Handwritten notes for hotels and hospitality

Handwritten notes work for hotels at four moments: before arrival for guests who booked well ahead, after the stay as a thank-you, ahead of a return guest's usual season, and throughout group sales, from the site visit to the post-event thank-you. A card written with a real pen and mailed to the guest's home stands out from the confirmation emails around it. Below are the moments, the timing that makes each one work, what to write, and how to send them without a staff writing session.

Plan around the mail

A mailed card takes days to arrive, so it suits the moments before and after a stay, not the stay itself. A card waiting in the room on arrival is a job for the front desk. A card that reaches the guest's home a week before the trip, or a week after it, is the one a service can do at scale, and it reaches the guest when they are not standing at the front desk.

Four moments worth a card

1. Pre-arrival welcome

For bookings made weeks ahead, such as anniversaries, honeymoons, family trips and long stays, a card that arrives before the trip sets the tone. Use it to say you are looking forward to having them and to name one person they can contact before arrival. Bookings made a few days out are better served by a post-stay card.

The timing is easy to automate. API workspaces can send each card with sendOn, a mail date, so a booking made in March for an October stay can create its card at booking time and have it mailed ten days before arrival. If the guest cancels, cancel the card in the portal any time before it is released to the robots, two business days before its date. See how to schedule handwritten cards.

2. Post-stay thank-you

The most common hospitality card. Send it a few days after checkout, from the general manager or from someone the guest actually met. Mention one real detail from the stay, if your team recorded it: the occasion, the room, the restaurant. This is also the natural place to invite them back, in one sentence, without an offer code.

3. Return guests

Guests who come back every year tend to come back in the same season. A card a few weeks before that season, or on the anniversary of a special stay, is a reason to book again. Schedule it with sendOn from the stay dates you already store, so it goes out every year without someone keeping a list.

4. Group sales and events

Group business is a sales relationship, and the cards follow a sales rhythm:

After a site visit. Thank the planner for coming and mention something specific they asked about.
After the contract is signed. A thank-you from the sales manager, with the name of the person who will run the event.
After the event. A thank-you to the planner, and separately to the client contact who chose your property.
A year later. A card ahead of the date the group usually books again.

These look much like B2B sales follow-ups; see B2B sales cards. If your sales team works in a CRM, the HubSpot and Salesforce guides show how to trigger a card from a stage change.

What to write

Keep each card short, specific and signed by a person. The message is written exactly as you send it, up to 500 characters including the greeting and the sign-off.

Pre-arrival: "Dear Ms. Lee, we are looking forward to welcoming you and Sam for your anniversary on the 14th. If there is anything we can arrange before you arrive, write to me directly. Maria, guest relations"
Post-stay: "Dear Ms. Lee, thank you for celebrating with us. It was a pleasure to have you both, and the team still talks about the cake. We hope to see you again. Maria"
Return guest: "Dear Mr. Chen, it is nearly that time of year again. Your room by the garden will be waiting whenever you are ready. With warm regards, Daniel"
Group sales: "Dear Jordan, thank you for spending Tuesday with us. Your question about the terrace in the evening stuck with me, and I will send photos from last week's event. Alex"

The pen writes letters, digits and common punctuation. Accented letters are written without the accent, which matters for guest names, so check how a name reads in the free handwriting preview first.

How to send them

From a weekly list. Export last week's departures, or next month's arrivals, with names and home addresses, and upload the file to Send to a list in the portal. Every row is checked like an API request, you see the price before you confirm, and no row is sent twice.
From your systems. If your reservation or sales system can call an API or connect to Zapier, each booking or checkout can send its card through one request. See the quickstart and the Zapier recipe. Use the reservation number in the Idempotency-Key so a retried request never mails a second card.
Only to guests you can mail. Send cards to guests who gave you a home address, and respect the contact preferences they set.

Every card is written by a robot holding a real pen, and every word is read back by OCR before the pen moves. API workspaces can view a proof image of each card before it is written, which helps when the card goes to a VIP.

Stationery that matches the property

A hotel's card should look like the hotel. Upload your own front and back in the portal's card studio, or pick one of the four handwriting styles to suit the brand. For luxury properties, heavier stock, gold foil, debossing, colored envelopes and wax seals are made in our New York studio, and gifts in or alongside the envelope are quoted per campaign; see stationery and campaigns.

Measure it

Return-guest cards are the easiest to measure, because rebooking is already in your data. Set a holdout percentage in the workspace so a random share of eligible guests is checked but never mailed or billed, then compare rebooking rates between the two groups over the following season. The method is in how to measure the ROI of handwritten notes.

What it costs

Cards are all-in, including postage: $3.25 each in the US at up to 499 a month, $2.95 from 500, $2.35 from 2,500 and $1.95 from 10,000. International cards, which matter for hotels with guests from abroad, start at $4.25. There is no monthly fee. See pricing.

Start free, upload one week of departures, and see how the cards read. Event venues should also see handwritten notes for wedding and event vendors.