The Pre-Arrival Email: What It Needs for a Smooth Arrival

Most questions you get right before arrival are identical: what time can I check in, where do I park, how do I get in after eight? Those questions cost you time every day. And they're questions you never needed to answer.

The problem

A pre-arrival email, that's the email you send between the booking and the guest's arrival, is the missing link for many small accommodations. The confirmation email goes right out, the welcome at arrival is well organized, but in the days before there's silence.

The guest fills that silence themselves. They send a message about parking, call about key handover or Google your address and land on the wrong page. Each time that's a small disruption for them and extra work for you.

A good pre-arrival email solves this at once. It gives the guest all the information they need at the moment they're actively dealing with it, namely 2 to 3 days before departure. And it does more than just prevent questions: it's the last good moment for a soft upsell.

What must go in it

The email has a logical order: first practical certainty, then options, then atmosphere. If you reverse that, the email feels like advertising.

Here are the parts in the right order, with each one's goal:

Seven parts sounds like a lot. In practice this fits in 200 to 250 words if you use headings and bullets. The guest reads it in under a minute.

A concrete example email

Below is a template for a bed and breakfast or boutique hotel. Adjust the bolded placeholders to your situation.

Subject: Just 2 days to go: everything you need for arrival at [Name]

Hi [FirstName],

Getting close. Here's everything you need for a smooth arrival.

Practical

• Address: [address], navigate to [street name + city]
• Check-in: from 3 PM, check-out by 11 AM
• Parking: [free on the driveway / paid parking 200m away, costs about X per day / parking garage X at 5 minutes' walk]
• Arriving after 8 PM? Just let us know, we'll arrange key handover via [method].

Want to add anything to your stay? We still have room for:

• Early check-in (from 12 PM): [price] euros, without VAT. Available on request.
• Breakfast: [price] euros per person, without VAT. Let us know by [date/time].

A tip for your arrival [Personal detail: local restaurant within walking distance, market day if you're arriving Wednesday, or anything else specific to your location or period.]

Questions before you leave? Reach us at [email or phone number].

See you then. [Name], [Accommodation Name]

Timing: why 2 to 3 days works

Most accommodations send the pre-arrival email too late or not at all. An email on the morning of arrival the guest reads while already traveling, too late for an upsell and too late to ask questions. An email a week in advance is too early: the practical info isn't relevant yet.

Two to three days before arrival is the optimal window:

• The guest is actively planning their trip (packing, finding routes).
• They read the email at a moment they can still do something about it.
• There's still time to book early check-in or breakfast.
• You have enough time to organize if they say yes.

If you send manually now, set a reminder for yourself at T-3 for every booking. If you use a PMS or automation tool, set the trigger for 2 to 3 days before arrival. Read how to set that up in email automation for hoteliers with n8n.

Common mistakes

Stuffing too much information in the email. The pre-arrival email is not an info guide. The guest wants the address, the check-in time and how to get in. The rest can be on the accommodation page, which you link to. An 800-word email nobody reads.

Leaving out the upsell. Some owners find an upsell in the pre-arrival email uncomfortable. But a concrete, transparent offer with price is not a sales tactic, it's information. The guest can say no. Let the email do it for you instead of suggesting it in person at arrival, because then it's too late to organize.

No contact line for the same day. The guest now knows everything for arrival, but maybe their train is late or they have a question you didn't foresee. One sentence with your phone or WhatsApp number is enough. That prevents stress for them and unexpected situations for you.

Sending the email without personalizing. Nobody wants to read an email starting with "Dear guest". Pull at least the first name from your booking system. If room type or arrival date aren't in the email, it's a mass email and feels like one.

Giving up on the upsell too early. If the first three guests don't click on the breakfast offer, doesn't mean the offer doesn't work. Average upsell conversion via pre-arrival email is 5 to 15 percent, depending on offer and price. That means 85 to 95 percent say no, but the 5 to 15 percent who say yes bring extra revenue without extra marketing costs.

Measuring if the email works

Setting up a pre-arrival email and never looking again is a waste. You don't need a dashboard, but two numbers tell you in a month if it works.

The first is the number of separate pre-arrival questions. Count for a month how often a guest still texts or calls about parking, check-in or the key. If that drops by 30 to 40 percent after launch, the email is doing its job.

The second is upsell conversion. Note per 20 sent emails how many guests click on an offer. If you're under 5 percent, look at your offer and price, not the email itself. Often the offer is too vague or price not visible.

Tweaking after a month makes sense. Earlier than that you don't have enough bookings to say anything.

What you can do now

Write the text today. It's one-time work of an hour: draft the base text, note variables, choose two upsell items. Then save it as a template.

After that you have two routes:

1. Manual: save the template in Gmail or Outlook, add a calendar reminder for T-3 for each new booking, send. Time investment per booking: 2 minutes.
2. Automatic: connect your PMS or booking module to an email provider via n8n or similar. Time investment once: half a day. After that: zero minutes.

Also read how you set up the welcome email after booking, because that email has a different function than the pre-arrival email and deserves its own text. And if you want guests to leave a review after their stay, read how you build the post-stay email for reviews.

The pre-arrival email is one link in a larger series. Want to see the full picture, from confirmation to post-stay, read the complete guide to email marketing for hotels and how all emails connect in the email retention hub.

Want to automate the complete email flow for your accommodation? Read how that works in email automation for hoteliers or see what Hotelmark can set up for you in automation.

Want to know what each extra direct booking and upsell concretely delivers? Calculate through the savings calculator.