Run the desk and the rooms of your small property the same good way every day
A complete front desk and housekeeping system for B&Bs, homestays, guesthouses and small hotels of up to about 40 rooms: the method, the workbook, the forms, the procedures and the exact words.
- A 10-chapter e-book that follows one composite 12-room guesthouse through the daily loop: book, arrive, stay, clean and fix, leave and close, learn
- The Front Desk and Housekeeping Workbook: 20 sheets covering reservations with balances, arrivals and departures, a housekeeping board, inspections, stock, maintenance, cash, night audit, rota, training, feedback and two dashboards
- 4 fillable PDF form sets (10 pages) and 6 Word documents, including 52 scripts and messages, a manual with 21 SOPs and an emergency one-pager, and 30 AI prompts
- A Start Here map, 3 more cheat sheets including dated country notes, a 7-sheet rota and labour cost planner, a 37-event set-up calendar and a 28-task CSV board
The Guesthouse Front Desk and Housekeeping Manual · Bodhih Pro Kits · 198 by Bodhih Training, trainers to 2,000+ companies since 2008.
How do you run the front desk and housekeeping of a small hotel or guesthouse?
Keep one register of bookings, prepare every arrival before it happens, check guests in with a short standard routine, clean rooms by priority and inspect them before sale, hand over between shifts in writing, run a short night audit, and review a few numbers every week. The Guesthouse Front Desk and Housekeeping Manual from Bodhih Training gives you a file for each step.
Want the full free guide first? Read How to Run the Front Desk and Housekeeping of a Small Hotel.
You already feel the problem. Here is what it is costing you.
Everything lives in one person's head
The owner knows which guest prefers service every third day and which room has the sticky door. When that person is off, the desk guesses and guests notice.
Rooms not ready when guests arrive
Housekeeping starts at the first door and works along the corridor. By two o'clock the stayovers are lovely and the room with an arrival due has not been touched.
Double bookings and missing deposits
A phone booking goes in the diary, the same room sells on a booking site, and nobody is sure who paid what. The bill at check-out becomes an argument.
Complaints handled differently by every shift
One person gives away a free night, another offers nothing. Nobody knows what they are allowed to do, and the same complaint keeps coming back.
Promises lost between shifts
The night desk arranged a taxi and an airport pickup and said 'all quiet' at handover. The morning desk finds out when the taxi arrives.
No idea how the business is really doing
Occupancy feels fine, but what about rate, commission, inspection scores, cash variances and the safety checks that were due last month?
Picture the next few weeks with the kit open beside you.
Picture tomorrow at 08:00. Instead of a scrap of paper, you open the Housekeeping Board and type each room's status. The board has already pulled in today's arrivals and departures, so the room with a departure at ten and an arrival at three sits at the top as priority one. You assign attendants by priority and the desk knows when each room will be ready.
At 11:30 a guest arrives off the night train. Room 104 is already inspected, so the check-in takes four minutes: greeting, registration as your local rules require, payment on the terminal, a fifty-second orientation and the booking marked Checked in. Your new starter watches and ticks the steps on his training checklist.
Imagine the afternoon complaint. Your desk team uses the opening line from the script library, offers a choice of fixes with a time, follows up, and gives a gesture within the authority level they already know. Then they log it, and on Monday you see it next to the inspection scores and change the procedure that caused it.
And imagine Monday at nine. Thirty minutes with the dashboards: occupancy, ADR, RevPAR, channel mix, inspection pass rate, complaints, overdue safety checks, cash variances, rota gaps. Whether you start with the workbook tonight or the housekeeping board tomorrow morning, you finish the review with one clear decision for the week.
19 files that do the work for you
The e-book shows you how. The tools make it happen. Here is exactly what you download.
The Guesthouse Front Desk and Housekeeping Manual (e-book, PDF)
The guide: methods, worked examples, scripts and exercises
Start here: guesthouse operations map
The whole front desk and housekeeping job as six steps with the file to open at each, your first hour, a 30/60/90 day use plan and links to measure your starting point.
Front Desk and Housekeeping Workbook
20-sheet workbook: settings, room register, reservations with balances and commission, today's arrivals and departures, housekeeping board, inspections, linen and supplies, maintenance and safety checks, lost and found, cash reconciliation, night audit report, channel mix, rota and coverage, training, guest feedback and two dashboards with charts.
Rota and Labour Cost Planner
7-sheet planner: turns a week's room forecast into housekeeping, front desk and breakfast hours needed, plans hours person by person, shows gaps by role and the labour cost per occupied room.
Reservation form and guest registration card
Two-page fillable set: a reservation form for phone, email and walk-in bookings with deposit and policy checks, and a guest registration card with privacy notice and signatures.
Room inspection checklist
Fillable inspection checklist: a 40-point departure clean standard across five areas, a 24-point stayover check, scoring against your pass mark and a re-clean sign-off.
Shift handover log
Two-page fillable log: the front desk handover between shifts (rooms, arrivals still due, open guest issues, cash and keys, safety checks) and the housekeeping end-of-day report.
Incident report, maintenance request and lost property forms
Three-page fillable set: a maintenance request with priority and out-of-order decision, a factual incident report for accidents, injuries, security and guest behaviour, and lost property tags with a release record.
Front desk script and message library
52 scripts and ready-to-send messages for phone enquiries, confirmations, check-in, requests, complaints, check-out, reviews and the hard moments (overbooking, no-shows, angry guests, welfare checks).
Front office and housekeeping procedures manual template
Editable manual: property service standards, 12 front office SOPs, 9 housekeeping SOPs and a one-page emergency procedures sheet to fill in with your local numbers.
Staff training plan and checklists
Four-week training plans for front desk and housekeeping, 16 competency checklists with 61 observable points, a 12-question knowledge quiz with model answers and a sign-off record.
Guest letters, house rules and information templates
Seven ready-to-send guest documents: booking confirmation, invoice and receipt (folio), pre-arrival email, in-room guest information book, one-page house rules, deposit request and receipt, and a thank-you letter.
Worked example pack: a day at a 12-room guesthouse
One composite day at a 12-room guesthouse from the 07:00 briefing to the night audit, with the main forms and sheets shown completed so you can see what good looks like.
AI prompt pack for guesthouse operations
30 tool-agnostic prompts grouped by the six parts of the job, each with what to paste in and what to check before you use the output.
Service recovery and room status decision card
If-this-then-that card for eleven guest moments, gesture authority levels to fill in, the eight room status codes and the cleaning priority order.
Front desk and housekeeping mistakes to avoid
Mistakes-to-avoid card: front desk, housekeeping and manager mistakes, what each causes, what to do instead and the file that prevents it.
Guest registration, safety and hygiene notes (October 2026)
Dated quick reference to guest records, data protection, fire safety, food hygiene and short-let rules, with specifics for the UK and India and what to check elsewhere.
30-day set-up and weekly controls calendar
37 calendar events: a 30-day set-up plan, the first two weeks of morning briefings and four Monday controls reviews, each naming the file to open. Import into a new calendar and move to your dates.
Guesthouse operations task board
28 set-up and recurring tasks as a CSV ready to import into Trello, Asana, Notion, Planner or Jira, with area, week, owner, file to open and due date.
Chapter by chapter
Each chapter opens with a real situation, gives you a method and ends with something to do today, using the tools in your kit.
- Format
- PDF e-book + XLSX + fillable PDF + DOCX + printable PDF + ICS + CSV
- Files
- 19 files plus a one-click ZIP
- E-book
- 62 pages
- Workbooks
- 20-sheet operations workbook and 7-sheet rota planner, with sample data, formulas and dashboards
- Works with
- Excel, Google Sheets, LibreOffice, Word, Google Docs, Acrobat Reader, GoodNotes, Google Calendar, Outlook, Apple Calendar, Trello, Asana, Notion, Planner, Jira
- Best for
- B&Bs, homestays, guesthouses and small hotels of up to about 40 rooms, in any country and currency
The Front Desk Is the Whole House
Why small properties run better on simple systems than on one person's memory, and the six-step daily loop.
Reservations, Rates and the Room Inventory
One register of bookings, rate plans in plain words, channel mix and commission, and taking a booking with a seven-point read-back.
Arrivals and the Check-in
Preparing every arrival, a six-move check-in in under five minutes, guest records and privacy, walk-ins and special guests.
During the Stay: Requests, Complaints and Service Recovery
Requests with a time and a follow-up, the service gaps behind complaints, the recovery ladder and gesture authority levels.
Check-out, Payments and the Night Audit
The folio and the bill, a fast check-out, a six-step night audit for a small property, and cash and card reconciliation.
The Housekeeping System
Eight room status codes, the housekeeping board, cleaning by priority, the cleaning sequence and a 40-point inspection standard.
Linen, Supplies, Lost Property and Deep Cleaning
Par levels for linen and supplies, laundry, chemical safety, lost property and a deep cleaning schedule.
Maintenance, Safety and Emergencies
Maintenance requests and out-of-order decisions, preventive maintenance, fire safety, emergencies, incidents, keys and security.
Breakfast and Guest Areas
Breakfast as a food business, the four hygiene habits, allergens and the guest areas everyone sees.
Shifts, Rotas, Handovers and Training
Handovers that keep promises, rotas built from the room forecast, and training that signs off only what was seen.
Controls, Reviews and AI
Six numbers for the Monday review, review replies, standard operating procedures, AI with a human check, and fair treatment.
The House That Runs Without You Standing in It
What you now have, how the pieces fit, and your first hour.
Front Office Terms in Plain Words
Plain definitions for twenty-four front office and housekeeping terms.
Writing One Good SOP
How to write a one-page SOP a new starter can follow, and a checklist before you adopt it.
Not just reading. Tools you will actually open again.
E-book
- The Guesthouse Front Desk and Housekeeping Manual: 10 chapters, 2 appendices and 6 hand-drawn figures (PDF)
Start here
- 00-Start-Here-Guesthouse-Operations-Map: the job as six steps with the file to open at each, your first hour and a 30/60/90 day use plan
Spreadsheets
- Front Desk and Housekeeping Workbook (20 sheets): Start here, Settings, Rooms, Reservations, Arrivals and Departures, Housekeeping Board, Inspections, Linen and Supplies, Maintenance, PM Schedule, Lost and Found, Cash Reconciliation, Daily Report, Channel Mix, Rota, Coverage, Training, Guest Feedback, Dashboard and HK Dashboard
- Rota and Labour Cost Planner (7 sheets): turns a room forecast into hours needed by role, plans the week person by person and shows labour cost per occupied room
Fillable PDF forms
- Reservation form and guest registration card
- Room inspection checklist: a 40-point departure standard and a stayover check
- Shift handover log: front desk handover and housekeeping end-of-day report
- Incident report, maintenance request and lost property tags with a release record
Word templates
- Front desk script and message library: 52 scripts and messages from the first call to the review reply
- Front office and housekeeping procedures manual template: service standards, 12 front office SOPs, 9 housekeeping SOPs and an emergency procedures one-pager
- Staff training plan and checklists: four-week plans, 16 competency checklists, a knowledge quiz and a sign-off record
- Guest letters, house rules and information templates: confirmation, invoice, pre-arrival email, guest information book, house rules, deposit request and thank-you letter
- Worked example pack: one composite day at a 12-room guesthouse with the forms completed
- AI prompt pack for guesthouse operations: 30 prompts, each with what to paste in and what to check
Cheat sheets
- Service recovery and room status decision card, with gesture authority levels
- Front desk and housekeeping mistakes to avoid
- Guest registration, safety and hygiene notes, dated October 2026
Calendar and import
- 30-day set-up and weekly controls calendar (ICS): 37 events for Google Calendar, Outlook or Apple Calendar
- Guesthouse operations task board (CSV): 28 tasks for Trello, Asana, Notion, Planner or Jira
When you have worked through it, you will be able to…
Every outcome is practised with a worked example and a tool, not just described.
- Keep every booking in one register with balances, deposits and commission calculated
- Prepare each day's arrivals and check guests in with a short, standard routine
- Handle requests and complaints the same way on every shift, with agreed gesture limits
- Run housekeeping by priority, inspect rooms before sale and coach from the inspection results
- Keep linen and supplies at par, log maintenance and lost property, and keep safety checks on schedule
- Reconcile cash and cards every shift and run a short night audit with occupancy, ADR and RevPAR
- Build rotas from the room forecast and train new staff with sign-offs you have observed
- Review a small set of numbers every Monday and adopt written procedures your team follows
Know your starting point. Prove your progress.
People who measure before and after improve faster and can show it. AssessAll, our sister assessment platform, has AI-graded assessments that pair with this kit. Take one now, work through the kit, then re-take it.
Hotel Front Office and Guest Recovery Assessment for Reception, Reservations and Duty Managers
Take the assessment →AssessAll assessmentThe Front Desk: Judgment When Everything Arrives at Once
Take the assessment →AssessAll assessmentCustomer Aggression and De-escalation Assessment for Frontline Staff
Take the assessment →JobularyIf-then plans that make habits stick (Jobulary)
Make it a growth plan →A taste of Chapter 1
A small property sells one thing: a room for a night. A night that passes unsold is gone forever, and a room sold twice is a crisis. So the first discipline of the front desk is treating the room inventory as stock that must be counted in one place. In practice that means one register of bookings. Many properties use a property management system (PMS), which is simply software that holds rooms, bookings, guests and bills. Many connect it to a channel manager, software that pushes your availability and rates to each booking site and pulls bookings back, so a room sold on one site closes on the others. Smaller places run on a spreadsheet and the extranet of each site. Any of these can work. What fails is having several half-registers: a diary, a booking site calendar and somebody's memory.
The honest comparison
| Free templates and typical advice | This kit | |
|---|---|---|
| Bookings | A diary plus each booking site's calendar | One register with balances, commission and a seven-point read-back for every booking |
| Check-in | Whatever the person on shift does | Arrivals prepared by 10:00 and a six-move check-in with scripts |
| Housekeeping | Clean in room-number order | A board that sets priorities from arrivals and departures, and a 40-point inspection standard |
| Complaints | Apologise and hope | A recovery ladder, gesture authority levels, a feedback log and the words for hard moments |
| Money | Count the drawer at the end of the week | Shift-by-shift cash and card reconciliation and a nightly audit with occupancy, ADR and RevPAR |
| Staff | Shadow someone and learn as you go | Rotas from the forecast, written handovers, four-week training plans and sign-offs |
| Rules and AI | Not mentioned, or one country assumed | Dated country notes, safety pointers and an AI prompt pack with a human-check rule |
Made for you if…
- Owners and managers of B&Bs, guesthouses, homestays and small hotels of up to about 40 rooms
- Short-let and holiday-rental hosts with staff on site, from one to twenty units
- Co-hosts and small property managers who run several properties for owners
- Front desk leads and housekeeping supervisors who train and organise a small team
- New owners opening or taking over a lodging business
- Properties in India, the UK, the US, Europe, Australia, Southeast Asia, the Gulf and Africa, in any currency
Probably not for you if…
- Unstaffed self-check-in rentals: The Short-Let Host Operations System is built for that
- Anyone looking for legal, tax or licensing advice: the kit teaches good practice and keeps country specifics in one dated sheet with pointers to official sources
- Large hotels with a full PMS, revenue team and departments: the method still applies, but the tools are sized for small teams
Built by trainers, tested in real rooms.
Bodhih Training has designed and delivered corporate programmes since 2008. Bodhih Pro Kits package what works in those workshops into a guide plus the exact tools we use, so you can apply it the same day without a facilitator in the room.
From here to using it in three steps
- STEP 1
Tap Get the kit
Name, email and country. UPI, card or netbanking in India; international cards everywhere else. No account to create.
- STEP 2
Download instantly
Your download page opens at once, with every file and a one-click ZIP. A permanent link lands in your inbox too.
- STEP 3
Open the first tool
Start with the quick-start chapter, then the main spreadsheet or planner. Most buyers use something from the kit the same day.
Your next arrival is already on its way. Have the house ready for them.
Open the Start Here map, type your settings and rooms into the workbook and print the inspection checklist. Whether you begin with the e-book this evening or the housekeeping board tomorrow at eight, the first hour is already planned.
Personal licence for the buyer's own use (and use with your own team or clients where the kit says so). Please don't share or resell the files. Team and company licences: solutions@bodhih.com.
What buyers say
No ratings yet. Only people who have bought this kit can rate it - every buyer gets a one-click rating link a couple of days after their purchase.
The Bodhih family, when you are ready for more
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Set room rates with a plan.
The Guest Experience Kit
Design the stay guests remember and review.
The Property Set-Up and Launch Kit
Take a property from empty to first guest.
AssessAll
250+ AI-graded assessments to measure skills and earn verified credentials.
Jobulary
Individual development plans that start from evidence and stay yours.
Bodhih Training
Run this topic as a live workshop for your team, in person or online.
Pewple
Book a vetted coach for career, leadership or communication. Pay per session.
Bodhih.org pathways
Certification pathways in Applied AI, Workplace English and management.
The Guesthouse Front Desk and Housekeeping Manual: FAQs
Read the free guideAlready bought? Resend my linkWhat does a guesthouse front desk do every day?
It takes and records bookings, prepares the day's arrivals, checks guests in and out, handles requests and complaints, takes payments, coordinates with housekeeping on which rooms are ready, hands over between shifts and closes the day with a short night audit. The kit gives each of those tasks a chapter, a procedure and a file.
How should housekeeping be organised in a small hotel?
Set a status code for every room at the start of the day, clean by priority (departures with an arrival today first), inspect each room against a written standard before it is sold, and keep linen and supplies at par. The Housekeeping Board in the workbook sets the priorities from your bookings and the inspection checklist sets the standard.
How many housekeepers does a small guesthouse need?
It depends on departures, stayovers and how long each clean takes in your rooms. Time three cleans, add an allowance for public areas and laundry, and divide by the productive minutes in a shift. The HK Dashboard and the Rota and Labour Cost Planner do this calculation from your own figures.
How should front desk staff handle a guest complaint?
Listen without interrupting, apologise for the experience, offer a choice of fixes with a time, follow up, give a gesture only for a real failure and within agreed limits, and log it so patterns get fixed. The script library and the decision card give the exact words and the authority levels.
How do I measure my team's starting point?
AssessAll offers assessments that match this kit: Hotel Front Office and Guest Recovery Assessment for Reception, Reservations and Duty Managers; The Front Desk: Judgment When Everything Arrives at Once; and Customer Aggression and De-escalation Assessment for Frontline Staff. Take one before you roll out the system and again a few months later. Links are on the Start Here map; the assessments are separate products and not included in the kit.
How do I turn the method into habits my team keeps?
Pick two or three routines per role, such as the five-heading handover or the 08:00 board, and tie each to a specific moment as an if-then plan. Jobulary's guide to if-then plans explains the idea, and the link is on the Start Here map.
Do I need a property management system to use this kit?
No. The workbook can be your booking register if you have no PMS, and a cross-check and control tool if you do. Either way, keep one place where every booking lives and close rooms on every channel as soon as they sell.
Is this legal, tax or safety advice for my country?
No. The kit is educational and teaches good practice. Guest registration, data protection, fire and food safety, tax and employment rules differ by country and city, so the specifics sit in one sheet dated October 2026 with pointers to official sources. Check your local authority, your accountant and qualified professionals before acting.
Which software do I need?
The workbooks open in Excel, Google Sheets or LibreOffice and use no macros. The forms are fillable in Acrobat Reader and most PDF apps, the templates open in Word or Google Docs, the calendar imports into Google Calendar, Outlook or Apple Calendar, and the CSV imports into Trello, Asana, Notion, Planner or Jira.
What is the refund policy?
Digital kits are non-refundable once downloaded. The exceptions are corrupted files that are not fixed within 3 working days, duplicate charges, or failed delivery.
How much does The Guesthouse Front Desk and Housekeeping Manual cost?
₹999 including 18% GST for buyers in India, or $29 for buyers outside India. One-time payment, no subscription, with an automatic invoice.
How do I get the files after paying?
Instantly. Your download page opens the moment payment succeeds, and a permanent download link is emailed to you. Download each file separately or everything in one ZIP.
What software do I need?
Any of the usual tools: Excel or Google Sheets for spreadsheets, Word or Google Docs for templates, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Preview, Xodo or GoodNotes for the fillable PDFs, and Google, Outlook or Apple Calendar for the calendar plan.
Can I get a refund?
Because it is a digital download, kits are not refundable once downloaded. We always refund a duplicate charge or a failed delivery, and if a file is corrupted and we cannot fix it within 3 working days. Full terms: bodhih.org/refunds.
Can my company buy this for a team?
Yes. Team and company licences, and workshops on this topic run by Bodhih Training, are available. Write to solutions@bodhih.com or call +91 99000 11601.
