What adaptations should you make for welcoming guests back?

[Stephanie]

Hiya everyone,

I hope that the recovery is going well for those of you who can accommodate travellers again, and that those who cannot yet are keeping safe.

After the last few months, many guests are considering how best to adapt their accommodation habits to this ever-changing environment. Arriving and welcoming travellers is one of the crucial stages of a stay, and I'd love to hear more about how you approach it now or plan to.

I have read in various comments on the Community Center in recent weeks several personal tips and tricks related to this stage, such as the following:

• Suggest Hydro-alcoholic gel at the entrance of the house
• Encouraging autonomous arrivals to limit human to human exposure, where possible
• Increased communication with travellers in advance of their stay to better understand their concerns and expectations they may also have (this one applied both to hosts and guests being proactive in open communications).

Do you plan to make any changes to your reception and welcoming routine?

I think this is a tough one to address for those hosts that list a private room in their property or are live-in on-sight hosts so any and all advice those hosts can share are going to be hugely beneficial to your peers.

Thank you for all your advice and ideas 💡

Stephanie

[Laura2484]

Hi @Stephanie ,

A relevant post as we have only just welcomed our first guest since late March. Like most of the world we put ourselves in isolation , as hosts we blocked our booking calendar and waited while watching how this pandemic ravaged & raged.

There is some calm now here in NZ, we are at Alert level 1 and things progressively return to routine.

The changes we have made to welcome our first guest to our entire listing.

# Check in - we will at some stage resume back to a welcome handshake but for the moment we are still being polite and maintaining a distance. We have placed hand sanitiser gel and hand sanitiser wipes at the main door, with a lined rubbish bin handy.

# Disinfectant sprays in each of the main spaces eg. Bathroom/kitchen etc. with other household cleaners and disposable gloves available for use.

# The house key we sanitised and placed in a sealed plastic bag left on the table

# Enhanced cleaning  routine and blocking days in between reservations .

# Making guests aware of the new cleaning procedure 

# Limited person to person contact and text messaging ‘guests as a post check in courtesy

( We actually told our guest they were our first since March )

With common sense we will adapt our welcome routines  & cleaning routines as we go , I do hope there is something helpful here. It is still early days of hosting for us , it feels very new .

‘All the best to those who are welcoming guests!’

Take care ☀️

[Stephanie]

@Laura2484 ,

Really great tips there! How is hosting again? How's your new guests?

Thanks

[Cathie19]

Thinking of you @Stephanie and hoping you all are well, settling into the routine of your new lifestyle. 🌻

[Sharon1014]

Having read through the US cleaning protocols, one thing did stand out as missing, but which applies to all hosts everywhere, and that is removing all reading material, games, toys etc .... make the place a little more zen (less is more).   The kind of things that guests can thumb through, touch, fiddle with, but since every last thing needs cleaning now, don't fancy disinfecting every last page of a book, or every card in a deck of cards etc.  We have our house guide printed on a laminated sheet, so that gets a going over both sides but that's the only printed material in the place.

We have been getting a rush of bookings despite it being winter, really quite gobsmacked, but 😀💰💰

[Stephanie]

This is a great insight (and something I will also feedback to the policy team too.) I think lockdown has made us all aware how much we interact with the world with our hands @Sharon1014 !

I'm excited to hear about your bookings rush, let us know how you get on!

Thanks,

Stephanie

[Sharon1014]

@Stephanie  Progress report:  I did a little research over the weekend to see what the bookings look like for other local hosts, and guess what?  We have snaffled it ALL, they have none!  We have even been getting weeknight bookings which is a first for us (normally it's just weekends or school holidays).  Think it may have something to do with running our winter special at slightly reduced rate with extras thrown in.  5 stars across the board from all the guests so far.  People do so love a sale!  😀

This was intentional of course, to pick up as much business as possible which will help to position our listing really well for the spring and summer trade when it kicks in.  Just wasn't expecting the strategy to be quite so successful.  Happy camper. 💰

[Helen427]

@Sharon1014Great idea about Zen.

I think you will find that people generally realise one can't get an infectious disease flicking through a book or cards.

Libraries are not about to disinfect them either.

In general terms people have decided after home schooling their children on the internet there's a move back to books as they are sick of looking at screens.

Something to be mindful of before you clear them out.

All the best 

[Nick]

This is a very good point @Sharon1014 thanks for sharing. Happy both of you guys ( @Laura2484 ) for hosting again! 

[Laura2484]

@Stephanie ,

Thanks for asking , actually feels like we are first timers. Guess we are in a way😅

Our guest is lovely, she is on a job transfer from another region. A front line worker in the health sector.. I am curious how her daily job has been affected now we are at level 1 - is there relief amongst the staff or are they busier than ever , with other medical cases that are not Covid related? Probably both.

@Sharon1014 

Yes, I also read about limiting these things, soft furnishings too. 

I’m sure there are other useful tips . Thanks for sharing and all the best for your new rush of inquiries👍🏾

[Maia29]

I changed the layout of my entryway so that the main entry is only for guests (I use my back porch door to access my unit).

*I added spray hand sanitizer and alcohol wipes to the entryway.

*I opted in the Airbnb enhanced cleaning protocol (most of the protocols I was already doing already anyways).

*I block at least two days between all guests.

*I removed all toys, games, cards, magazines from the unit.

*Since I have blocked at least two days between guests, I also offer early check in and late check out.

[Martina714]

I put gel at the entrance and disinfectant spray in the bathroom just in case someone want to disinfect again the wc and handles again. I have 3 ozone makers since 3yrs  all over the public spaces which are pretty good as they kill even smell other than bacterias. I now try to engage self check-ins which is ok if they send me their id's via whatsapp and until now we always found a solution for the tourist tax keeping a phisical distance, I now this weekend having a couple, soldiers, and everything is going fine. Last but not least, I never shook hands of my guests since 2yrs and joining the hands like to say thanks on emojis fine for me, I understand it was pretty weird until few months ago, but now it became normal.

[Helen427]

@Stephanie @Martina714 @Maia29 

@Laura2484 @Sharon1014 

 It's still very flat & quiet here in Auckland.

Around a 1,000 people a day have been losing jobs here in New Zealand because of the longest Quarantine ever in world history.

 The lockdown has done serious harm to the wider economy & people's personal security.

People in general however have otherwise carried on as we used to, a hug & friendly welcome which is a positive.

Looking forward to getting our borders back open to get stimulus within our economy.

Missing my overseas Guests and locals who are hunkering down

[Melodie-And-John0]

@Stephanie @Martina714 @Maia29 

@Laura2484 @Sharon1014 , I think we were in better shape to come into this thing with our listings being private inside our home in ways that guests and hosts separation wasn't tough to maintain and we have always been IB friendly and Self Check in ready but have added the 24 hour reset day between bookings.  Our cleaning and sanitization  standards were high before, they are even higher now and our listing is clear about that. 

We have been open for the duration and watched the highly diminished guest flow change greatly over that time.  Everyone is very nervous, few are vacationing, most are traveling for work or other reasons and they have no choice.  Its not the happy go lucky crowd were accustomed to, I want them back!!!!!  Until then, we will do our best to make them comfortable by keeping their needs and safety in mind (as well as our own) they need a private, safe and comfortable place to sleep at the very least and were open to Provide that!.   Stay well, JR  

[Suzanne302]

Great topic @Stephanie ! I may catch flak from fellow hosts for this, but I am an in-home host and decided to open my home back up at the beginning of June. I do not share a bathroom. This was the deciding factor for me. I would not host during this time if the bathroom was shared.

Information about the virus is constantly evolving, but the advice right now is that the highest risk is being in close contact for an extended period of time with an infected person. Surface transfer while still a risk, is much lower than originally thought.

**I've limited stays to no longer than 3 nights. That leaves less room for just "hanging out" at the house and most people staying such a short time are out and about and really just use the room to sleep.

**I block two days before and after each reservation.

**I've slightly bumped up my prices from last year and will continue to do so as I book up. My thinking is that anyone just looking for a spontaneous cheap, quick getaway is riskier than someone who needs to travel or is making serious plans. (I could be way off on that thinking, but it's the same thing insurance actuaries do when judging risk!)

**Of course everything is sanitized between guests, but I had a pretty strict cleaning protocol prior to the pandemic so I have always wiped down remotes/door knobs/light switches/etc.

**I provide hand sanitizer.

**I let guests know that even if I'm home, I will limit contact. My first guest in June I never even met. My house is set up in such a way that the guest room is on the opposite side of the house from my room.

**I am only booking out a month at a time, so I can monitor what is going on and stop taking reservations if things start to spike rapidly.

What I am NOT going to do right now I will really miss! Often I'll make extra breakfast and offer it to guests. Or share a glass of wine on the porch. Those are the things that make Airbnb special to me, but those little personal interactions will have to be put on hold.