Quick-reference: Top guest expectations that hospitality businesses are underestimating
If you don’t have time to read the full article, here are the top guest expectations that you should know about in 2026:
The data is based on 10,000+ conversation summaries from 1,000+ European properties that took place between March 2025 and February 2026. |
Most shifts in guest expectations don't happen overnight, but they do show up consistently in the data before most properties notice them. In this article, we share four things guests across Europe are increasingly expecting, based on 10,000 real conversations across more than 1,000 hospitality businesses, from seasonal check-in patterns to multilingual communication and travelling with pets.
If you want to dive deeper into the full dataset, access the 2026 Guest Trends and Preferences in European Hospitality report. See more detail on the research methodology at the end of the article.
Top 4 guest expectations impacting hospitality businesses this year
Here are the main things that guests expect from hotels, holiday parks, and hostels in 2026, based on real conversations.
1. Check-in and check-out questions peak in winter
After analyzing 1.2 million interactions in chatbot interfaces, "check-in time" is the single most-tapped item, receiving 266,418 clicks (21.6% of all clicks) from guests. Combined with check-out queries, it was actually the top thing guests asked about in 2025, especially for hotels.
But it’s the seasonal breakdown that gets even more interesting. While click rates hover around 17% from March through September, in Q4 the numbers start to climb sharply. October hits 20% with a peak in December at 27,7%.
It makes sense when you think about it as winter travellers typically have less time off than a 2-week summer vacation, from Christmas market city breaks to jam-packed ski holidays. Even if your high season is summer (more likely for holiday parks), then you’ll have the same issue, just at a different time of the year.
Properties that communicate check-in information and options ahead of time see fewer inbound enquiries and calls, and guests arrive happier since they were aware of the details in advance.
What this means for your property: Well before guests arrive, make sure you send a proactive message asking what time they’ll be arriving and whether they'd like to add early check-in or late checkout to their booking. This removes the uncertainty for the guest and creates a natural upsell moment for you.
Automated messaging and upsell prompts can enable this at scale, ensuring every guest gets the check-in and check-out information they need, regardless of how busy your front desk is.
2. Guests expect to communicate in their own language
Over 92% of EU residents spend their vacations visiting other EU countries, and while this is typically pretty straightfoward with many countries accepting the euro currency and rules like EU data roaming, communicating across 24 official languages remains a barrier.
Our research shows that English, Dutch, German, and French are the most commonly spoken languages by guests, with Spanish and Italian following closely behind. However, it’s worth noting that the dataset included conversations from a high number of properties in Benelux which skews the results slightly.
Either way, the point remains that guests are increasingly expecting to communicate with hotels in their native language, especially when using digital channels like WhatsApp and SMS. And they won’t be willing to wait until a front office team member who speaks that language is available.
What this means for your property: If your property attracts guests from multiple different countries—or you receive tourists who don’t speak your country’s primary language—you need to be able to offer them the same personalized, fast response times as other guests.
A multilingual virtual concierge can provide exactly this across all channels, proactively messaging guests in their own language and instantly responding in the language the request was written in.
3. Pets are now brought on holidays too
With 49% of all households in Europe now owning at least one pet, it’s no surprise that pet-related enquiries appeared in 3.5% of all conversations in our dataset. Mostly guests asked about the property’s pet policies before booking or arrival, indicating a clear intent to bring their pet on their holiday.
Take this example of a dog-owning holiday park guest: "We'll be bringing our border collie. She's very well trained. Can you confirm the cottage is pet-friendly?"
The guest already wants to add their dog onto their stay, and is likely willing to pay extra for this. However, they didn’t receive any proactive message on whether pets were permitted at the holiday cottage or whether there are any extra charges or restrictions. This creates unnecessary uncertainty and hassle for the guest, which could easily have been avoided.
What this means for your property: Whether your property welcomes pets or not, proactively messaging guests with information about your pet policies ensures every guest is fully aware in advance of what is and isn’t permitted. It can also help boost revenue if pets are an add-on to their booking, as guests who may have assumed no pets were allowed may decide to bring their pet after seeing your policy.
4. Families expect child-related equipment to be ready on arrival, no exceptions
Travelling with children is already stressful, so families expect the required equipment—such as high chairs, cots, and baby gates—to be ready in their room or unit the moment they arrive. These types of child equipment requests appeared in 434 (4.3%) of all conversations in our dataset, with holiday parks representing 368 of these requests.
As you can imagine, when a high chair or baby cot is missing at 6pm, guests will expect the issue to be resolved immediately. As one guest said:
"We urgently need the high chair and baby cot delivered to cottage 510. We have two small children and mealtime is approaching."
If this guest received an instant response and the requested equipment in 15 minutes, the first night would be smooth. Whereas, if it took an hour to receive a response or they had to go to reception to make this request, the outcome would be quite different in terms of their experience and their review.
What this means for your property: For guests with children in their booking, send a personalized message before they arrive confirming the available equipment in the unit they booked and asking whether they need anything else. This has the double benefit of preventing on-site issues as well as making them feel valued and understood before they even arrive.
What these changing guest expectations mean for your property
All four findings point to the same gap: guests have expectations they may not voice at the front desk, but that show up in what they click or send on digital channels. Hotels, holiday parks, and hostels that catch those signals early are the ones that act before complaints start to stack up.
As the report's executive summary put it:
"Guest communication strategy is no longer just about responding to enquiries. It's about anticipating needs, removing friction, and creating revenue opportunities — all through the channels guests already prefer."
And it’s not just about responding quickly. Guests also appreciate proactive messages about their stay and booking options on the channels they’re already using in their daily lives, like WhatsApp and SMS. In fact, WhatsApp messages sent by Runnr.ai see a 98% open rate, making it the best way to reach guests before they arrive.
Ready to automate guest communications? Test Runnr.ai on WhatsApp now to see how our AI would respond to questions you commonly receive from guests or download the 2026 Guest Trends and Preferences in European Hospitality to learn more about guest trends you need to know.
More information on how this data was collected and summarized
This blog is based on chapter three of the 2026 Guest Trends and Preferences in European Hospitality report. As part of this report, Runnr.ai analyzed over 10,000 guest conversations in eight different languages across 1,000 hotels, holiday parks, and hostels across Europe. All guest responses and property names were anonymized.
The conversations took place between March 2025 and February 2026 on WhatsApp, Email, SMS, OTA inboxes (e.g. Booking.com inbox), and webchat. Positive, neutral, and negative sentiment messages were included to ensure the results showed the full picture, and 1.23 million button clicks were recorded to help capture guest intent as well as what they actually said in messages.
