What your team needs to know about every villa
The person who has managed a villa for years knows which gate sticks, where the spare linen lives and whom to call about the pool. The challenge is making that knowledge available when they are on holiday, asleep or busy with another arrival.
Keep reusable property facts in one maintained record. Keep guest details, temporary faults and one-off agreements attached to the relevant stay or job.
Start with the questions people actually ask
Use recent guest questions and team handovers to build the first version. A beautiful property description will not tell a cleaner where to find the replacement vacuum bags.
For each villa, cover arrival directions, parking, check-in arrangements, Wi-Fi, appliance instructions, room and bed setup, supplies, checkout expectations and approved supplier contacts. Include the small details that repeatedly interrupt the manager's day.
Write instructions that someone unfamiliar with the property can follow. Replace “the usual cupboard” with a specific location. If a photo makes an instruction clearer, label what it shows and keep it with the text.
Separate lasting facts from temporary arrangements
A standard checkout time belongs in property knowledge. Permission for one family to leave later belongs with their booking. A broken dishwasher belongs in an open maintenance record until its status changes.
Mixing these together creates stale instructions. The next guest may receive last week's exception, or a repaired appliance may continue to be described as unavailable.
Treat sensitive details separately too. Your cleaner, guest and external supplier may need different information. Decide who can see access details, private contacts and guest-specific information rather than putting everything in one universally shared document.
Make updating the record part of the change
When a lock, appliance or supplier changes, assign somebody to update the relevant instructions as part of that job. Do not rely on the person who happens to notice the old answer later.
Record who checked important information and when. Where two sources disagree, resolve the disagreement before the team starts quoting whichever version they saw first. A simple note that a detail is awaiting confirmation is better than a guess disguised as a fact.
Before the season, walk through the arrival and checkout instructions as if you were a new guest. During the season, use repeated questions and corrections as prompts for targeted updates.
A practical property knowledge check
For one villa, ask a team member who does not usually manage it to answer these questions using only the shared record:
- How does a guest find the correct entrance after dark?
- What is the agreed response when they cannot get inside?
- Where are the instructions for the most frequently queried appliance?
- Which cleaner and supplier contacts are current?
- What is the standard departure arrangement?
- Which open issues might affect the next stay?
If they need to message the manager for most answers, note the gaps. You now have a focused list of information to gather rather than an open-ended request to document the entire business.
Give an AI employee the same reliable foundation
An AI concierge cannot make an old access instruction correct by wording it well. Before asking it to answer for a property, check the source information and how corrections are saved.
At Isla, Marco's role includes building and maintaining company knowledge that the team, including Lucia, can use. The aim is for a correction to help the next conversation as well as the current one.
When evaluating that behaviour, give the employee a changed property fact and then ask a related question through the other relevant channel. Check that the update reaches the right place without exposing information to the wrong audience.
Written by the Isla team, who build AI employees for hospitality businesses. Our guides share practical approaches; the scope of each hire is agreed for your operation.
