A hotel pool deck is a dining room where nobody wants to stand up. Guests are wet, half asleep, wearing very little and carrying nothing. The bar is eighty feet away behind a gate. It is the room where a second drink is most wanted and least likely to be ordered.

Why the deck is hard to staff

Demand comes in waves you cannot roster against. Two hours of nothing, then everybody wants lunch at once, then nothing again until four. Staff one server and they are overwhelmed at one and idle at three. Staff two and the afternoon costs more than it makes.

So most hotels do the thing that seems safest and put a sign up telling guests to come to the bar. Then they wonder why the poolside spend per guest is a third of the terrace.

The chair is the table

A number on the lounger and a code beside it is all the address you need. The guest orders from the chair, the ticket reaches the bar with the lounger number on it, and someone walks it out. The wave at one o’clock becomes a queue on a screen instead of six people standing at a bar in swimwear.

• Number the loungers the way a runner walks the deck, not the way they are stacked.
• Keep the poolside list short. Nobody reads forty items in the sun.
• Say how long food will take. A guest in a chair will wait twenty minutes happily if they were told twenty.

The bill goes on the room

Hotels already have the answer to payment and it is the room number. Taking a card through a phone at the pool adds fees and a reconciliation problem you did not have. Let the order carry the room, and let it settle at checkout the way everything else in the building does.

One property, several rooms

The pool, the rooftop and the restaurant are three menus, three kitchens and often three prices for the same negroni. They are still one hotel, and whoever runs food and beverage wants to read all three on one page at the end of the night, then open any one of them on its own.

Where to start

The pool, in the first warm month. It is the room with the clearest before and after, and if the spend per lounger does not move you will know quickly and cheaply.

Nobody puts their shoes on for a second drink. Reach the chair or lose the round.