‘Prepare for better guest experience’

Harmeet Singh Bedi, Director, Hotels & Hospitality Group India, JLL, lists down several key measures that hotels will need to take once travel resumes, to ensure that travel agents choose them for their clients. From use of masks to monitoring temperature, he shares his view on simple, but important, steps.

The hospitality industry is a customer-centric industry and therefore, direct interface is a prerequisite in the overall guest experience. Hotels will therefore have to prepare and adopt protocols for a better guest experience. Below are some of the protocols that would need to be adopted to instil confidence among the guests as well as the team for their health and safety. These may include the following:

• All hotel personnel will have to mandatorily wear masks. Guests could also be provided masks as part of guest room supplies. Masks could be customised especially in the brand’s colour or motif.
• At the entry level, the doorman would open the door for arriving guests. Alternatively, doors would have to be left open. Hotels with automatic sensor doors will not have to worry.
• Monitoring temperature of the guests was already in place prior to the lockdown. Sanitisation areas would need to be created in the lobby before the guest heads for check-in.
• Advance check-in and check-out systems will have to be adopted so as to ensure minimal crowding in the lobby. Alternatively, one would have to follow a queuing system with
  at least three-foot distance
  between guests.
• Guests may have to produce health certificates, as mandated by the government.
• Swimming pools, gyms and spas will not be operational initially.
• Ventilating and disinfecting rooms after check-out will be mandatory.
• Minimum three-foot distancing between tables in restaurants. Breakfast will be pre-ordered
  and served to guests. Also, breakfast on-the-go options with takeaway packaging will have to be offered.
• Menu offerings could be limited, taking into account customer diet preferences while ensuring additional quality of the ingredients as well as safety in the preparation process.
• Near contactless delivery of food, especially in-room dining as well as smaller individual portions, will need to be in place.
• FSSAI standards for one to three-star hotels and HACCP standards for four-star and above should be strictly followed.
• Regular timelines mandated for sanitising, for example, every 15 minutes wash hands in the kitchen/food production and service areas, cleaning
  and disinfecting high-contact surfaces like handles, elevator buttons, switches, etc., at
  regular intervals.

• Hotels will have to put in place manpower scheduling with equal staff spread across all three shifts ensuring safe distancing. They will also need to ensure high hygiene standards and regular sanitising.