You're cooking dinner, fixing a tap, or finally asleep when the phone rings — and a guest with a card in hand books the motel down the road instead. Lobby answers that call in your motel's name, quotes your real rate, and turns it into a paid direct booking on your own Little Hotelier page. You hear about it in the morning.
Lobby is the after-hours AI voice front desk for owner-run Australian motels on Little Hotelier — it catches the calls you miss and turns them into direct bookings the guest pays for themselves, then gets them into their room.
You don't have a night receptionist. You can't afford one — not for ten rooms, not for forty. So after hours, you are the front desk: in the kitchen, under a sink, or finally in bed.
Here's the part that costs you. A real share of those after-hours calls are guests ready to book tonight, card already out. They found you on Google or a sign by the highway and chose to ring — not tap Booking.com. When that call hits voicemail or dead air, one of two things happens, and both come straight out of your pocket.
They give up on the dead line and ring the next sign on the highway. A guest who'd already chosen you — gone, to a competitor a minute away.
Which skims 15–20% commission off a booking you'd already half-won — money handed to a middleman for a guest who was yours.
A room you owned, lost while you slept. Night after night. That leak is the entire reason Lobby exists.
It's 9pm. "Got a room for tonight, two adults?" Lobby picks up in your motel's name, checks your live availability, and quotes your real nightly rate. It takes the guest's name, mobile and dates, reads them back, and texts a link to your Little Hotelier page.
The guest pays themselves. Lobby sends them their door code, lets you know a booking just closed, and goes quiet.
You wake up to a confirmed direct booking, no commission taken, and a guest already asleep in the room.
From the call you'd have missed to coffee the next morning. The owner stays asleep the whole way through.
Lobby answers in your motel's name, tells the caller it's an AI and that the call's recorded, and helps. Check-in and check-out, parking, pets, the wifi, late arrival, how to find you off the highway — answered from the answers you set up.
The guest wants tonight. Lobby checks your live availability and quotes your actual nightly rate — never a number it made up. It takes their name, mobile and dates, and reads them back to be sure.
Lobby texts a ready-to-go link to your own Little Hotelier booking engine. The guest pays there, themselves, in a checkout they already trust. Lobby never sees a card.
Once the booking's paid, Lobby texts the guest their door code — only to the mobile on the booking, only inside the right window, and only after a single tap from you to okay it. No Kaba login at midnight.
A booking closed while you slept. The guest's in their room. Lobby's already texted you the details. You didn't lift a finger.
Lobby isn't built to bother you. If a guest is distressed, speaks a language it isn't set up for, or asks something it honestly can't handle, it warm-transfers the call to your mobile — and only then does your phone ring.
You'd rather take one call in ten than miss ten in ten. Lobby is how you take just that one.
If anything in the loop stalls overnight — a code that didn't send, a message that didn't land — our team is watching, and steps in before a guest at a dark door has to ring you back.
Supervised autonomy: it runs itself, with a real operator's hand on the safety rail.
The whole design starts from one rule: on your money, your rooms, and your door, Lobby is built to be more careful than a person, not more clever. These aren't settings you have to get right — they're hard rules baked in.
Lobby never asks for, sees, or stores a card — ever, even if a guest tries to read one out. Every payment goes through your own Little Hotelier page, the same checkout your guests already trust. Nothing to do with cards passes through us.
No cut of the booking, no per-booking skim. Its whole job is to win you direct bookings so you keep the full rate.
Lobby says so in its greeting, and that the call is recorded — up front, not only if asked. It won't pretend to be a person.
Availability, rates and policies only ever come from your real data and the answers you set. If it can't confirm something, it says you'll confirm, or puts the guest through. It will never invent a price or sell a room you don't have.
A code only goes out for a verified, paid booking it matched to its own call — only to that booking's verified mobile, only in the right time window, and only after you tap to confirm. No tap, no open door. No stranger ever gets a working code.
Lobby sits alongside your Little Hotelier through SiteMinder's official partner ecosystem. It's not a new system to learn, and it's not a channel manager — it just answers the phone you can't.
Name, mobile, dates, room type. No ID, no card, no marketing profiles. Recordings and details are kept on a set schedule and masked on screen by default.
If Lobby is ever unsure about your money, your rooms, or your door, it does the careful thing — and tells you. That's the whole idea.
You don't port your number or change your system. Your existing phone simply diverts to Lobby's line when you don't pick up — and you can switch that off the instant you want to. No porting, nothing to install. Nothing about your Little Hotelier or your locks changes.
Where the owner is also the night shift.
With its own booking engine for guest payment.
So the door-code part works end to end. No smart locks yet? Lobby runs booking-only, with the door code simply switched off.
It's deliberately not a one-size-fits-all "AI receptionist." Being built tight around the Australian small-motel world is exactly what lets it close the whole loop — call, booking, door — properly.
Lobby is made by Audevelopers, an Australian software company that builds narrow, well-bounded tools for independent hospitality — software that does one job properly and stays inside clear, conservative limits around your money, your rooms and your guests' data. Visit audevelopers.com →
We take on motels one at a time, working directly with the owner — no call centre, no contract to wade through. The best way to judge it is to hear it pick up.
No lock-in to look — keep your line diverting to Lobby only as long as it's earning its keep.