News, social media, or emails – every information medium is shooting up COVID-19 and its information.
It has already done a lot of damage and it’s time we give it a back seat.
We just can’t let it run our lives and businesses.
It is time to take up the charge and get back on our toes.
The entire world is getting back on its feet, and so is the travel industry.
It is natural to wish that every room in the hotel gets occupied. But such a booming start isn’t realistic.
However, you can surely prepare for a decent start, if you reopen with the right measures listed in the article.
Essential requirements to reopen hotel post COVID-19
Let’s prepare your property to all corners:
1. Follow the statutory requirements
Very few countries in the world have flattened the curve significantly and opened their boundaries to travelers. Whereas some countries will lift the travel bans in the coming months.
On that note, most countries would issue COVID-19 preventive measures regarding cleanliness, physical distancing, and communication.
And you have to follow all these measures before you reopen your property.
Well, we have already gathered those guidelines officially issued by different countries and OTAs here.
Out of the statutory guidelines, the two important things that you need to focus is on:
Improvising Your Cleanliness Standards
It is a crucial requirement to keep your hotel safe from COVID-19.
- As you already know, the virus lives on any surface for a maximum of 8 hours. Have a practice at your hotel to sanitize common touch-points such as the door handles, the reception area, the front desk, or elevator buttons.
- As an alternative, you can also apply plastic insulating films on the elevator buttons, and change it every day.
- Trolleys carrying luggage have to be sanitized before sending them to rooms.
- Avoid having carpets at the hotel’s entrance.
- If you have an in-house restaurant, ensure the cleanliness of your kitchen and dine-in area.
- Buffet should be avoided totally. You can promote the ‘Grab & Go’ or ‘Pick up from the door’ trend.
- Avoid keeping the crockery and cutlery, tablewares such as salt and pepper shakers, toothpick holders, sugar containers, tent card holders, menus, and bill folders. If you wish to keep them, then they should be cleaned and sanitized at least 3-4 times a day.
Maintain Physical Distancing
You and your staff should maintain a physical distance of at least 6 feet generally. Here are a few ideas that will help you manage the crowd at your property:
- Avoid handshakes. Practice the new way of greeting your guests- Namaste.
- You should restrict guests’ entry to the common areas of your property like the pool, spa, gym, and conference rooms for a certain period.
- In case you don’t want to restrict, then maximum capacity is generally based on three square meters per person. Also, maintain at least six feet of distance between lounge chairs at the pool.
- You have to make markings at a sufficient distance to manage the check-in queue or crowd at your hotel premises.
- Limit the number of people in elevators, escalators, and lifts. For escalators, allow one person on alternate steps.
Keep an eye on all the areas of your hotel through surveillance cameras and ensure that physical distance is being maintained.
2. Encourage the use of masks, gloves, and sanitizers
Mask is the most important safety measure to keep oneself safe from being infected with the virus.
- Your hotel entrance should have mandatory hand hygiene (sanitizer dispenser) and thermal screening provisions.
- You should allow staff and guests to enter your hotel only if they are using face covers/masks.
- Mask has to be worn at all times inside the hotel. Keep sanitizers and surgical masks in each hotel room.
- You can provide your staff members and guests with surgical masks, alcohol-based hand sanitizer (containing at least 60% alcohol), and gloves to wear.
- Install the alcohol-based hand rub dispensers at your front desk, reception area, in-house restaurant, cafe, meeting rooms, or hotel lobbies. You can also keep big bottles of sanitizers at all these places.
- Standees, posters, and audiovisuals on preventive measures for COVID-19 are to be displayed clearly.
Unless the COVID-19 drug is discovered, the only rescue you have are – masks, sanitizer, and gloves.
3. Create and share your hotel’s own guidelines
At present and even in the coming times, their foremost concern would be safety instead of luxury or comfort. So your primary concern is to implant trust in your guests’ minds. Only that will help you to receive bookings.
And it’s not difficult! All you have to do is make them aware of all the preventive measures for your property.
- It is very important for you to develop your hotels’ own COVID-19 guidelines, in which you have to mention all the precautionary measures to ensure guests’ safety.
- Have a dedicated page made on your website to highlight all the steps.
We’ve created FREE COVID 19 webpage content templates for you. Select the template from here, and we'll add the page on your website at NO COST.
- Promote them on your property’s social media handles and OTA profiles.
- You can also email your guidelines for reopening to your guests.
Basically, taking enough measures is not enough, you have to share them; so that your guests can have confidence in your property. It is the most essential part that will get you bookings after reopening.
4. Participate in Safety Programs
This is one essential tip that you can consider taking part in once your hotel becomes operational.
Recently MakeMyTrip and Goibibo have launched MySafety and goSafe programs for hotels respectively. It will enable you to give a surety to your guests that your property is safe from COVID-19.
- Under this program, your hotel will be physically audited by Deloitte personnel for compliance with important safety and hygiene as advised by WHO and the Government.
- This will provide a better discovery of your property on both these OTAs.
- Besides, on completion of the audit, your hotel will be qualified for MySafety and goSafe safety badges on both platforms.
- You can even highlight them within your hotel’s premises, on your website as well as other offline platforms.
Such programs might cost you a bit, but they will definitely reap good returns with time. On top of that, it would create trust amongst your potential guests and drive them to visit your property.
5. Introduce contactless services
You will also be scared to touch any surface if you move out of your house; so will your guests. That is why you have to make your guest’s journey completely contactless. Here are a few things that you can do:
- Hotels can adopt technology like a mobile concierge app or guest self-service portal, that reduces the physical contact of guests with staff.
- You have to replace physical keys with digital keys that let your guests open their rooms from their mobile.
- For the room service orders, request your guests to pick up their meals from the doorstep to avoid physical contact.
- Adopt vending machines to provide toiletries or other amenities to your guests.
- Encourage digital payments.
We’ve created a complete guide on how hotels can deliver the contactless guest experience. You can download it and understand how you can provide a complete touch-free stay.
COVID-19 has mandated automation in our industry, and all businesses have to accept this change.
5. Train your staff
Your staff will be the primary point of contact for your guests; so it is of utmost importance to train them on how to cater to guests post COVID-19.
- Though 99% of your staff must be fairly familiar with the precautions. We would still recommend you to arrange a meeting and make them aware of the present scenario of your region.
- Educate them about the preventive measures that they should take on your hotel premises.
- Also, brief them about the official guidelines provided by your regional tourism board.
- Ask them to avoid any physical content with guests or any other staff members and strictly follow your hotel’s own guidelines.
- Train them to deal with guests who are not following the hotel’s basic guidelines.
Your property needs to have all measures in place to protect staff and guests during interactions with each other.
6. Take care of your guests and staff
Apart from the statutory measures, you have to be extra cautious when it comes to safety.
- Have the infrared thermometers at your front desk to conduct temperature checks on all guests. Your staff can request all your newly arrived guests to measure their body temperature via a thermal scanner placed near the entrance.
- If you find any guests who are unwell with any symptoms of fever, flu, or respiratory problems, ask them to consult a doctor immediately.
- Only asymptomatic staff and guests shall be allowed after the thermal screening.
- People above 65 years of age, people with multiple medical conditions, pregnant women, and children below the age of 10 years are advised to stay at home, except for essential and health purposes.
These are easy-to-adopt practices and essential requirements to reopen hotels. Following these practices and sharing them will definitely help you revive your business.
7. Store your guests’ data
You should maintain accurate guest records which include name, ID Proofs, their nationality, travel history and security camera tapes.
These records should be kept for a minimum of 90 days. It is very important to trace if any of your hotel’s staff or guests have been diagnosed with the virus.
Some hotels may not consider it important to store the guest data. But now onward it has become mandatory for each accommodation provider.
8. Additional Tips
Other than this, here are some steps that will help you revive your business.
Modify your cancellation policy
In the current scenario, travelers will look for hotels whose cancellation and refundable policies are flexible. Reason being, if the trip gets canceled because for any reason then the guests can get an acceptable refund amount. So, you need to make your cancellation and refund policies a bit flexible.
Check where your supply is coming from
Keep a tab on your suppliers and other outsourcing agencies. Ensure megastores from where you are getting inventory for your in-house restaurant are safe from COVID-19. None of your food or beverage should be outsourced from the contaminated or quarantine zone.
Also, check whether the laundry service agencies are taking adequate preventive measures.
So, these steps pretty much sums up all the precautions that hotels and accommodation provider have to take.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, now onward the look and feel of the hotels are going to change. With our wide range of resources, blogs and many other things, we are leaving no stone unturned to empower the hotel industry.
We hope these measures help you deliver the best and safe guest experience.
We will be happy to help you in case of any queries.
