Guide · uses the free Front Office skill
How to handle an oversold night at a hotel (walk strategy) with Claude
When the house is oversold, someone has to be walked. The Front Office skill treats it as service recovery: it picks who to walk, lines up comp-set partner hotels, assembles a standard walk packet, documents every walk and follows up — so the guest's next stay can be comped and elevated.
What you need
- Claude (Claude.ai in your browser — the free tier works for short tests — or Claude Code) with the Front Office skill loaded
- Tonight's arrivals with rate, loyalty tier, length of stay and special requests
- Your oversold count and out-of-order / out-of-inventory rooms
- The comp-set hotels you'd walk to
Step by step
- Load the Front Office skill. In Claude.ai, create a Project and paste the Front Office SKILL.md into its instructions — or run
npx hotel-team-skills installonce and use Claude Code, which picks the right skill from your prompt. - Share the arrivals and the oversell. Paste tonight's arrivals (or let the skill read them from the PMS) and how many rooms you're over, including OOO / OOI rooms.
- Let it pick who to walk. The skill looks for the latest-arriving, lowest-paying, lowest-loyalty-tier, single-night guests with no special requests.
- Lock the receiving hotels. Line up 3–5 comp-set partner hotels with rates locked before the first walk.
- Prepare the walk packet and follow up. Paid first night at the receiving hotel, transportation, a full refund, an F&B credit on the return night, a hand-written GM apology and a loyalty bonus. Document every walk and follow up within 24 hours.
"We're oversold tonight — who do we walk, where, and what goes in the walk packet?"
What a good result covers
This is the workflow the Front Office skill follows, quoted from its SKILL.md:
Walk strategy (oversold)
When the property is oversold:
- Identify guests to walk: latest-arriving, lowest-paying, lowest-loyalty-tier, no special requests, single-night
- Pre-arrange walk hotels (3–5 comp-set partners) with rates locked
- Standard walk packet: paid first night at receiving hotel, transportation, full refund of guest's reservation, $50–$100 F&B credit on return night, hand-written GM apology, loyalty bonus
- Document every walk, follow up within 24h, ensure the guest's next stay at your property is comped and elevated
See a finished example: the Walk strategy the skill produced for The Meridian Nashville in the mock portfolio.
Review before you send. The output is a strong first draft, not a final answer. The skill asks for missing pieces before it writes, but you remain responsible for anything you send, sign, pay or publish.