Most advice about hotel guest communication is based on surveys or vendor claims. We wanted to see the real picture, so we analysed two years of guest e-mails to our own hotel: a small seaside hotel in Sweden with 10 rooms. This page shares what we found, how we counted and where the data is uncertain.
Key findings
- Availability and price is the #1 question — 23.6% of guest e-mails, and it touches roughly one in three.
- Pets are the #2 topic — 12.2% of guest e-mails, more than cancellations.
- 46% arrive outside weekday office hours, 11% at night.
- One in three is not in Swedish — English 25%, Danish 5%, Norwegian 3%.
- Median first reply: 1 h 52 min — 1 h 12 min in office hours, 4 h 26 min otherwise. 22.5% got an e-mail reply within an hour.
- Group and invoice requests wait longest — medians of 10 h 40 min and 14 h 35 min.
The data
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Period | October 2024 – October 2026 (24 months) |
| Hotel | Small seaside hotel in Sweden, 10 rooms, owned by the BookingWatch founders |
| E-mails screened | 9,690 in the inbox and about 300 sent; 2,862 read in full |
| Guest e-mails after filtering | 900 (469 of them started a new thread) |
| Excluded | Suppliers, booking-site notifications, newsletters, job applications, authorities, spam, travel agencies |
What guests e-mail about
Each e-mail was given one main topic. Counts are approximate — the classification was automatic and spot-checked.
| Main topic | Guest e-mails | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Availability and price | 212 | 23.6% |
| Bringing a pet | 110 | 12.2% |
| Cancellation | 79 | 8.8% |
| Group, wedding, conference | 36 | 4.0% |
| Changing a booking | 28 | 3.1% |
| Receipt or invoice | 27 | 3.0% |
| Parking, campervan, charging | 11 | 1.2% |
| Late check-out / early check-in / discount / complaint | 5 | 0.6% |
| Other | 392 | 43.6% |
"Other" is mostly guests replying in an ongoing booking thread, plus questions about breakfast and restaurants nearby, bikes and hiking, room wishes (beds, children, extra bed, sea view), arrival time and keys, payment and lost property.
Three things that surprised us
- Late check-out and early check-in almost never arrive by e-mail (3 e-mails in two years). Our booking engine lets guests add them when they book — so the cheapest way to handle a question is to make it bookable.
- Complaints by e-mail are very rare. Dissatisfaction shows up on site, in reviews or as a reply to our follow-up e-mail after the stay.
- Cancellations are often about bookings made on a booking site — the guest writes to the hotel, but the cancellation has to be made on the platform.
When guests write
| Time the e-mail arrived | Share |
|---|---|
| Weekdays 08–17 | 54.3% |
| Outside weekday 08–17 | 45.7% |
| — of which weekends | 18.1% |
| — of which weekday evenings 17–22 | 16.6% |
| Night 22–07 (all days) | 11.1% |
Volume follows the season, with a peak from May to August. In January 2026 availability inquiries jumped (23 of 38 guest e-mails that month) — guests were planning their summer early. 2026 is higher than 2025, partly because the hotel now stays open all year.
Which languages
| Language | Share |
|---|---|
| Swedish | 65.7% |
| English | 25.1% |
| Danish | 5.0% |
| Norwegian | 2.7% |
| German, Dutch, unclear | 1.5% |
Many German, Polish and Baltic guests write in English, so "English" covers far more nationalities than English-speaking countries.
How fast guests got a reply
Measured on new threads (n = 453, excluding pure thank-you and confirmation e-mails), from the guest's e-mail to the hotel's first e-mail reply.
| All | Arrived weekdays 08–17 | Arrived other times | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Median reply time | 1 h 52 min | 1 h 12 min | 4 h 26 min |
| Reply within 1 hour | 22.5% | 28.7% | 17.2% |
| Reply within 24 hours | 50.1% | 54.5% | 46.3% |
| No traceable e-mail reply* | 39.1% | 34.4% | 43.0% |
* This overstates unanswered e-mails: some guests were answered by phone, through a booking site's messaging or from another address.
By topic, availability (median 1 h 22 min), cancellations (1 h 18 min) and pets (1 h 40 min) were answered fastest. Group inquiries (10 h 40 min) and invoice requests (14 h 35 min) waited longest — exactly the e-mails that need a bit more work, and are easy to postpone.
What we learned — and what we recommend
- Answer the evening and the weekend. Almost half of the e-mails arrive when the front desk is busy or closed. That is the gap BookingWatch was built to close in our own hotel.
- Answer every question in the e-mail. Our weakest replies were fast but incomplete — one of two nights answered, the price left out, the real question (a room for tomorrow) missed while the side question (parking) was answered.
- Turn frequent questions into booking options. Pets were the second most common topic, and a guest told us the dog could not be added in the booking engine. Late check-out, which guests can add in the booking engine, almost never comes up by e-mail.
- Always confirm in writing. Cancellations and changes without a written confirmation leave the guest unsure.
- Reply in the guest's language — or at least in English. One in three guests wrote in another language.
Limitations
- One small hotel in one country. The data illustrates patterns; it does not represent the hotel industry.
- Topics were classified automatically; individual e-mails can be in the wrong category.
- About 235 guest messages sent through a booking site's messaging are not included, because the message itself stays on the platform.
- We could not reliably connect inquiries to bookings, so this data says nothing about whether faster replies lead to more bookings.
Source: BookingWatch analysis of 900 anonymised guest e-mails to the founders' hotel, October 2024 – October 2026. Analysis done read-only; no personal data is published. You are welcome to cite these figures with a link to this page.