The in-room guest directory

The twelve things guests actually look for

A guest directory almost always starts with the same gesture: someone in the family sits down one winter evening and writes down everything a guest might ask. What comes out is a complete binder, where every page carries the same weight. Guests, though, look for one thing at a time, and almost always in the same order. These are the twelve, in that order.

On walking into the room

1. The Wi-FiNetwork name and password, written large, on the first page. It is the first thing everyone asks for, before they have even put the suitcase down.
2. Who is on duty, and how to reach themThe reception's extension or WhatsApp number, and the hours when someone answers. If nobody is there at night, say so: guests would rather know at nine in the evening than find out at midnight.
3. How things in the room workThe air conditioning, the hot water, the safe, the window screens. Five lines, not a manual. These are the questions that otherwise reach reception at eleven at night.

The next morning

4. BreakfastWhat time, where, and whether it can be served in the room or in the garden. If early leavers get different hours, or a packed breakfast to take away, this is where it goes.
5. Parking and keysWhere to leave the car, whether the gate is locked at night, how to get back in late.
6. The pool or the beachOpening hours, towels, whether sun loungers are booked and how. It is the page that changes most from one year to the next.

Around midday

7. What to do todayThree ideas for half a day, not a list of everything in the county. The ones you have tried yourselves, with the reason you recommend them.
8. Where to eatThree places, each with its reason: fish here, steak there, pizza round the corner. With the number to book and whether you need the car.
9. Pharmacy and doctorThe nearest pharmacy and its hours, the out-of-hours doctor's number, the hospital. Nobody reads it until they need it, and when they need it, it has to be there.

During the stay

10. House rulesQuiet after a certain hour, towels, pets, smoking. Five lines, written the way the lady of the house would say them, not like the small print of a lease.
11. The house and the people who run itHow long you have been here, who was here before, what the land around it produces. It is the part guests photograph and talk about back home.
12. Check-outWhat time, where to leave the key, whether a late check-out is possible and how to ask. It is the last thing they read, and it decides the mood they leave in.

In what order to put them

The right order is not by topic but by the hours of the day. The Wi-Fi is needed at five in the afternoon, breakfast at half past seven in the morning, the local area at eleven, the pharmacy when it is needed. A well-made directory is read from start to finish only once, on the day of arrival, and after that it is opened to find one specific thing. If that thing is on page twenty-three, the guest closes it and goes down to reception.

Why a guest's day has its own hours, and what changes when the information arrives at that hour, we have written about in another note: At the right moment.

The four things that won't fit

Even the best directory, printed on good paper and redone every spring, has four limits that do not depend on who wrote it. They are the limits of paper.

• Language. A directory comes in one or two languages: here in Puglia, Italian and English. A German guest reads it in English, and the details you took most care over, the story behind that olive mill, the history of the house, only half reach them.
• Updates. The restaurant that closed in June stays in the directory until winter. The pharmacy's number changes in April and the room still has the old one. Reprinting costs money, and in high season there is no time.
• Questions. A directory informs; it does not answer. When guests can't find something, or want something that isn't written down, they go down to reception or message the property's WhatsApp. And that request lives on the phone of whoever received it: if the shift changes at three, the colleague coming on doesn't see it.
• Feedback. A directory doesn't tell you what was read. You will never know whether anyone opens the restaurants page, whether the history of the house interests them, what language your guests read in. At the end of the season you have the number of rooms sold and no figures at all on what guests looked for.

What Cortése does in place of the directory

On the nightstand there is a wooden frame, holding a print and a code to scan. The guest scans it with their phone and a page opens, with nothing to download and no sign-up. Inside are the same twelve things as this guide, written by you, in the guest's own language (English, Italian, German) and in the order of their day: breakfast at half past seven, what to do today at eleven, the aperitivo and the restaurant at seven in the evening.

And there is a button, Ask. The guest's request, a table outside, a late check-out, a taxi at six, reaches the phone of whoever is on duty at reception, and stays written there, with its status. If the shift changes at three, the colleague finds it in the same place, without the guest having to repeat it. In the Desk's Report the property sees which pages guests open most and at what time of day: what the directory has never been able to tell you.

The restaurant that closes in June comes off in a minute from the reception's phone, and disappears from every room at once. The frame stays the same: the page changes, not the print.

In Puglia we install the frames ourselves, room by room, on a site visit, and reception learns to use its side, the one where requests arrive, with us there, not from a manual. Further afield we work remotely, as described on our home page. Nobody at the property writes the translations: we prepare them, together with the content.

What Cortése does not do

• It is not a property management system. Bookings, rooms and payments stay where they are today. Cortése begins when the guest is already in the room and ends when they leave.
• It does not answer on its own. Behind the Ask button there is no program making up answers: there is your reception, reading and replying as it would in person. The machine carries the request and keeps it in order. The answer is yours.
• It does not know the guest. It knows the room, not the person. No name, no ID, no profile: the page belongs to the room and resets when the guest changes.
• It doesn't make you remove the directory. If you like it, it stays. The frame sits beside it and does the four things paper can't.