Hotel: The Gotham Hotel | Location: Midtown East, Manhattan, New York | Rooms: 67 rooms and suites | Property type: Boutique hotel | Stayntouch products: Stayntouch PMS, Stayntouch Guest Messaging | Key priorities: Personalized service, a lighter front desk workload, upsell revenue and guest reviews
The Hotel
The Gotham Hotel is a boutique hotel in Midtown East, near Times Square and Rockefeller Center, with 67 rooms and suites across 25 floors.
General Manager Kristina Tinaj leads a small team at more than 90% occupancy, with guests from all over the world.
When the Phone Came Before the Guest
“Before Stayntouch Guest Messaging, my front desk team spent 70% of their day answering the phone to repeat the Wi-Fi password for the tenth time, explain where the closest parking garage is, or type out late checkout requests. While they were stuck on the phone, a guest was standing right in front of them waiting for assistance.”
— Kristina Tinaj, General Manager, The Gotham Hotel
Messages from Booking.com, Expedia and Airbnb added to the load, with a separate extranet to check for each one.
Built to Help the Human Touch
The Gotham introduced Stayntouch Guest Messaging in June to make the hotel easier to reach and take pressure off the front desk.
“We didn’t implement a chat messaging system to replace the human touch. We implemented it to help the human touch.”
— Kristina Tinaj, General Manager, The Gotham Hotel
She told her team: “This is not to replace you, this is to help you.” Their verdict: “We love it.”
A Message at the Right Moment
Guests hear from the hotel at every stage:
- A confirmation when they book.
- A pre-arrival message inviting questions about parking or bag storage and asking when they’ll arrive.
- Pre-check-in, then a text when the room is ready, so no one waits in the lobby.
- A message the morning after check-in asking how the stay is going.
- A thank-you after checkout with a direct link to leave a review.
More Time for the Guest in Front of You
Kristina believes automation can make hospitality more personal, as long as you know when a person needs to step in.
When a guest walks into the lobby, the team isn’t on the phone or buried behind a computer. They look up, make eye contact and talk about the best lunch spot nearby.
They also learn who is staying. Kristina now gets notes like this: a guest just started at a company three blocks away and plans to come every Monday. That helps the sales team spot repeat business and corporate partnerships.
Many guests now know front desk agents like Brandon and Ilda by name. Pre-check-in details help the team prepare special touches for VIPs and returning guests, while the welcome stays in person.
“The technology handles the transaction, so our team can handle the hospitality.”
— Kristina Tinaj, General Manager, The Gotham Hotel
Knowing When a Person Steps In
When the AI doesn’t have a direct answer, it tells the guest it will connect them with an agent, and a red light blinks on the chat icon for whoever is on shift. Complaints, special arrangements and reservation changes go to the team.
The guest sees the agent’s name, and some arrive asking for the person they texted. Stayntouch Guest Messaging can also pick up on tone and prompt the team to take over when a conversation is heading toward service recovery.
Even with about 11 languages on the team, some guests speak none of them. Instead of Google Translate, staff now use the system’s translation, even with the guest standing at the desk.
One Inbox, Fewer Missed Requests
OTA messages now share one inbox with the website chat, which also answers questions before people book. The AI answers many right away, and nothing sits unseen on an extranet. Chat history shows what a guest was promised.
International guests often can’t take calls in New York. With WhatsApp, the team can tell them their room is ready, or that they left something behind.
With arrival times collected in advance, housekeeping knows each morning which rooms are needed early. At a small property with many room types, that ends the “we need this room in 15 minutes” scramble.
When the first-morning message turns up a cold room or a loud AC, maintenance fixes it that day, before it becomes a bad review.
Early Check-In and Upgrades Without the Back-and-Forth
Early check-in is where Kristina has seen the most upsells, and “a drastic difference.” A guest texts about check-in. The AI explains that check-in is at 3:00 PM and offers 12:00 PM for a fee. The guest says yes. “Done deal,” she says.
Room upgrades have made a difference too. When a guest asks for a city view, the system explains that it’s a different room type with an upgrade fee. There’s no long phone negotiation for a freebie. A late arrival gives the team time to sell a late checkout or day-use booking that day, which Kristina calls “potential easy add-on revenue.”
Reviews are improving, too, especially on TripAdvisor, where the post-checkout message links. Kristina says the link “definitely helped out.”
Up and Running in About a Day
Because Stayntouch Guest Messaging is embedded in Stayntouch PMS, much of the hotel’s information, such as room types and add-ons, was already in place. Kristina adjusted the wording of some descriptions to make them “AI friendly.” “I feel like we finished everything in one day,” she says.
Kristina updates details when things change, like the gym closing for renovation, and is training her front office supervisor to take over. At least once a week she reviews the questions the AI struggled with. In the first couple of weeks there were 11 to 15 of those flags. Now there are one or two.
What Comes Next
Four months in, the team is still refining how it uses the system. Kristina is clear about where the value lies.
“I see the greatest value when technology takes unnecessary pressure off the team without taking away the human side of hospitality.”
— Kristina Tinaj, General Manager, The Gotham Hotel
Originally published by Stayntouch: How the Gotham Hotel Uses AI-Powered Guest Messaging to Personalize Its Service
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