Hotel answering service questions, answered

Hotel QA is a hotel answering service and virtual front desk for independent hotels. Our live agents answer your phone calls and guest messages, book reservations in your property management system, help locked-out guests and escalate real emergencies to your on-call manager. We are based in St. Petersburg, Florida, and serve independent hotels across the United States and Canada, with our first properties now in Europe.

A hotel answering service picks up the calls your front desk can't get to, whether that's overnight, during a busy check-in rush or when someone calls out. Instead of voicemail, guests reach a trained agent who can answer questions, take and change reservations, handle lockouts and late arrivals, and pass urgent issues to your team.

Yes. Many hotels use us as a backup: calls ring at your front desk first, and if your staff doesn't pick up within a set number of rings (we recommend 3), the call rolls over to Hotel QA. You can also have us answer 24/7, or only during certain hours such as overnight.

Yes. Our agents are trained in the property management systems independent hotels use, so reservations, changes and cancellations go straight into your system instead of onto a sticky note.

Our agents are trained in Cloudbeds, Mews, ResNexus, WebRezPro, Little Hotelier, Think Reservations, innRoad and RoomMaster. If your hotel uses a different system, ask us and we'll tell you how we can work with it. Hotel QA is an independent company and is not affiliated with or endorsed by these PMS providers.

Our agents are trained on your door lock system and your lockout procedure, so most lockouts are solved on the call without waking anyone up. If your procedure requires someone on site, we contact the person you designate.

We follow your escalation rules. Routine questions are answered on the spot, and real emergencies, such as a water leak or a safety issue, are escalated to your on-call manager right away. Your manager gets the calls that matter instead of every call.

Yes. Replying to guest messages on approved guest messaging services is included in your monthly fee, so texts and chats get answered alongside your calls.

Hotel QA is billed for the call time we actually handle, plus a small commission on reservations our agents book for you, so you aren't paying someone to sit and wait for the phone. For a typical small hotel with 24/7 coverage, that usually comes to far less than staffing the overnight shift. Our free savings calculator gives you an estimate for your property in about a minute.

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For most independent hotels, yes. Staffing just the overnight shift (11 p.m. to 7 a.m.) at $15 an hour costs about $3,650 a month before payroll taxes, and covering the desk around the clock costs about $10,950. With Hotel QA you pay for the calls we handle, not the hours spent waiting for the phone to ring. If you still need someone on site overnight, we take the phones off their plate.

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We work with independent hotels: boutique hotels, inns, motels, lodges and small resorts that don't have a chain's central reservations office behind them. Our agents work as an extension of your team and answer as your property.

Besides our 24/7 hotel contact center, we offer a full-service Virtual General Manager plan (setup, calls, OTAs, revenue management and daily operations), plus revenue management, OTA management and hotel consulting as standalone services.

Book a 15-minute call with our team. We'll ask how your front desk runs today, which PMS and door lock system you use, and when you need coverage, then show you what live answering would look like for your property. You can also call us at (813) 553-4412.

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