Three files, three days: preparing your menus and services

Going live should not tie up your team for weeks. With three well-prepared files, your hotel is online three days after you hand them over.

Many digital projects stall in hotels before they have ever been used. The tool is rarely to blame: setting it up takes meetings, IT access and endless data entry, and in high season nobody has the time.

We approached the problem from the other end. HOTELLA asks you for three files, nothing more, and our team takes care of the rest.

Rooms, catalogue, programme

The first file is the list of your rooms as your team knows it: numbers, floors, categories. Suites and villas appear under their own names if you use them. This file ensures that every request arrives with the right room number, so there is never any doubt about where it should go.

There is no need to format it. An export from your current system or the spreadsheet kept by the front desk is more than enough.

The second file is your catalogue. It brings together everything a guest can order or book: the room service menu, the pool bar menu, spa treatments, housekeeping requests, transfers. Each line has a name, a short description and, if you wish, a price. The catalogue is imported from an Excel file.

The third file is your programme. It describes what gives the stay its rhythm: breakfast times, pool opening hours, entertainment, themed evenings, children’s activities. This is what allows the assistant to give the right answer when a guest asks at 10 pm whether the beach bar is still open.

Files that change as your hotel does

The catalogue is the file that will change most often. When your chef updates the restaurant menu for the summer, you update the spreadsheet, run a single import, and the new menu is live. No phone calls, no waiting for an update.

The same applies to the spa’s new summer treatment, the Sunday brunch or the golf transfer added mid-season. Anything your team already manages in a spreadsheet, it can put online.

The programme deserves the same attention. The more precise it is, the fewer calls your front desk receives for simple questions. An hour of writing here saves weeks of repeating the same answers on the phone. Simply plan to review it with each change of season.

Why three days are enough

Once the three files are in our hands, configuration and import are handled by our team and included. Three days later, your hotel is live: the QR codes can go into the rooms, and your teams receive their first requests in Hotella Pilot.

HOTELLA runs independently, without touching your IT systems. A connection with your PMS can be considered hotel by hotel, where it makes sense for you, but it is not a prerequisite. You can therefore start without waiting for your software vendor or service provider to be available.

The best way to judge is to watch a catalogue take shape on screen. A demonstration shows you the full journey, from the Excel file to the order arriving in the kitchen.