Preparing for a short tourist season in Kullu and Manali

Picture a hotel, an invented one, on the first long weekend of the summer: the phone rings all Friday while the owner is still deciding Saturday's rate, the new receptionist quotes last year's price on WhatsApp, and Instagram still shows January's snow. Prepare by rehearsing the season before it starts, not during it. Fix rates for every peak date, write the replies, update the photographs and brief the staff. Then test the lot on a quiet weekday. The first weekend should be the second time your team answers those questions.

Why the first weekend matters so much here

Kullu and Manali get a few sharp peaks rather than one long season. There is the summer rush when the plains heat up, Kullu Dussehra in October, Christmas and New Year with the hope of snow, and the long weekends in between. Each one opens fast. Reviews from the first weekend's guests sit at the top of your listing while next week's guests compare. And a rate dropped in panic on a Friday becomes the rate guests expect for the rest of the season.

There is no quiet fortnight in which to learn. Guests from the plains find hill properties in Himachal Pradesh through the same few doors every year, and the rehearsal is about having the answers ready before the questions arrive.

The rehearsal checklist

Work through it in three passes. Most of it is an afternoon's work for one person who knows the hotel.

Three weeks before the first peak weekend

• Rates set for every peak date to the end of the season, including Dussehra week, on one sheet that the front desk, WhatsApp and the portals all work from.
• Advance and cancellation terms in two lines, word for word the same everywhere.
• Rooms photographed as they are now, with the view in this season and the parking and the approach from the highway.
• Google Business Profile checked from a phone: number, WhatsApp link, hours and season photographs.

The week before

• Quick replies saved for last season's commonest questions: rate, availability, road, parking, food, check-in time. In Manali add the ones guests actually ask: whether Rohtang needs a permit, what the Atal Tunnel road is like this week, and how far you are from the Hadimba road.
• One person named for WhatsApp and Instagram messages on each shift, with the logins on their own phone.
• Seasonal staff walked through the rate sheet and the quick replies.
• The first fortnight's posts made and scheduled.
• Ads built. Not switched on.

A quiet weekday before the first weekend

• A friend in Delhi sends five test enquiries, one through each door a guest uses: WhatsApp, Instagram, a late-evening call, the number on your Google profile and a portal. Time each answer and read it.
• Fix whatever failed. Then switch the ads on.

Set the rates before the phone rings

Decide each peak date's rate, and the floor you will not go below, before the season. Then decide one condition for dropping it, such as rooms still empty on the Wednesday before a long weekend, and who is allowed to make that call. A price changes on the sheet first and in a conversation never. Two prices on two channels for the same night is how a guest decides you are not to be trusted.

If you are in or near Kullu town, give Dussehra week its own line on the sheet, with its own minimum stay if you want one. Properties in Manali or higher up the valley should check their own past bookings before assuming the same.

What to post before the season, and what to leave out

Post what this season really looks like: the orchard in blossom or in fruit, the river, the room as it is now, the road to your gate. Do not sell a May stay with a January snow photograph. The guest who arrives expecting snow writes about it.

If you run seasonal ads, aim them at the cities your past guests came from, and switch them on only after the test run passes.

For example: a hotel on the Hadimba road

For example, imagine a 20-room hotel on the road up to the Hadimba temple in Manali. Its first summer weekend brings sixty enquiries and two angry reviews about rates. On Monday the owner sits down with the front desk to work out what went wrong. Instagram messages sat unanswered for a day because the one manager with the login was on leave. WhatsApp and the front desk quoted different rates. And the new staff did not know the cancellation terms, so each of them invented their own.

The next season the owner rehearses on a Tuesday, two weeks before the first long weekend, and a cousin in Delhi plays the guest. The test catches two things. The Instagram reply is still slow, because the login is still on one phone. The late-night call goes to a night clerk who has never seen the rate sheet. Both are fixed by Friday. The weekend itself is busy, but nobody is guessing, and the first reviews of the season talk about the room rather than the confusion.

How fast your team should answer, and why the first reply wins, is covered in how quickly should your team respond to a new lead.

What a rehearsal will not do

It will not create demand. If the highway is shut by a landslide or the season is weak, a well-drilled team still waits for guests. Nor does it need to be a project. For an eight-room guest house run by a family, the whole checklist is one afternoon and one test evening. And if your past guests and portals already fill every peak date, skip the ads entirely and spend the effort on the replies.

Book the rehearsal before you book the ads

Put the date of the first peak weekend in your phone, count back three weeks, and block an afternoon for the first pass of the checklist. Then choose your test guest: someone outside the hotel, who will be a little difficult on purpose. Planning the ads around school holidays and festival dates is festive and seasonal advertising; if you want help with that, the replies or the rate sheet, tell us what you need.