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Posts in Release Radar

We run the stay. This is where we show our work. Each Release; guest-facing and back-office, on whatever PMS you already run. Nothing here is a preview or a roadmap. It has been shipped, then it appears and is available to everybody.

Tasks, departments, and who can see what
Release Radar
Tasks, departments, and who can see what

Tasks is the largest thing we have built and never announced. It has been doing real work for a year, and this week a task can finally belong to a department rather than to a person. Here is each part, what it does, and what it does not.

Kevin Hoft · 8 min read
Release Radar
Two ways to charge for the extra. Neither moves your banking.

A guest taps yes on the sunset cruise at 14:20 on a Wednesday. Every article about upselling ends there. The operator's actual next question is where the money goes, and there are only two honest answers, neither of which requires you to move your banking.

Kevin Hoft · 9 min read
Upsell by itinerary, not by email blast
Release Radar
Upsell by itinerary, not by email blast

Most upsell tools time an offer off one date field, check-in minus seven, and reach everyone with the same thing whatever is already in their week. Target the message template on the contents of the guest's itinerary instead, and write the rule yourself.

Kevin Hoft · 15 min read
Who plans day three?
Release Radar
Who plans day three?

Both ends of a stay are crowded with software. The middle is three days of small, repeated, answerable questions, and it is where your reputation is made. A stay produces one list, most properties keep it three times over, and this is what happens when you keep it once.

Kevin Hoft · 11 min read
White-label guest app: your domain, your colours
Release Radar
White-label guest app: your domain, your colours

Branding is a distribution decision rather than a design one: an app store download, a redirect onto a vendor's domain and a sender name nobody recognises are each a place where a share of your guests fall out. Run the guest app on your own domain, in your own palette and your own voice, and those handoffs stop existing.

Kevin Hoft · 7 min read
Guest registration requirements in Europe, by country
Release Radar
Guest registration requirements in Europe, by country

A country-by-country table of guest registration requirements in six European markets, with the official authority source and the date it was last checked. Only three of the six have a filing system at all; in the other three the duty is to hold a register at the property and produce it on request.

Kevin Hoft · 9 min read
Self check-in for hostels, parks and aparthotels
Release Radar
Self check-in for hostels, parks and aparthotels

Hostels, holiday parks and aparthotels do not have a queue problem. They have a nobody-is-there problem. Four steps on the guest's own phone, a camera reading a passport, a signature on glass, and the reservation staying correct in the PMS you already run.

Kevin Hoft · 9 min read
What an AI agent can actually do to your property
Release Radar
What an AI agent can actually do to your property

The HolidayHero MCP server is generally available. The full tool list, the permission model, the audit trail, and an honest account of what is not ready yet.

Hjalte Niehorster · 8 min read
One inbox for all guest communication: SMS, email, WhatsApp and OTA messaging
Release Radar
One inbox for all guest communication: SMS, email, WhatsApp and OTA messaging

A forty-room property answers guests on five surfaces before lunch. What changes when WhatsApp, SMS, email, web chat, Booking.com and Airbnb become one queue — with the reservation showing alongside the conversation, sitting on top of the PMS you already run.

Kevin Hoft · 7 min read