A hotel fact sheet for AI assistants: what to write down first

An AI assistant answers from what the hotel has written down, not from what its staff know. A hotel knowledge base for AI is one dated, owned set of short factual sentences covering rooms, board basis, hours, policies, transport, accessibility, children and pets, kept current and free of guest data.

A guest asks the website chatbot whether the pool is heated and until what time the restaurant serves dinner. The assistant has a brochure, a rate sheet and three old web pages to work from. It answers confidently, and one of those sources is two seasons out of date. After reading this guide you will know which facts to write down first, in what format, who should own each section and how to keep seasonal changes from going stale.

Why is an AI assistant only as good as the hotel's written facts?#

Because the assistant answers from a source it is given, and most hotels have never put their own facts in one place. What is not written down cannot be quoted.

The mechanism is simple. When a question arrives, the assistant is handed a set of passages, finds the ones that match the question, and phrases an answer from them. It does not hold the property in its head. The fact sheet is a source the assistant reads, not material it is trained on, and no honest supplier will promise how often the answers will be right.

Three failure modes cover most wrong answers. A missing fact makes the assistant refuse or quietly fill the gap. Two sources that disagree make the answer depend on which passage was picked. And a fact that was true last year is still confidently repeated this year.

Then there is the staff-memory problem. The front desk knows the pool is heated from mid-June and that late check-out is free for returning guests. Nobody wrote it down, so no assistant can say it. The same gap shows up in every channel: the website chatbot, a messaging assistant and a staff helper all fail on the same missing sentence.

If you are planning a chatbot, the same boundary shapes its scope, knowledge and handover for a hotel website chatbot.

Which sections should a hotel write down first?#

Start with the eight blocks guests ask about before booking and during the stay: rooms, board basis, hours, policies, transport, accessibility, children and pets. Order them by how often the front desk answers the question, not by department.

Rooms come first because every booking conversation starts there: each room type, bed setup, approximate size, view, balcony, connecting rooms and the maximum number of people allowed. Board basis follows, because "half board" means different things in different hotels: what each board type includes, where and between which hours breakfast is served, and whether drinks with meals are included.

Hours and policies carry the most day-to-day questions: reception, restaurant, bar, pool, gym and spa opening times, plus check-in and check-out times and what happens outside reception hours; then cancellation terms, deposit, accepted payment methods, smoking rules, quiet hours and whether outside visitors are allowed. Transport covers distance and travel time to the nearest airport, transfer options and prices, parking, and public transport nearby.

Accessibility deserves the most care. Step-free routes, lift size, adapted rooms and bathroom fittings should be described exactly and honestly; an overstated claim here is the most damaging error in the document. Children and pets close the list: cots, extra beds, the age up to which a child stays free, and the pet rules including where pets may and may not go.

Finally, write the list of questions the front desk answered most often last month and check that each one has a sentence in the document. That list, not a template, is the real specification.

How do you write a fact an assistant can quote?#

One fact per sentence, short, dated, with units and no adjectives. If a sentence cannot be lifted into an answer unchanged, rewrite it until it can.

Start by removing hedges: various, several, etc., modern, comfortable, spacious. They give the assistant nothing to say and invite it to invent detail. Attach units and scope to every number: per person or per room, per night or per stay, which currency, and whether tax is included. Date each sentence and name where it came from: the rate sheet, the transfer contract, the manager's written instruction.

Avoid half-negations. "Pets are not allowed, guide dogs excepted" is usable; "pets welcome in some areas" is not. Include the words guests use, not only the hotel's internal terms, so a question phrased in everyday language still finds the sentence. Keep one authoritative language and approved translations that carry the same date, since a translation that drifts from the original is a second source of error; planning the languages your guest mix actually needs is worth doing before you commission translations.

For example, instead of "Our spa offers a range of relaxing treatments", write: "The spa is open 10:00 to 20:00 daily. A 50-minute massage is 45 EUR per person, bookable at reception until 18:00 on the day." The second pair of sentences answers three real questions and carries its own limits.

Who owns each section, and when is it reviewed?#

Each section needs one named owner and a review date, because a document owned by everyone is updated by no one.

Assign owners by role, not by name inside the text: front office manager for hours, food and beverage for board basis, reservations for policies, technical manager for accessibility with the general manager signing off. Set two clocks: a routine review, quarterly for hours and policies, yearly for accessibility, and a trigger review, whenever a renovation, new menu, new transfer partner or changed rate plan makes a section stale.

Name one editor who merges changes, so two departments cannot overwrite each other's sentences. Show the date on each section, not only on the document, so a reader can see which part is stale. Add a sign-off step before anything is published to the website, the channels or an assistant. Keep a short change log: what changed, by whom, on which date. It is the fastest way to trace a wrong answer back to a wrong sentence.

This is also where cleaning up hotel data before any AI project pays off: the fact sheet inherits whatever quality the source records have.

How do you handle seasonal and temporary changes?#

Give every temporary fact a start date and an end date, and let it expire on its own. Otherwise a pool closed for maintenance this November is still closed in next summer's answers.

Use three fields for anything temporary: the fact, valid from, valid to. When the end date passes, the sentence drops out without anyone remembering to delete it. Write the specific version: "The outdoor pool is closed 3 to 10 November 2026 for maintenance" rather than "the pool is closed". For winter hours, keep two dated sentences rather than editing one, so the summer line expires and the winter line starts on the right day.

Log the change and who made it, so a wrong answer after the change can be traced to a specific edit. After any change, ask the assistant the question a guest would ask, in the guest's words, and read the answer as a guest would. Schedule the season-opening review before the season, not during it; the first week of high season is the worst time to discover a stale sentence.

Should staff, the website, channels and assistants read from one source?#

Yes. One maintained source, published to the website, the sales channels and the assistant, is the only way the answers stay the same everywhere.

The copying problem comes first: the same fact written three times in three places becomes three different facts within a season. Put the source where the fact already lives. Opening hours belong to the operating system that runs the day; rates belong to the rate plan. A separate document that nobody owns will drift.

Publish rather than duplicate: one edit, several outputs, so the guest app, the website and the assistant cannot disagree. Keep the outside view as a separate check. What booking sites, search results and review pages say about the hotel is a different problem from what the hotel has written, and both need watching; keeping the facts AI assistants describe about your hotel consistent covers that outside half.

Make sure the person answering the phone and the person editing the fact sheet are reading the same text; a mismatch between the two is what guests notice first. For a small property, one shared document with dated sections and named owners is enough to start. The discipline matters more than the tool.

What to do next#

This week, write the eight sections as short dated sentences, name one owner per section and set the first review date before your next season. The pieces fit in one order: the written fact is the source, the format makes it quotable, the owner keeps it true, the dates handle change, and one source keeps every channel saying the same thing.