The hotel
Girasoles Hotel is a three-star, 42-room hotel in the heart of Miraflores, Lima, on Avenida Ernesto Diez Canseco, a few blocks from the boardwalk and Larcomar.
The building pairs stonework architecture with contemporary interiors and adds a buffet breakfast, a terrace and Sawa Café & Restaurante, serving Peruvian cuisine. The guest mix is broad: international tourism, business travelers and Peruvian families passing through Lima.
María Fernanda and Vanessa Lock run the hotel's commercial and operations side, and they were the ones who pushed the change in how inquiries get handled.
The challenge
Before WeSpeak, the Girasoles team was losing inquiries after hours and responding late during peak demand. The front desk was overwhelmed and direct sales depended entirely on who happened to be available.
The underlying problem is simultaneity. The same person handling a check-in, answering the phone and solving a request in the lobby is the one who has to reply on WhatsApp: when the lobby fills up, WhatsApp waits.
Time zones make it worse. A good share of international inquiries arrives in the middle of the night in Lima, and in Miraflores, where dozens of hotels sit the same distance from the boardwalk, whoever replies first usually keeps the booking.
The WeSpeak solution
With WeSpeak, the assistant responds instantly around the clock, without depending on who is at the desk. It quotes rates, explains room types, describes what breakfast includes and places the hotel relative to the boardwalk, Larcomar and the airport.
The front desk stopped being the bottleneck: the assistant takes the first line and the team steps in when there is something to decide, like a corporate rate, a group or a special request.
The change required no extra staff and no change to the hotel's systems. Automation was layered onto the same WhatsApp line Girasoles was already selling through.
Results
The team regained time to focus on guests already on-property, the ones who suffered most from an overloaded front desk.
Direct bookings grew without adding a single new staff member, with the margin difference that implies against intermediated channels.
Late-night inquiries stopped falling through the cracks. Someone writing at three in the morning from another continent now gets a full answer and wakes up with the booking practically closed.
The story, told by their team
Before, if the front desk was busy, WhatsApp waited. Now it gets answered instantly at any hour, and direct bookings grew without adding a single person to the team.
