Booking accommodation and arranging accommodation are two different jobs, and almost all of the second one happens in the fortnight after the first is done. This is that second job, written down.
Most stays that go wrong were booked perfectly well. What went wrong was in the gap: nobody confirmed the parking, the access instructions reached a manager instead of the person travelling, or the property was fine and the commute turned out to be fifty minutes at seven in the morning.
None of it is difficult. It is a list, and having the list is most of the value. If you are still choosing between options, the questions for that stage are in serviced accommodation or a hotel; this picks up once the booking exists.
Two weeks out: the things with a lead time
Five items that cannot be done at the last minute, and that everybody tries to do at the last minute anyway.
Parking, confirmed for the actual vehicles
Not "is there parking" but "is there room for two vans with roof racks, and where do they go overnight". Height barriers and permit schemes are the two that take days to sort and five minutes to ask about.
Anything anybody needs on medical or accessibility grounds
Ask the question routinely of everybody, rather than waiting for somebody to volunteer it. A ground floor room or a bath rather than a shower is easy three weeks out and very hard on the Friday.
Whether the invoice can go where finance needs it to go
Company invoice or personal expense claim, purchase order number, payment terms. Settle it before arrival, because arguing about it in week three sours a stay that was otherwise going fine.
The real commute, checked at the real time
Look at the route from the accommodation to the site at the hour people will actually travel. A twenty minute drive at two in the afternoon can be a fifty minute one at seven in the morning.
Who is staying, by name
Not a headcount. Names, arrival dates and departure dates, because they are rarely all the same, and because somebody has to be able to hand over a key to a specific person.
The week before: two sets of information
There is what the person travelling needs, and there is what you need. They are not the same list, and the first one is the one that gets missed because it feels like somebody else has sent it.
Send to the person staying
- The full address, and a postcode that actually takes a satnav to the door rather than to the middle of the estate.
- How to get in: key safe, meeting somebody, a code, and what to do if it is nine at night and it does not work.
- The Wi-Fi details, before they arrive rather than after they have used their own data all evening.
- Where to park, specifically, and whether a permit or a fob is involved.
- Which day the bins go out, which sounds trivial and is the single most common thing nobody is told.
- The number to ring when something is wrong, and confirmation that it is answered outside office hours.
Confirm for yourself
- Confirmation the booking dates match the programme, not the version from three weeks ago.
- What is included and what is not: heating, electricity, water, internet, cleaning, linen, towels.
- Whether the property is ready on the arrival date or being turned around that morning.
- What happens if somebody arrives a day early or leaves a day late.
- The notice needed to extend, and whether the rate holds.
- Who the supplier will contact if there is a problem, and whether that is you or the person staying.
Send the left-hand list to the people actually travelling, not to their manager to pass on. It is the single cheapest thing on this page and it prevents most first-night phone calls.
The first 48 hours
The stay is largely set by what happens in the first two days. Four things.
- Check somebody actually got in. One message on the first evening. A key that does not work at ten at night is a small problem for twenty minutes and a large one by midnight, and people are oddly reluctant to ring anybody about it.
- Get the first shop done. A kitchen is only useful when there is something in it. The stays that go badly are very often the ones where nobody shopped in the first two days and takeaways became the default by week one.
- Report anything that is not right, immediately. A slow shower, a heater that does not come on, a missing bin. All of these are trivial to fix on day two and infuriating by day thirty, and nobody can fix what they have not been told about.
- Test the commute for real. Drive or walk it once before the first early start, at roughly the right hour. Better to find the closed road on a Sunday than at half six on the Monday.
The whole thing, as one list
Copy this into wherever you keep such things. Twelve items, most of them a single message.
- Confirm the booking dates against the current programme, not the original one.
- Confirm the parking, for the vehicles that are actually coming.
- Ask everybody travelling about accessibility or medical requirements.
- Confirm what is included: heating, electricity, water, internet, cleaning, linen, towels.
- Settle invoicing, the purchase order number and payment terms.
- Check the commute from the accommodation to the site, at the right time of day.
- Send the address, postcode, access instructions and Wi-Fi details to the people travelling.
- Send the out-of-hours number, and confirm somebody answers it.
- Tell them where to park and what day the bins go out.
- Agree who reports a problem, to whom, and how.
- Check somebody got in on the first evening.
- Ask, in week two, how it is actually going.
If you find yourself rebuilding this list every time somebody goes away, that is what a written accommodation policy is for.
Common questions
How much of this should the supplier be doing?
A good supplier should be handling the property side without being chased: the access arrangements, what is included, the state it is in on arrival, and putting things right when they are not. What no supplier can do for you is know your programme, your people or your finance process. The split is worth agreeing out loud at the start rather than discovering it on the first evening.
What is the most commonly forgotten item?
Out-of-hours contact, and it is not close. Everybody sorts the address and the keys. Far fewer check what happens when the heating packs up at nine on a Saturday, which is exactly when it will. Ask who answers, on what number, and then confirm the person staying actually has it rather than assuming it reached them.
We are only sending one person for two weeks. Is all this necessary?
No, and doing all of it for a short single stay would be silly. The items that still earn their place are the address and access details, the out-of-hours number, the parking answer and a check on the first evening. That is four things and about ten minutes. The rest scales with the size and length of the stay.
Who should hold the checklist, us or the supplier?
You should, because most of it is about your people and your programme rather than the property. Send the supplier the parts that are theirs. The failure mode is both sides assuming the other is tracking it, which is how a crew arrives to a property nobody has confirmed is ready.
When should the checklist actually start?
The lead-time items want about two weeks, because parking permits, accessibility adjustments and finance approvals all take longer than people expect. Everything else fits comfortably into the week before. If you have less time than that, do the four items in the answer above and catch up on the rest afterwards.
In short
Do the lead-time items two weeks out, send the arrival information to the people actually travelling rather than to their manager, and check somebody got in on the first evening. That is most of it.
There is a guest help page written for the person staying, which is worth forwarding on with the address. If you are mobilising a whole crew rather than sending one person, planning accommodation for a project team covers the stage before this one.
Would rather not run the list yourself?
Tell us where your people need to be, when they arrive, how many of them and roughly how long for. We take on the arranging, not just the booking.
Support during a stay is available 24/7, so the out-of-hours number on the list is one somebody answers.