The power of automated flows
Hotels have many moments when timely communication can improve the guest experience and create revenue opportunities. Flows respond automatically to guest actions and reservation milestones, such as subscribing, booking, checking in, checking out, or abandoning a reservation.
Unlike campaigns, which are planned for broader audiences, flows deliver relevant messages based on each guest’s behavior. Use them for booking confirmations, pre-arrival information, onsite recommendations, abandoned reservation recovery, and post-stay follow-up. This helps your team support guests while promoting upgrades, amenities, direct bookings, and repeat stays.
Once activated, flows run automatically, reducing manual work. In this lesson, you’ll explore hotel flow use cases and tools that help you personalize experiences, save time, and increase revenue per guest.
Out-of-the-box hotel flow templates
Once you integrate your PMS with Klaviyo, you’ll find the following flow templates available for you to get started quickly. In the table below, learn a bit more about each of these flow templates. Once you’re done, update messaging and tweak the structure to your specific use case, and set them live!
To find all of these flow templates in your account, head to Flows > Create flow, and you’ll land right in the flow template library.
Flow description | Trigger details | Why it matters | |
|---|---|---|---|
Welcome series | A series of messages for new subscribers who have not booked a stay yet. | A guest joins your list, such as through a sign-up form. | Nurtures website visitors toward their first booking and can help encourage direct bookings. |
Browse abandonment | A follow-up message for guests who view a property or room listing but do not continue to checkout. | A guest views a listing. | Re-engages interested guests while the property is still top of mind by sharing more details about the room or a relevant offer. |
Abandoned checkout reminder | A reminder for guests who begin the booking process but do not complete it. | A guest starts checkout and does not complete the booking. | Recovers high-intent booking opportunities by prompting the guest to return and finish checkout. |
Guest thank-you | A confirmation or thank-you message sent after a guest books a stay. | A guest confirms a reservation. | Reinforces the booking, thanks the guest, and starts the relationship on a positive note. |
Reservation cancellation | A follow-up message after a guest cancels a reservation. | A guest cancels a reservation. | Helps you understand why the guest canceled and creates an opportunity to encourage rebooking. |
Guest winback | An ongoing re-engagement flow for guests who have not booked recently. | A defined period of time passes since the guest’s last checkout, such as 12 months. | Bring lapsed guests back with a timely reminder, a relevant offer, or a reason to stay again. |
Proper Hotels saw
71%
of CRM revenue from automations in Q2 2026
Proper Hotels saw
257%
YoY growth in CRM revenue in 8 months since switch to Klaviyo
Build flows powered by reservation objects
If you’re looking to expand your strategy past the pre-built templates we covered above, there are a few more recommended flows you can build using reservation objects. More specifically, you can trigger additional message paths at key moments across the journey: pre-stay, during stay, and post-stay.
Pre-arrival flows help you build excitement before guests even arrive. Share thoughtful ways to make their stay even better, from room upgrades and late checkout to dinner reservations, spa treatments, and on-property activities. These timely messages can turn anticipation into action while helping you grow revenue from every reservation.
Use the reservation object’s check-in date to trigger a message about 1 week before a guest arrives. Share relevant ways to enhance their stay, such as dinner reservations, spa treatments, room upgrades, late checkout, or on-property activities.
Personalize the message with details such as the guest’s property, arrival date, room type, or preferences when that data is available. Consider using conditional splits to show only relevant recommendations, such as a dining offer to guests who have not already made a restaurant reservation. Link to the appropriate booking or reservation page so guests can act immediately.
During-stay flows help hotels create a more thoughtful guest experience while also driving engagement with on-property amenities and events. Timely messages can help guests discover value they might otherwise miss.
Trigger a flow when a guest checks in. Use the message to welcome them to the resort, introduce on-property amenities, and share events, dining options, spa services, or the daily activity schedule.
Keep the content timely and easy to act on. Personalize it with the guest’s property and stay details, then include a clear call to action, such as viewing the schedule, reserving an experience, or contacting the front desk.
Post-stay flows help hotels learn from each guest experience, protect relationships, and create opportunities for repeat visits. A timely feedback request can surface issues while the stay is fresh and give satisfied guests a clear next step.
Use the reservation object’s checkout date to send a thank-you message and NPS request after the guest’s stay. Keep the survey short and direct, and make it easy for guests to share feedback while their experience is still fresh.
Use the response to guide the next step. For example, you might route lower scores to a service recovery follow-up and invite guests who had a positive experience to leave a review or consider a future stay. Include a clear survey link and thank guests for taking the time to respond.
Differentiate marketing vs. transactional messages
When building your flows, messages are classified by purpose. Transactional messages are triggered by a guest’s action and provide information directly related to it, such as a booking confirmation, reservation update, cancellation confirmation, or arrival instructions. Marketing messages are initiated by the hotel to encourage engagement or revenue, such as a pre-arrival upgrade offer, spa promotion, or post-stay winback message. Follow the below best practices:
- Keep transactional messages focused on the necessary information the guest expects. Avoid adding promotions, coupons, or marketing calls to action.
- Use marketing messages for offers, upsells, cross-sells, surveys, and winback campaigns.
- Review the full message, not just the flow trigger. A message related to a reservation can still be promotional if it includes an offer or other marketing content.
- Check that guests have the appropriate consent for the channel, especially for text and mobile push messages.
Enhance your flows with AI intelligence
Once you have your core hotel flows in place, use additional tools to build faster, personalize the guest experience, and improve performance over time. Expand the dropdowns below to learn more.
Audit flows using Composer
Composer can review your flow structure, trigger logic, and performance to help you identify issues and prioritize improvements. Ask Composer to audit all of your flows or focus on one specific flow, such as your pre-arrival, welcome, or winback flow.
Start with a broad prompt, such as “Audit my hotel flows,” then ask follow-up questions about the most important finding. Composer is advisory, so review its recommendations and apply the changes yourself in Klaviyo. Re-run the audit after making updates if you want to confirm that your changes addressed the issue.
Flow library and templates
Earlier in this lesson, we explored some of the out-of-the-box flow templates you have immediately upon integrating your PMS with Klaviyo. If you’d like even more templates for inspiration, the Klaviyo Flow library is a comprehensive database of flow templates designed to help you accomplish specific goals.
Browse the library for inspiration on new flows to create, and find templates to get started quickly and easily.
To access the Flow library:
- Log into your Klaviyo account.
- Click Flows on the left-hand navigation menu.
- Select Create flow to land in the Flow library.
You can use the search field to find specific templates, or filter by integration type and message channel. You can also browse flows by goal, including encouraging repeat orders, building customer loyalty, and more.
Use Flows AI to design flows in seconds
Have an idea for a new automation, but not sure how to build it yourself? Use Flows AI to generate what you’re looking for in seconds, and then you can make any necessary tweaks after.
To access this AI feature:
- Log into your Klaviyo account.
- Click Flows on the left-hand navigation menu.
- Select Create flow.
- Click Build your own.
- In the side panel that appears, name your flow.
- Select Create with AI. Describe your automation details in the field labeled Describe the flow.
- Click Generate draft, and watch the flow populate before your eyes.
Want to make a few tweaks, Just click Edit in builder to make your changes.
Use conditional splits to send messages via a guest's preferred channel
Adding conditional splits to your flows lets you create branches of personalized messages for different types of hotel guests. A conditional split is a set of criteria that determines which path someone takes and which message they receive next.
For example, you might create a pre-arrival flow that promotes a spa treatment, dinner reservation, or room upgrade. A guest who has already booked dinner could receive a spa recommendation, while a guest who has not booked a dining experience could receive a restaurant offer. This helps you keep each message relevant instead of sending every guest the same content.
Consider using conditional splits to choose the message channel, such as email or text message, based on a guest’s consent. Let’s say you have created a pre-arrival flow that offers guests 20% off a spa treatment if they book before arrival. You want to send this offer by text message to guests who have subscribed to receive text message marketing, so they see it quickly. You also want guests who are subscribed only to email to receive the offer.
In that case, insert a conditional split after your flow trigger with the condition:
If someone can or cannot receive marketing > can receive > text message marketing
Guests who have subscribed to text message marketing will move down the YES path. Guests who are only subscribed to email marketing will move down the NO path. Drag a text message under the YES path and an email under the NO path, then customize each version of your spa offer.
If your account meets Channel Affinity eligibility requirements, you can also use predicted channel affinity to configure conditional splits. Your account must have:
- At least two activated channels
- At least 1,000 profiles with at least one delivery through each channel
- At least 5,000 campaign deliveries through each channel in the last six months
- At least one engagement with delivered campaigns on each channel.
When Channel Affinity is available, select Predictive analytics about someone > Predicted channel affinity > Engagement preference in the split details and choose the channel preference you want to evaluate. Consider including a relevant fallback path for guests who do not have populated Channel Affinity data.
Review flows analytics
Flows analytics make it easier to see how guests move through each flow. Review how many guests enter the flow, how many reach each step, where people stop engaging, and which messages drive bookings, revenue, or survey responses. Reviewing your data frequently enables you to spot obstacles quickly, make swift improvements.
To review your overall flow performance:
- Go to Flows in the left-hand navigation, then select the Analytics tab.
- Choose a timeframe, such as the last 7, 30, or 90 days, the last 12 months, or a custom range.
- Use Flow view to compare individual flows, or Channel view to compare performance across email, SMS, and other channels.
- Review key metrics such as revenue, conversions, conversion rate, deliveries, and unique recipients. For hotel flows, choose a conversion metric that aligns with your goal, such as a booking, revenue event, or survey response.
To review a specific flow’s performance:
- Select a flow to explore the messages within it. I
- In the visual flow builder, click Show Analytics to display performance metrics directly on each sending action and compare messages or split paths.
- You can also select an individual message and click View all Analytics to review engagement over time, deliverability, recipient activity, link activity, and skipped reasons. The recipient activity view can help you understand who received, opened, clicked, converted, or was skipped from a message.
Use these insights to improve your flow over time. You might adjust the timing of a pre-arrival message, test a clearer call to action, remove an underperforming step, or refine a conditional split based on guest behavior. If you need to share results or analyze them outside Klaviyo, export the flow analytics as a CSV.