A Hotel Manager, Reservation List and the Question No PMS Could Answer!

For most of my career as a hotel General Manager, I had the same recurring thought, often late at night, usually staring at tomorrow’s arrivals list:

Who are these guests… really? Not just their name. Not just their room type. Not just whether they prefer oat milk or feather pillows. But who they are in the real world, what they do, the influence they hold, the decisions they make, the networks they move in, and the stories they carry with them when they walk through the lobby doors. Because deep down, I believed something very simple:

“If we truly understood who was coming to stay with us, we could fine-tune our service in a way that creates genuine loyalty, not transactional satisfaction.”

The Manual Obsession Every Good GM Knows Too Well

So, like many hotel leaders who genuinely care about experience, we did what we could with the tools we had.

·       We searched.

·       Manually.

·       Endlessly.

·       Reservation by reservation.

Google searches, LinkedIn profiles, Company websites, Press mentions, Awards. Boards. Start-ups, Investments.

Sometimes we found nothing, many guests understandably have no digital footprint at all. And that’s perfectly fine. But sometimes, we uncovered gold.

·       A guest who had just sold a company.

·       A founder mid-funding round.

·       A managing director overseeing thousands of employees.

·       A quiet investor backing brands we all recognise.

·       An industry influencer with reach far beyond their Instagram following.

And when we knew, really knew, something about them, magic happened. Not in an obvious, cringeworthy way. But in subtle, thoughtful moments that made them feel seen. And those moments? They changed the relationship entirely.

From “Nice Stay” to “You Just Get It”

The difference between a good hotel stay and a memorable one is rarely about luxury alone.

It’s about relevance. It’s about anticipation. It’s about the guest thinking:- “How did they know this about me… without asking?”

That’s where loyalty is born. That’s where advocacy starts. That’s where a guest stops being a booking and becomes a promoter. But here was the problem…

This Was Never Scalable

What took hours, sometimes an entire day to research a list of arrivals depended on:

·       experience

·       instinct

·       curiosity

and a lot of caffeine……

It wasn’t consistent, it wasn’t fair and it certainly wasn’t scalable. And yet, the value of that knowledge was undeniable. That’s when the thinking shifted.

What If We Focused on Influence, Not Ego?

I started refining the question. Instead of “Who can we find?” It became:

“Which guests, if we truly impressed them, could become our strongest advocates?”. Not celebrities for the sake of it. Not vanity VIPs. But:

·       senior decision-makers

·       entrepreneurs

·       founders

·       managing directors

·       influential leaders

·       people whose recommendations genuinely move markets

Guests who:

·       travel often

·       influence where teams stay

·       recommend brands within powerful circles

·       and quietly shape buying decisions

If hospitality is about relationships, then these relationships mattered disproportionately.

Turning a Hotel GM Problem into a Technology Solution

So I did what any slightly frustrated hotelier would do. I tried to automate it.

What if:

·       a process that took hours could take minutes.

·       guest influence could be assessed consistently.

·       relevant public information could be surfaced automatically.

·       hotels could know without guessing.

By combining structured data, AI, and public information sources, we created a system that:

·       identifies guests with potential influence

·       generates a contextual profile

·       highlights roles, industries, achievements

·       references news, projects, and visibility

· and assigns a potential influence rating…

Not to label guests. Not to judge them, but to help hotels prioritise where personalised effort delivers the greatest return, emotionally and commercially. And that’s how BHPeople was born.

This Isn’t About Creepy. It’s About Care

Let’s be clear. This isn’t about surveillance. It’s not about ego and it’s definitely not about treating guests differently in an obvious way. It’s about using intelligence responsibly to deliver better hospitality. The best experiences are the ones guests never realise were planned. And the best loyalty is earned when guests feel understood, not sold to.

The Bigger Question for Hotels

The real question isn’t whether hotels can know more about their guests. It’s this:

If the information already exists, is it better to ignore it, or use it thoughtfully to improve experiences?

Because the hotels that win tomorrow won’t just be the most beautiful. They’ll be the most  aware.

Over to you

Have you ever had a guest where one small, well-timed gesture changed everything? Or asked yourself, “If only we’d known this sooner…”?

That moment, that gap between knowing and not knowing is exactly where BHPeople lives. And it all started with a GM, a reservations list, and a lot of late-night curiosity. Watch this space for further developments.