The Covid-19 pandemic has affected hotels all over the world. It’s incredibly difficult to keep running a business while keeping all employees and guests safe. While most hotels worldwide closed while the virus was at its peak, some are now able to re-open while following strict guidelines.
Practices regarding hygiene, cleanliness, and social distancing are important if you want to keep your hotel open while ensuring everyone’s safety. As long as you find a way to protect your guests and staff while maintaining a regular workflow, there’s no reason for your hotel to stay closed.
To help you stay in business, we have compiled a list of tips that will keep your hotel staff and guests safe and healthy.
Use contactless check-in
Your guests need to feel secure during the check-in process, which is impossible to achieve with standard check-in practices. To ensure you’re respecting social distancing measures and limiting contact between people, you need to implement a new system.
That’s where contactless check-in enters the stage, a method that has been popular for a while. Even back in 2015, 90% of millennials said they would be interested in digitally checking-in and out of a hotel.
Unlike the traditional check-in process that involves multiple outpoints with surfaces and staff members, contactless check-in removes all of these risks. It only requires guests to use an app or a link to scan their ID and fill out their details.
Once that’s complete, the guests get access to their key via their smartphone or they simply go to a designated self-service check-in point to pick up their key.
Aside from being a much safer and healthier option, contactless check-in has many benefits such as:
- Saving a lot of time and effort for both guests and staff, as all of the documentation can be sent ahead of time and before the guest even arrives at the hotel
- Easier data gathering which allows hotels to build their email lists
- Easy integration with other systems in your hotel
- Possibility to use it as a marketing tool that allows you to create a branded experience and even upsell certain amenities
- Allowing hotel staff to devote more time to hospitality
The best way to set up contactless check-in is before your guests even arrive on-site by sending a check-in link at least 12 hours before the guest is scheduled to arrive at the hotel. Create additional material that will let guests know that your hotel is following all Covid-related protocols.
Aside from sending out the link, update your hotel’s website with information about the changed practice, and set up signs at your hotel that detail how guests can use contactless check-in.
Acquire sanitation materials
Keeping everything clean and sanitized has always been necessary at hotels, but due to the Covid-19 pandemic, sanitation needs to be taken more seriously than ever. Apart from maintaining your regular cleaning practices, you need to have a sustainable supply of sanitation materials.
Here are some sanitation materials you always need to have available:
- Face masks and gloves. You need to take your hotel’s maximum occupancy into consideration and plan how big of a stock you need to have. It’s important to provide masks and gloves for both guests and staff. Make sure to have at least two masks per person per day, and even more if possible.
- Hand sanitizer. Place dispensers of hand sanitizer in all public areas. However, it’s also important to remind guests and staff that, in addition to using hand sanitizer, they need to wash their hands with warm water and soap for 20 seconds as often as possible.
- Disinfectant products. Regular cleaning products aren’t enough to combat the spreading of Covid-19, so you need to invest in cleaning products that are good disinfectants. Keep in mind that you will also have to train your cleaning staff on how to safely use these products.
Educate your employees
It’s essential that all employees in your hotel are educated properly on how they can prevent the spread of infection.
Make sure that:
- Staff and guests don’t share either personal hygiene items or food, cutlery, and utensils
- Your employees maintain good personal hygiene, especially when it comes to hand washing
- Your employees know how to keep all public areas and high-touch services clean and disinfected as often as possible, preferably after dealing with each guest.
Communicate with guests via Direct Chat
Communication with guests is unavoidable, but it can still be done while practicing social distancing. To communicate with guests in real-time without any personal contact, you need to use Direct live chat. That way, your staff can provide essential support and discuss the guest’s requirements during their stay.
Using Direct Chat also gives you the opportunity to provide your guests with all relevant information that can help them prevent the spread of the Covid-19 virus. You can also provide guests with evacuation plans and emergency contact numbers, all translated into multiple languages.
Stay safe
Businesses all over the world are currently going through a very hard time, it is not just the hotel industry. An important thing to remember is that we all need to stay humane toward each other and be as responsible as possible to guests and hotel staff who risk their health every day.
All of this will pass, and hotels will once again return to doing business as usual. But until then, you need to provide a safe environment for everyone who enters your hotel and maintain trust between you and your guests. Remember to leverage new technologies like mobile check in to protect your front desk and staff.
Get started with Canary Technologies’s Contactless Check-In Solution Today
