After the pandemic, the traveler's verdicts have shifted, however few hospitality practices haven't, and one such botheration is treating 'early check-in' .
Even today hoteliers that run on modern PMS, have this concept of fixed 'check-in time', meaning guests can check-in by or after the property defined time. This may look ‘okay’ to neatly frame their routines - rooms availability, housekeeping, room allotments, and billings. However, does this fit with vigorous guest arrival time patterns??
Mostly, guests who arrive after the 'check-in time' or loyalty guests do not face the drag, but people who make it early or leisure travelers, have an inferior experience. Think of a guest who is been traveling on a long flight, whose only expectation is to check in & and relax and not get maddened by being asked to wait. Though this is an ancient problem, not all hoteliers supervise this soundly. Here are some solutions to clear up this hitch.?
- Collect arrival time: Collect the guest arrival time during booking, and don't assume every guest arrives by the defined check-in time. Based on this, hoteliers could generate an advance report on early arrivals, during the night audit process
- Room available: If rooms are available in plenty and there is not much conflict with planned arrivals, assign guests a room and check-in, without waiting for the check-in time. Hotels could also charge a fee for early check-in.
- Room upgrades: On guests arriving early and if the booked room is unavailable, hoteliers can capitalize on this situation by requesting, that guests can upgrade to the next class (Silver->Gold), by paying an additional $15.00. On the other hand, hoteliers can also do downgrades or complimentary upgrades.
- ?Location Tracking: Using the latest mobile check-in process, also have the option to enable GPS tracking, which gives planning space for the hotel to allot room.
- Notify guest in advance: It’s better to notify the guest (via App, SMS, or email) even before his arrival if the room is ready/not ready, rather than vexing him at the front desk, after his arrival. In doing so, the guest may delay his arrival by spending some time in the airport lounge or meeting friends
- Gather schedule of local flights/events: Hoteliers need to have acute monitoring on schedules of flights or any key events like music concerts that could happen in their proximity, to better judge the number of ad-hoc-early check-ins.
- Arrange for transportation: Arrange for a chargeable cab/bus to pick up the guest from the airport, who is at the destination at an odd hour (say 3 AM) and is struggling with a new place & and people. The hotel may need to collect the guest’s transportation mode details (like flight no.), as a prerequisite
- Safeguard the luggage: This is another burden that early arriving guests have, where they have to roam around with the heavy luggage, until check-in time. For this, promptly tag their luggage to their reservation, store it in the cloakroom, and ensure guests that their luggage is safe and will reach their rooms, when ready.
- Complete the pre-check-in process: When hotels know that early check-in is possible, but would take some time (say 20 mins), then in this ‘wait time’, they can proceed with pre-check-in steps like scanning address and ID proofs, printing the confirmation letters, and collecting GDPR consents
- Dynamic Housekeeping: While the front desk must be aware of the early arrivals, it is much more important that the HK system is aware of the list. Hoteliers need to have a shroud HK system, that quickly scans the property, cleans the rooms as and when it is vacant, and have them ready for guest.
- Eye on early departures: At times, a room could become vacant early due to early departures. Take this into factor while assigning the rooms for early arrivals.
- ?Encourage merchandising: Hoteliers could use this technique to happily engage their guests until the room becomes available and earn revenue. This could be like offering them refreshments, taking them to nearby aquariums or museums
- Groups/walk-in Reservations: While it is manageable to handle the planned early arrivals, it's a little hard for the ad-hoc groups/walk-ins, requesting early check-ins. In this case, the best combo of the above solution could lighten the scene and use other options like assigning room based on age/gender (senior citizen, infants, and female), health conditions, etc.,
- Business Intelligence: Just like any other way to foresee a problem, always have a BI system in place to observe the diverse historic patterns of early check-ins and take pro-active actions
- Room not available: If the rooms are not available, maybe it’s a peak time or we have a sudden walk-in, then always have a place in your property (could be a dormitory, a specific room, lobby), where guests can use the restrooms, charge mobile phones, use Wi-Fi, and have power naps
- Nearby properties/Tie-up with airport lounge:?Every hotel chain might have its other property, nearby or have a tie-up with nearby hotels or airport lounges. Accommodate the guest in this place for the time being and smoothly shift the guest to your property when the room is ready. Alternatively, hoteliers can also completely move the reservation to the other property
- Order rooms: Hoteliers needs to ensure that room that is Out of Order or Out of the Market are swiftly addressed, and are back in inventory to consume reservations
- Don't accept the early arrival reservation: It is always better to say no when you can't fulfill it for sure. When a hotel cannot accommodate early check-in due to multiple reasons, then please do inform the guest and don’t accept the reservation
?In today’s dynamic world where guest has diverse arrival times, it is important for the hotel’s system to handle these situations, without losing the guest experience
A hotel PMS should not always work in favor of systematic and planned routines but should also be assertive enough to handle ad-hoc situations. Along with hotel's best operational practices, this could be achieved by having PMS with smart room assignment algorithms, interactive tape charts, and integrated digital marketing tools
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Budding hospitality & product expert with humbleness ;) & 'happy to learn' attitude
Let me know if you have faced this problem and how you/your system solved this or have planned to solve this. I understand there could be a better solution or something I missed, so please share your feedback on this article.
Senior Lead Business Analyst at Agilysys
3 年Great Post Yoknath!!!
Technology Executive, Program Manager, and Customer Champion
3 年Great post, Yoknath! I recommend starting with the guest and working backwards from there. I might not always know I'm going to be arriving early (flight was early, no traffic, meeting cancelled, etc.) and just show up at the property. My first choice is always that the front desk says "no problem", checks me in, and I go to my room. If that's not possible because my room is not ready, tell me when my room will be ready (best to be conservative here), offer to send my luggage directly to my room, and maybe give me a drink voucher and point me towards the bar. If the front desk agent genuinely seems happy to see me (and doesn't treat me like a problem to be solved), then I am very likely to return to this property on my next trip.
That's a great point! Good thing is, technology is evolving, and now hoteliers can rely on flexible software solutions that take into account various scenarios. For instance, in our system, you can easily add "Early check-in" or "Late check-out" service at any stage of creating a booking. Mobile check-in via an app grants more flexibility to customers as well. Guest experience is paramount! ??
Export of services & products │ International │ Projects │
3 年Interesting list of solutions Yoknath, it is good to put the human factor in each solution proposal for early check-in. I have been managing hotels for years so I know the point of view of the hotel, but in recent years I have also become more expert in the point of view of the tourist and I see it necessary to reach an agreement between both, and it seems important to me that the tourist does not feel that the hotelier wants to take advantage of certain situations, such as capitalizing on early check-ins as a way of saying "it's not my problem, therefore you should pay for it", I think that in these situations we have to be careful and personalize each guest, the guest who wants the cheapest room and sleeps just one night is not the same as the tourist who requested a VIP room for several nights, or the frequent customer, and in these cases it is as you say, you can give authority to the night audit to decide, and that not all decisions are the responsibility of the manager (delegate and to dinamize, not-bureaucratize). Tourists tend to realize everything and feel frustrated when they see that they are deceived, both in hotels and in rental cars and in restaurants, they have to wait for availability at the same time that they see free tables in a restaurant, or available cars for rent or available rooms. One of the many problems that I have noticed since #sixsigma and other continuous improvement strategies have been invented is the eternal clash between minimizing downtime without having to eliminate contingency times, that is, that any of the three businesses that I have named, they do poorquaity cleanups (in rooms, cars, and tables) in their attempt to minimize those times of lost capitalization. PMS or any #hotelsoftware are important, but so is the human eye, and each client is different from the rest, the client thinks “I am a frequent client of this chain, I should be treated differently from the other clients”. We can generate a lot of profits by capitalizing on these problems and digitizing everything, but be very careful with the review that the tourist later leaves on GooglMaps or on some opinion website. We must also keep the staff in constant training and monitoring. It is important to generate extra revenue for the hotel, but other methods can be used. I agree with 85% of your list, it is a very good article. #hotelmanagement