How The Alderton Hotel Automated Guest Inquiries Across Three Properties
Challenge
The Alderton Hotel Group operates three boutique hotels inNashville, Tennessee - a flagship property in the Gulch neighborhood, a second location near Vanderbilt University, and a recently opened property in EastNashville. Combined, the three properties managed over 200 rooms and a shared guest services inbox that received between 150 and 200 emails per day.
Guest inquiries covered predictable ground: room availability, pricing, parking, check-in and check-out times, pet policies, amenities, local recommendations, group bookings, and special requests. The same questions arrived from different guests every single day across all three properties.
The guest services team of four coordinators was managing these inquiries manually alongside their in-person and phone duties. Email response times during busy periods stretched to several hours, a problem in an industry where guests often send the same inquiry to multiple hotels and book with whoever responds first.
The situation was most acute overnight. Emails sent after 6pmfrequently waited until the following morning for a response, meaning guestsbooking last-minute or planning ahead from a different time zone were oftenwaiting 12 or more hours for basic availability information.
“We were losing bookings to faster hotels. Someone asks three properties if they have a king room available for the weekend. We’re the ones who respond at 9am the next day. We’re not the ones who get the booking,” saidClaire Oberg.
Approach
The Alderton connected one shared inbox for each of theirthree properties to InboxPilot - three inboxes managed from a single dashboard.
Each inbox had its own Knowledge Center configured with property-specific information:
• Room type descriptions, pricing ranges, and availabilitypolicies
• Check-in and check-out times, early check-in and latecheck-out policies
• Parking availability and costs for each location
• Pet policy, accessibility information, and amenity details
• Local area guides and restaurant recommendations
• Group booking procedures and event space information
• Cancellation and modification policies
Custom labels were configured per inbox: Availability Inquiry,Room Question, Group Booking, Special Request, Complaint, Existing Reservation,and Misc.
Email actions automatically routed group booking inquiries to the events coordinator and complaints to the property manager. For standard availability and policy questions, auto-reply was enabled immediately - the answers were accurate, consistent, and required no human judgment.
Solution
Within four weeks, The Alderton had transformed their guest communication operations across all three properties. Availability inquiries received instant responses at any hour. Policy questions — parking, pets, check-in times - were answered automatically and accurately. Special requests were acknowledged immediately and flagged for the relevant coordinator to follow up.
The guest services team’s email workload dropped significantly. Instead of composing responses to repetitive inquiries all day, coordinators focused on group bookings, complaints, and high-touch guest relationships.
The most meaningful change was overnight. Emails that previously sat unanswered for 12 hours were now responded to within minutes. Weekend occupancy — typically driven heavily by last-minute bookings - improved in the first full month after deployment.
Claire attributed three confirmed group bookings in the first eight weeks directly to the speed of the initial automated response, which kept the prospect engaged long enough for the events team to follow up with a formal proposal.
Results
What’s next
The Alderton is now deploying InboxPilot’s website chatbot on each property’s individual booking page to answer pre-booking questions from visitors in real time and capture leads from guests who are not quite ready to book.
Their next milestone: full AI coverage of all standard guest inquiry categories across all three properties by Q3 2026, with human coordinators focused exclusively on group events, complaints, and VIP guest relationships.
This case study is based on a composite of real customer experiences using InboxPilot’s AI email automation features.
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