Zitlin keeps one record per guest — how to reach them, what they asked for last time, what they cannot eat, every stay they have had with you, and their ID if you hold one. Not a campaign tool, but the notebook a good front desk has always kept, in a place the whole team can read.
The best front desks have always run on memory. Somebody remembers that the couple in 204 come every March, that the gentleman from Chennai likes the quiet side of the building, that one of the regulars cannot eat shellfish. It works beautifully until the person who remembers is on leave.
Zitlin's guest records are that memory, written down where the whole team can read it. There is no campaign builder here and no automation to configure — just one honest record per guest, kept up to date by the bookings you are already taking.
The guest, on the same screen as the stay
One record, made by the booking
You never have to create a guest first. Take a booking and the record appears; take another next season and it attaches to the same person rather than making a second one. Guests in the main menu is where they all live, newest first, searchable by name or phone number — three characters is enough, so a half-remembered surname or the tail of a number off the caller ID will find them.
The record holds what a desk actually needs:
| Contact and address | Name, phone with its country code, email, full address for the registration card or a GST invoice |
| Company details | A tax number, for the guest being billed to their employer |
| Identity | ID type and number, and optionally a photograph of the document itself |
| Food allergies | Kept with the guest, not buried in a booking note |
| Standing requests | Extra pillows, late check-out, quiet side — the things a regular should not have to ask for twice |
| Notes | Anything the next person on the desk should know |
| Tags and tier | Your own labels, and where the guest sits with you |
Every stay they have had with you
Past bookings on any guest lists their stays with dates and rooms. It is a small screen that earns its place at the moment somebody telephones and says "we stayed with you last spring" — you can see when, in which room, and whether they were happy enough to have come back since.
For a returning guest, that is also the fastest way to give them the room they liked without asking them to describe it.
Six tiers, meaning what you decide
Each guest carries a tier — Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Presidential — shown as a small coloured badge wherever they appear, including on their folio while they are in house.
Zitlin does not promote anybody automatically, and a tier attaches no discount by itself. That is on purpose: loyalty at an independent property is a judgement, not a points formula, and the badge exists so the person at the desk knows who they are dealing with before the conversation starts. What a Gold guest gets is your decision, and your team's to apply.
Tags, for the things that do not fit a field
Tags are labels you define once and stick on things — Honeymoon, VIP, Repeat guest, Travel agent, Allergy on file. They are colour-coded, so they read at a glance across the calendar and the guest list, and they work on bookings, folios and rooms as well as on guests.
Six good tags beat forty. The test is simple: a tag earns its place if somebody will one day scan a screen looking for it.
One tap to reach them
From a guest's card the desk can call, email or message them on WhatsApp without copying a number anywhere. In most of the markets Zitlin serves, WhatsApp is how a property and a guest actually talk, so it sits beside the telephone rather than being treated as an afterthought.
What Zitlin will not do is write to your guests on your behalf. There are no scheduled campaigns, no automatic pre-arrival sequences and no post-stay follow-ups — a booking confirmation is sent when a direct booking is confirmed, and that is the extent of it. The messages that matter at a small property are short, personal and written by somebody who knows the guest. Zitlin's job is to put that person one tap away, with the guest's history in front of them.
The regulars, remembered
One record per guest — history, preferences, allergies, tags and tiers — searchable by name or phone, and free forever.
Start free
Records that clean up after themselves
A guest record is data about a person, and the most sensitive part of it is any photograph of their ID. Zitlin keeps those in private storage, shows them only to staff who enter their PIN, writes down every time somebody looks, and deletes them automatically once your retention window has passed.
Who this is for
- Properties with regulars — the seasonal couples, the visiting engineers, the wedding party that comes back every year
- Small teams where the memory lives in one person's head, and stops working the week they are away
- Restaurants and hotels handling dietary requirements, who want the allergy written somewhere other than a booking note from last March
- Anyone doing this in a notebook today — which is a perfectly good system until it goes home in somebody's bag
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Zitlin send automated emails to guests? Zitlin sends the emails a booking needs — a confirmation when a direct booking is confirmed, and a note while an online booking is still on hold pending payment. It does not run marketing campaigns, scheduled pre-arrival messages or automated post-stay follow-ups. What it does instead is put the guest one tap away: call, email or WhatsApp them straight from their record, in your own words.
How do I find a guest who stayed with us before? Search by name or phone number from the Guests screen, or from inside the booking form while you are taking the reservation. A partial number off a caller ID is enough. Their record opens with every past stay on it, so "the same room as last time" is a question you can answer while they are still on the telephone.
Can we record dietary requirements and preferences? Yes — food allergies and standing special requests are fields on the guest record, alongside free notes. They stay with the guest between visits. Zitlin does not push them onto a kitchen ticket or a housekeeping card, so tell your team as well; the record is where anyone can look them up.
What are loyalty tiers used for? They are a label your team applies and reads — six of them, from Bronze to Presidential — shown as a coloured badge wherever the guest appears, including the folio. Zitlin does not promote guests automatically or attach a discount to a tier. What a tier means is your policy, and the badge is there so the desk knows who they are speaking to.
Is the guest CRM free? Guest records, history, tags and tiers are part of the free forever plan. Capturing a photograph of a guest's ID needs Zitlin Pro, though viewing and deleting one never do.