Pre-Opening Guide #4: Hotel SOPs Before Opening

Which hotel SOPs should be ready before opening?

A new hotel should prepare SOPs for the activities that happen frequently, affect guests, involve money, create safety risks, or require coordination between departments. Start with reservations, front office, housekeeping, maintenance, payments, complaints, emergencies, procurement, and staff handovers.

You do not need to document every minor action before opening.

Prioritize processes where inconsistency could create a real operational problem.

A useful starting list includes:

• Reservation & booking
• Check-in & checkout
• Room cleaning & inspection
• Room-status management
• Guest complaints
• Maintenance requests
• Payment & cash handling
• Refunds & cancellations
• Discounts & comps
• Shift handovers
• Lost and found
• Procurement & receiving
• Inventory management
• Emergency response
• Security incidents
• Staff attendance

The purpose of an SOP is simple: two employees should be able to approach the same recurring situation and understand what is expected.

What should a hotel SOP actually contain?

A useful SOP should explain the task, the person responsible, the required steps, the conditions that change the process, and how completion is verified.

A practical structure is:

Purpose: Why does this procedure exist?

Owner: Which role is responsible?

Trigger: When does the procedure begin?

Procedure: What steps should be followed?

Exceptions: What happens when the normal process does not apply?

Escalation: When should a supervisor or manager become involved?

Record: Where should the activity be documented?

Completion: How do we know it has been completed correctly?

For example, “clean guest rooms daily” is not an effective SOP.

It does not specify who is responsible, what standard applies, what happens when a room contains a maintenance problem, or who verifies the room before it becomes available.

The objective is not to write more words.

It is to remove ambiguity.

Which front-office SOPs should a new hotel create?

Start with the procedures employees will use throughout the guest journey, from reservation through checkout.

Important front-office SOPs include:

• Taking a reservation
• Confirming a reservation
• Modifying a booking
• Cancelling a booking
• Handling no-shows
• Checking in a guest
• Checking out a guest
• Handling early arrival
• Handling late checkout
• Room changes
• Guest identification
• Payment collection
• Refunds
• Discounts
• Complimentary services
• Guest complaints
• Shift handover

Each procedure should clearly define what frontline staff can do themselves and what requires approval.

For example, an employee may be able to move a guest to another equivalent room but require manager approval to provide a substantial discount or refund.

This prevents staff from making inconsistent decisions simply because the person working that shift interprets the rules differently.

What housekeeping SOPs should be ready before opening?

Housekeeping SOPs should define how rooms are cleaned, inspected, reported, and released for guests. They should also establish standards for linen, amenities, lost property, and room defects.

At minimum, document:

• Room-cleaning sequence
• Bathroom cleaning
• Bed and linen standards
• Amenities replenishment
• Cleaning supplies
• Room inspection
• Defect reporting
• Lost and found
• Deep-cleaning schedules
• Public-area cleaning
• Linen handling
• Damaged items

The room inspection procedure deserves particular attention.

Cleaning and inspection are different activities.

The person who cleans the room may not be the person who gives final approval for the room to be released.

The hotel should decide what constitutes an acceptable room and how that decision is recorded.

That creates a consistent standard rather than relying on individual judgment.

What maintenance SOPs should a new hotel prepare?

Maintenance procedures should explain how problems are reported, prioritized, assigned, resolved, and verified. They should also distinguish between routine maintenance and issues that could affect guest safety or room availability.

Document procedures for:

• Reporting faults
• Emergency repairs
• Routine maintenance
• Preventive maintenance
• Room defects
• Equipment failures
• Water problems
• Electrical problems
• Air-conditioning problems
• Generator or power issues
• Escalation
• Contractor involvement
• Closing completed tasks

A useful maintenance procedure should define priorities.

A broken light in a public area and a major water leak should not enter the same queue with the same urgency.

The hotel needs a clear method for determining what requires immediate intervention and what can wait.

This is particularly important in a new property because equipment failures often reveal installation or commissioning problems that were not obvious during construction.

What payment and financial SOPs should be ready?

Financial SOPs should establish who can receive money, record transactions, approve discounts, issue refunds, and reconcile accounts.

Document procedures for:

• Cash handling
• Card payments
• Bank transfers
• Payment links
• Deposits
• Refunds
• Discounts
• Complimentary charges
• Guest folios
• Checkout balances
• Daily reconciliation
• Cash handover
• Financial discrepancies

The goal is not to make employees suspicious of one another.

It is to make transactions traceable.

A good financial procedure should make it possible to answer:

What was received?

Who received it?

What was it for?

Where was it recorded?

Who approved any adjustment?

Does the final amount reconcile?

These controls should exist before the hotel starts processing meaningful transaction volume.

What guest complaint SOP should a hotel have?

A complaint SOP should tell employees how to receive, record, respond to, escalate, and close a guest complaint. It should give staff enough authority to resolve routine issues without requiring management approval for every interaction.

A simple framework is:

Listen → Acknowledge → Record → Resolve → Follow up → Close

The procedure should distinguish between different types of complaints.

A minor inconvenience may be resolved by frontline staff.

A serious service failure may require a manager.

A safety issue should follow a different escalation path entirely.

The important point is that the employee should not have to invent the response while standing in front of an unhappy guest.

The SOP should provide a clear framework while still allowing staff to exercise judgment.

What shift handover SOP should a new hotel have?

A shift handover SOP should ensure that important unresolved issues move from one team to the next without relying on memory.

The outgoing employee should communicate:

• Important arrivals
• Expected departures
• VIP or special requests
• Open guest complaints
• Outstanding payments
• Maintenance problems
• Rooms with special status
• Security concerns
• Tasks that remain incomplete

The receiving employee should confirm that the information has been understood.

This sounds simple, but handovers are one of the points where information can disappear.

A task that exists only in someone's memory may effectively disappear when that person goes home.

The handover process should therefore leave a reliable operational record.

What procurement and inventory SOPs should be ready?

Procurement procedures should define how the hotel requests, approves, receives, stores, and records supplies.

This can include:

• Purchase requests
• Supplier selection
• Purchase approval
• Receiving goods
• Checking quantities
• Checking quality
• Recording deliveries
• Storage
• Inventory counts
• Damaged goods
• Supplier discrepancies
• Invoice verification

The people ordering goods should not necessarily have unrestricted authority to approve and receive everything themselves.

The hotel should establish appropriate controls based on its size and risk.

For a new property, this is particularly important because the opening period can involve large volumes of purchases across furniture, amenities, cleaning supplies, food, beverages, maintenance materials, and other operating inventory.

What emergency SOPs should a hotel prepare?

Emergency procedures should cover situations where normal operating procedures are no longer sufficient. Staff should know what to do, who to contact, and when to escalate.

Depending on the property, emergency procedures may cover:

• Fire
• Medical emergencies
• Security incidents
• Power failure
• Water failure
• Major equipment failure
• Severe weather
• Evacuation
• Guest emergencies

Emergency SOPs should be practical.

A document that employees have never seen is unlikely to be useful during a crisis.

Train employees on the procedures and make sure critical information is accessible when needed.

Emergency procedures should also identify responsibilities rather than simply listing emergency phone numbers.

How should hotel SOPs handle exceptions?

Every important SOP should explain what happens when the normal process breaks down. Exceptions are where poorly designed procedures usually fail.

Consider a check-in procedure.

The normal case might be:

Reservation exists → guest arrives → payment confirmed → room available → check-in completed.

But what happens when:

• The reservation cannot be found?
• The room is not ready?
• Payment has not arrived?
• The guest disputes the amount?
• The guest wants a room change?
• The assigned room has a maintenance problem?

The SOP should not attempt to predict every possible situation.

Instead, identify the important exceptions and define when the employee should resolve the issue, escalate it, or stop the process.

This makes procedures more useful without turning them into enormous manuals.

Should every hotel SOP be a printed document?

No. SOPs should be available in whatever format makes them practical for the employees who use them, including digital documents, checklists, workflow systems, or printed procedures where appropriate.

The important question is not whether the SOP is printed.

It is whether employees can find and follow it when they need it.

A long operations manual sitting in a manager's office has limited operational value.

A short procedure available to the employee at the point of work can be much more useful.

The format should therefore match the task.

Emergency procedures may need highly visible physical copies.

Detailed administrative procedures may work better digitally.

Frequent operational tasks can potentially be embedded directly into the hotel's operating systems.

How should hotel SOPs be tested before opening?

Test SOPs by having employees perform the procedures without someone explaining each step. If staff repeatedly ask the same questions, the procedure probably needs clarification.

Take one process at a time.

Give the employee the scenario.

Ask them to perform it.

Observe where they hesitate.

Record the ambiguity.

Update the SOP.

Test it again.

For example, give a front-office employee a fictional reservation that has a payment discrepancy.

Do not explain what they should do.

See whether the procedure leads them to the correct action.

This turns SOP development into an iterative process rather than a writing exercise.

The best SOP is not the one that sounds professional.

It is the one that helps an employee make the right decision when nobody is standing beside them.

How should a hotel keep its SOPs up to date?

Assign an owner to each SOP and review procedures after significant operational changes, incidents, or recurring mistakes. Do not assume that an SOP written before opening will remain correct forever.

A simple review system can track:

SOP → Owner → Version → Last reviewed → Next review → Changes required

The first major review should happen after the hotel has accumulated real operating experience.

If employees repeatedly bypass a procedure, find out why.

The problem may be poor training.

But it may also mean the procedure is unrealistic.

For example, if a three-step process consistently becomes a seven-step workaround during busy periods, management should investigate whether the original process was designed for real operations.

SOPs should evolve with the hotel.

What should be completed before the hotel opens?

Before opening, the hotel should have its critical SOPs written, reviewed, tested with employees, and connected to the responsibilities of each department.

A practical priority is:

Before recruitment: define the major operating processes.

During management recruitment: let department heads refine their procedures.

During staff training: teach and test the procedures.

Before opening: run realistic scenarios and correct gaps.

After opening: review the procedures against actual operating experience.

The goal is not to create a 300-page operations manual.

The goal is to make the hotel's expected way of working clear enough that employees can execute it consistently, managers can identify deviations, and problems can be escalated before they become larger failures.

That is also where operational technology becomes useful.

At Oriald, the broader idea is to move important hotel processes beyond static documentation into systems where work can be assigned, tracked, measured, and surfaced to management.

An SOP can tell an employee what should happen.

An operational system can also help show whether it actually happened.

If you are preparing a new hotel and want to build your operating processes into a connected system from the beginning, explore Oriald.

Request a personalized demo →

A hotel does not become consistent because it has written procedures.

It becomes consistent when the procedures are understood, followed, measured, and improved.