How hotels can beat the front desk queue problem | By Tom Brown

If you’ve ever stood in line at a hotel reception, you know how quickly excitement can turn into frustration. Guests arrive with bags, families and expectations – but a slow-moving queue at check-in is often the first impression they get. For hoteliers, this isn’t just an operational issue. It’s a brand issue. Those first (and last) moments shape guest satisfaction more than almost anything else.

Queues might feel inevitable, especially for larger properties, but they’re not unsolvable. With the right mix of smart processes, technology, and team enablement, hotels can dissolve those dreaded peaks at reception. In fact, many already are.

Understanding the spikes

When you map hotel activity against hours of the day, patterns emerge. Mondays often bring corporate arrivals. Fridays and Saturdays peak around 3pm when check-in opens. Sundays see a rush of departures between 10 and 12.

None of this will surprise anyone who’s worked in a hotel. But what is surprising is how rarely these patterns are analyzed and acted upon. Tools like the Mews Activity Report show exactly when spikes occur, yet too often the data isn’t used to rethink how staff, housekeeping, and technology should adapt.

The result: long lines, stressed staff and unhappy guests.

Start with housekeeping

Queues at reception don’t start at reception – they start with housekeeping. If clean, inspected rooms aren’t released into inventory until 3pm, you’ve already lost. The lobby fills up, staff scramble, and guests wait.

The fix is simple in principle: equip every housekeeper and inspector with mobile technology so they can update room status in real time. Rooms get released gradually throughout the morning, rather than all at once in the afternoon.

This means no bottleneck when check-in starts. Guests arriving early can often be accommodated (with an early check-in fee if you wish), and pressure on the front desk is reduced. It requires training and consistency, but the payoff is huge: smoother operations and happier guests.

Diffusing the check-out rush

Check-out is usually less complex than check-in, but the spikes are real. A Sunday morning leisure crowd can overwhelm a desk in minutes. Here’s how to smooth it out:

• Online check-out: Configure it properly and promote it effectively. When guests receive an email or SMS the evening before, they can settle bills and confirm minibar items from their phone. For 20-30% of guests, this removes the need to queue altogether.
• Pre-check-out in the restaurant: Staff with tablets can approach guests at breakfast and offer to handle checkout on the spot. It’s quick, personal and removes a big chunk of late-morning congestion.
• Self-service kiosks: Simple and fast, kiosks are ideal for the straightforward process of settling a bill. Guests often prefer tapping a screen over waiting in line.
• Flexible staffing: Tablets in staff mode mean anyone – from trainees to F&B staff – can step in to support the desk when it gets busy. Technology enables teams to flex across departments without heavy training.

Together, these tactics spread check-outs across the morning instead of crushing the front desk in a two-hour window.

Tackling the check-in challenge

Check-in is the toughest nut to crack. It’s complex: IDs, payments, upsells, keycards, questions about facilities. Even the fastest receptionist takes four to five minutes per guest. Multiply that by dozens of arrivals and you have a problem.

The solution is to break it down:

• Online check-in: By completing registration and payments before arrival, guests cut their lobby time by two-thirds. A five-minute process becomes ninety seconds: “Welcome, here’s your key.” Adoption rates of 30–40% are achievable when emails are optimized and SMS reminders are added. Integration partners like BookBoost or Runnr.ai can also drive conversions by sharing links in guest messaging.
• Kiosks: Some guests may not prefer kiosks as their primary experience, but when faced with a 15-minute line, many will happily self-serve. Hotels can choose a kiosk-first or kiosk-second approach, but either way, they’re invaluable to increase check-in capacity during peak times.
• Mobile staff mode: Just as with check-out, tablets in staff mode allow any employee to step in. A restaurant waiter can head to the lobby after service and process check-ins in minutes. This agility makes a real difference.
• Payment automation: One of the most time-consuming parts of check-in is pre-authorizing cards. With automated payment flows, this can happen the night before arrival. Guests walk in with everything settled, reducing one of the biggest friction points in the process.

Real-world results

The contrast between hotels that embrace these strategies and those that don’t is stark.

One property, despite using Mews, hadn’t fully deployed its capabilities. The result: queues spilling out the front door every Friday afternoon, staff overwhelmed, and guests starting their stay frustrated.

Meanwhile, Paradise Resort Gold Coast in Australia faced the same issues. But once they leaned into online check-in, housekeeping tech and kiosks, the queues disappeared. Guests now flow smoothly through arrival, and the team can focus on hospitality rather than firefighting. Read their success story.

A mindset shift

Technology alone won’t solve queues. What makes the difference is a mindset: refusing to accept that long lines are just part of hospitality.

That means:

• Training and enforcing tech adoption in housekeeping
• Configuring online check-in and check-out properly, not just switching them on
• Using SMS, not just email, to cut through guest communication noise
• Equipping staff with tablets so they can help wherever they’re needed
• Automating payments to remove painful manual processes

It requires decisions, configuration and change management. But the impact is clear: shorter queues, less pressure on staff, better guest satisfaction and more opportunities for upselling.

The future of the front desk

Queues won’t disappear completely. Hospitality is unpredictable – delays, late arrivals and peak travel days will always create pressure. But with the right preparation and technology, those spikes become manageable.

For hoteliers, it’s about more than efficiency. It’s about brand experience. No guest ever leaves a glowing review because of the queue they waited in. But they do remember when everything just worked, when they were welcomed with ease, when their first impression was a smile and a key, not a line.

That’s the hospitality future we should be aiming for – one where technology enables teams, spreads workloads and creates space for genuine human connection.

Want to explore more about how to cut lines at reception? Watch episode 43 of Matt Talks as he explores how technology can transform guest and staff experiences.

Watch the video