desired results.

At Lighthouse, we often hear hoteliers questioning whether they're setting prices too high or too low, especially during major events like a music festival or concert. Without a complete view of the market, they resort to copying their closest competitor, keeping fixed prices based on last year or simply playing the guessing game.

With Pricing Manager, Lighthouse offers a dynamic pricing tool designed to solve this puzzle and increase your revenue by 19% on average, while minimizing commission costs. It uses AI and vast amounts of market data to provide you with dynamic pricing recommendations for the next 365 days. Suggestions are based on competitor prices, demand, local events as well as your own performance. These updates can be automated across your channels with Autopilot – pushing optimized rates up to three times a day – or approved manually if you prefer to stay in control. The best part is that you can instantly see why recommendations to increase or lower prices were made.

By relying on accurate, real-time insights instead of guesswork, you can confidently set prices that maximize occupancy and profitability.

The OTA overload: Excessive commission costs and revenue loss

As reservations soar, so do OTA commissions. For most hoteliers, the vast majority of bookings come from Online Travel Agencies (OTAs), usually at a high cost. OTA bookings can account for more than 90% of your revenue, with commissions and fees eating up to 20% of that income. This over-reliance on OTAs makes it difficult to stay profitable and to drive direct, commission-free bookings.

The Lighthouse for Independents platform helps you regain control of your channel mix and commission costs. It automatically optimizes your pricing and distribution strategy in favor of your direct channel and lower-cost OTAs. The solution also includes a conversion-oriented booking engine that can be easily integrated into your existing website, removing any barriers for guests to book directly with you. The Smart Distribution feature even provides recommendations on when to close a channel in case of high occupancy to stimulate direct bookings.

The result? Fewer commission fees, stronger profit margins and more control over your guest relationships.

Monitoring market trends, competitors and performance

The market mystery: Limited market awareness and competitor insights

Setting the right strategy for your property starts with understanding the market you operate in. Yet, independent hoteliers often struggle to get a clear and accurate view of their market and competition. Manually keeping track of competitors and their strategies is such a difficult, time-consuming task that it’s often put on the back burner or completely neglected in some cases.

On top of that, hoteliers risk relying on a list of competitors that is static, outdated or contains properties that aren’t truly relevant. Maybe you own a boutique B&B, but your competitive set includes chain hotels, luxurious vacation rentals and newly opened properties. Inaccurate comparisons lead to unreliable insights, and ultimately, poor strategic decisions.

Lighthouse addresses this struggle by providing a single, easy-to-interpret market overview that shows how your prices compare to competitors and highlights opportunities to increase revenue. You can view competitor rates across multiple platforms and room types in one centralized dashboard. It automatically refreshes data daily for the next 90 days and weekly for days 91-365, eliminating the need for manual data collection.

Thanks to AI-recommended, dynamic and customizable compsets, your choice of competitors is guaranteed to match your positioning, offering and target guests. You can add or remove properties to ensure the data is perfectly tailored to your property. This level of customization gives you the power to base your strategy on accurate, relevant data, ensuring you're always one step ahead.

System silos: Fragmented and incompatible tools

Is your hotel software fully integrated or are fragmented systems holding you back? Using disconnected software tools for channel management, bookings, operations, market insights and yield management results in a clunky tech setup that slows you down more than anything. Fragmentation causes additional work, technical issues and suboptimal results that end up costing you time and money.

Lighthouse offers a single platform that seamlessly combines all the tools needed to run a hotel or B&B, successfully and efficiently:

• Capture and manage direct bookings effortlessly

• Receive smart pricing and distribution recommendations

• Update rates and availability automatically on all channels

• Centralize all reservations and streamline front desk duties

• Process payments and refunds with ease

No more manual exports. No more duplicate work. Instead, you have a single, streamlined system where every part of your operation talks to each other. That means fewer mistakes, faster decisions and a smoother workflow for you and your team. Discover why our customers love the Lighthouse platform for independent hoteliers.

Turn chaos into control: Lighthouse is here to simplify your life

Your busiest season should also be your most profitable, balancing out the inevitable slower periods of the year. But without the right hotel software to support you, it can feel like the opposite. The higher influx of reservations and guests puts more strain on you and your team, and leaves less time to interact with each guest. Instead of celebrating full occupancy, you’re buried in admin tasks, dealing with overbookings, chasing payments and losing revenue to OTAs and competitors.

If you feel like your hard work over the peak travel season hasn’t paid off, and you’re already dreading the next peak, it’s time to change your way of working.

With Lighthouse, you can turn peak season from stressful to streamlined. Our all-in-one hotel platform helps you:

• Centralize and simplify reservations, payments, and guest communication

• Eliminate manual work and reduce costly errors

• Automate pricing to maximize revenue without the guesswork

• Increase direct bookings while reducing reliance on OTAs

• Coordinate daily operations with ease, from housekeeping to reporting

We understand that you chose the hotelier life because you care about hospitality – not paperwork. That’s why the Lighthouse team has built tools that put you back in control and let you focus on what matters most. Take care of your guests, while we take care of the rest.

Want to take a closer look at our all-in-one solution for independent hotels to manage hotel high season without the complexity? Book a free introduction call with our team today or watch our platform demo video here.