In short: What guests expect based on 10,000 conversationsIf you don’t have time to read the full article, here are the top things that hospitality guests expect 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. |
You’ve probably seen some predictions and expert commentary on the trends that will impact the hospitality industry the most this year. The usual topics like AI, sustainability, rising labor costs and staff shortages will probably pop up.
But we decided to do something different this year, and look at what trends are emerging in 10,000+ real guest conversations across 1,000 properties in Europe. This dataset covered a 12-month period and multiple channels: WhatsApp, SMS, email, OTA inbox, and web chat platform. We also looked at over 1,000 negative-sentiment messages to ensure we covered the good, the bad, and the ugly of guest experiences.
In this article, we share the top five trends that you need to know about as a hotel, hostel, or holiday park/campsite. If you want to dive deeper into the research, access the full 2026 Guest Trends and Preferences in European Hospitality report.
See more detail on the research methodology at the end of the article.
Whether your guests are mainly business or leisure travelers, it’s quite likely that many of them will be arriving before check-in or wanting to stay longer on their departure day. Our analysis shows that these timing flexibility requests accounted for 11.3% (or 1,131) of conversations, and that “check-in time” is the single most tapped item in chatbot interfaces, representing 21.6% of all clicks.
Aside from flexible arrival and departure times, guests frequently request specific beds setups (6.5%), food and breakfast options (4.8%), and parking availability (4.5%). While these requests appeared across all property types, there was a noticeable difference for holiday parks where equipment-related requests, such as appliance, linen, or tech issues, featured in a staggering 23.9% of holiday park conversations.
What this means for properties:
Properties need to have a clear strategy for how they handle common requests such as early check-in and late check-out, for example what is a paid add-on that they want to proactively offer or what options should be reserved for certain guests like loyalty club members.
Either way, properties should send automated, proactive messages to guests asking what time they’ll be arriving and giving them useful information based on their actual booking. This improves the pre-arrival experience for guests, and creates natural upsell moments to propose paid add-ons.
It’s easy to assume that guests are most likely to complain about issues with their room or services at your property, but the reality looks quite different. We found that four of the five most common guest complaints are all tied to digital touchpoints that failed.
Payment and billing friction tops the list with mentions in 9.2% of the 1,000 negative-sentiment messages we analyzed. Online check-in flows and access codes follow closely behind at 7.5%, with missed booking confirmations and cancellation/rebooking difficulties rounding out the list. The only other complaint in the top five related to broken equipment.
Leaving these issues unresolved results in affected guests starting their stay on the wrong foot, often impacting their overall experience and ultimately their review rating.
What this means for properties:
To avoid digital friction issues, properties should review all of their existing messaging workflows to ensure they’re working and correctly connected to relevant systems such as the payment service provider, invoicing system, or the PMS. All new automated workflows should be tested by staff, and feedback and reviews should be monitored so that any new issue can be quickly fixed.
An automated messaging tool can also help guests quickly flag any issues they have and resolve them digitally, without waiting for front desk staff to investigate each individual issue.
By the time guests reach your front desk, they are focused on getting to their room, dropping their bags, and starting their stay. Yet this is still when many properties try to upsell guests.
Our analysis showed that upsell conversion is actually strongest during the 24 to 48 hour window before arrival, with three types of upsells standing out: breakfast (4.7%), parking reservations (4.5%), and baby or child equipment (4.3%). Restaurant reservations, room upgrades, activity bookings, and transport arrangements were the other major categories.
To learn more about how these upsells vary by property type, check out the full report.
What this means for properties:
Properties should shift their upsell strategy towards the pre-arrival window, when guests are still actively planning their stay. Automated messages sent 24 to 48 hours before check-in are the most effective moment to offer breakfast, parking, room upgrades, restaurant bookings, and family add-ons.This not only increases revenue, but also creates a smoother guest experience by helping guests organize key parts of their stay before arrival. See how Hotel de Sterrenberg improved guest experience with automated messaging, while increasing upsells by €75 per room per month on average.
Given that our dataset included 1.23 million clicks within the 10,000 conversations, it’s safe to say that modern guests are engaging with properties on digital channels. This indicates that they value self-service options, from simply getting more information about the local area to fully booking activities without visiting the front desk.
While 21.6% of the clicks related to finding out about the property’s check-in times, the next most clicked button was relating to enriching their stay at 12.2%. Things like requesting a bottle of champagne to mark a special occasion or arranging a bicycle rental.
Checkout times, check-in procedures, location information, luggage storage, and things to do in the area were also among the most-clicked categories. This suggests a behavioral shift in hospitality where guests increasingly expect instant access to practical information and booking options without needing to contact the front desk directly.
What this means for properties:
Properties should make key operational information and booking options available through self-service channels before guests need to ask staff directly. This not only reduces repetitive front desk workload, but also creates a faster and more convenient experience for guests who increasingly expect instant access to a virtual concierge during their stay.
Our dataset spanned eight languages—Dutch, German, French, English, Spanish, Italian, Czech, Lithuanian—highlighting the necessity for front desks to be able to respond in multiple languages, and fast.
Guests now expect an immediate response in their own language, in the channel they prefer, at any time of day. The bar has moved from "we will get back to you" to "you have an answer already in your preferred language." And the impact of quick responses is evident, with 98% of guests opening WhatsApp messages, and 65% of them engaging in conversations in the app.
As Michiel De Vor, CEO and Co-Founder of Runnr.ai, summed it up: "Guests are choosing automated messaging as their primary communication channel, and they expect it to work in their own language."
What this means for properties:
With international travel growing by 4% in 2025, it’s likely that your guests this year will be travelling from many different countries. Whatever language they speak, you need to be able to provide the same fast, friendly service as local guests. The easiest way to manage this is by using a multilingual virtual concierge that can work across your channels to proactively messaging guests and instantly respond in their preferred language. With this approach, properties can automate up to 95% of guest communication, and 94% of guests say this actually enhances their stay.
The common thread across all of these trends is that guest expectations are leaning more and more towards proactive communication, fast and personalized responses, and access to self-service options. And this applies from the moment they book to the moment they check-out.
For properties, keeping up with those expectations no longer means simply adding more staff or extending front desk hours. It means reducing friction by automating the repetitive interactions guests expect to happen instantly.
That includes proactively handling check-in communication, offering upsells before arrival, making operational information self-serve, and enabling guests to get answers in their own language across channels like WhatsApp, SMS, OTA inboxes, and webchat.
The properties that will perform best in 2026 are not necessarily the ones adding the most technology. They are the ones using automation and AI strategically to remove operational bottlenecks while allowing staff to focus on the moments where hospitality matters most. See how properties across Europe are achieving this with Runnr.ai in our case studies.
Ready to get started with automated guest communications at your hotel, holiday park, hostel, or other accommodation? Test Runnr.ai on WhatsApp now or book a demo—no strings attached.
Dive into the above hospitality trends in more detail and explore more findings by downloading the full 2026 Guest Trends and Preferences in European Hospitality Report.
Download the full 2026 Guest Trends Report →
For 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.