In today’s digital age, efficiency and simplicity are paramount in the hospitality industry. As businesses strive to enhance customer experiences and maximise their operational effectiveness, mastering the art of online guest booking is essential. This article will explore various strategies, tools, and payment solutions that streamline the guest booking process.
The Host’s Dilemma: Why the Online Check-in Process Remains Challenging
Designed by FreepikAs we all know, OTAs often restrict access to guests’ personal information. So, it is difficult for property managers to gather essential details needed for a smooth check-in process. Without the ability to communicate directly with guests before their arrival, hosts find this challenging to provide personalised services.
On the other hand, collecting and verifying guest information can be time-consuming, especially for large portfolios. Property managers must ensure the secure storage and handling of guest data to prevent breaches or misuse. Properties with high turnover rates require frequent collection and verification of guest information, posing a continuous challenge.
Communicating the terms and conditions effectively to guests before their arrival can also be a hassle. Hosts need to find ways to convey this information clearly during the booking process and upon arrival. Implementing efficient systems for guests to electronically sign terms and conditions is useful, but can be difficult deploy. Property managers need user-friendly and secure platforms to obtain digital signatures.
And last but not least, guests often expect seamless and convenient payment processes. Property managers need to invest in user-friendly payment systems to meet these expectations and enhance guest satisfaction. However, claiming and collecting security deposits is another problem. In case of damage, disputes over security deposit deductions can be complicated to resolve through OTAs. Property managers may find it difficult to prove damages and justify deductions, leading to conflicts with guests.
Hassle-Free Booking Management
Optimising Your Airbnb Booking Process: Zeevou’s Streamlined Approach
Zeevou’s Online Check-In Process simplifies the processing of all bookings regardless of source and ensures that any unmet conditions are fulfilled before check-in can occur.
Collecting Guest Information
The first step lets users specify if they’re booking for themselves or someone else and complete one or both profiles. Furthermore, this step includes the full digital check-in form, allowing you to collect personal details such as name, address, and passport number. This also enables you to get an estimated arrival time, upsell early check-ins and late check-outs, and collect GDPR-compliant marketing consent. This way, you can build a contact database for future email campaigns to encourage direct bookings.
You can also request specific details from guests, like their exact arrival and departure times, the purpose of their booking, and any other custom questions.
Zeevou has a highly flexible built-in guest CRM. You can easily create a guest profile without needing a booking in the system. Any bookings the guest makes are automatically associated with and displayed under their profile. When guests update their details in Zeevou after booking through an OTA, their reservation automatically links to their existing profile.
Guest Screening
During the Online Check-In Process, you can ask the guest to upload some files. You can include a scanned copy of their passport/ID or a photo of their card (just make sure to check the legal rules in your area before doing so).
After checking the documents, you can mark the guest as ID Verified in Zeevou. Once you verify a guest’s ID, they won’t need to go through the verification process for future stays at any of your properties.
Designed by FreepikZeevou’s VIP Guest Flagging feature also helps you to identify your loyal guests, making the online booking process even easier. With this feature, you can flag your special guests with Gold, Silver, or Bronze medals. You can also label additional guests, even if the lead guest doesn’t have any specific mark. This way, you’ll know whether any extra guest for a particular reservation is your VIP guest.
Signing Terms and Conditions
To ensure that you are fully protected in case something goes wrong, we have developed an E-signature Rental Agreement feature. This allows you to get your terms and conditions digitally signed by guests without having to pay extra for other tools. Once the guest has signed the terms and conditions, we will display this in Zeevou. And a copy of the agreement envelope will be available for download.
You can also use our integration with Signable. The e-signature software helps you send online documents to the guest’s inbox and get an electronic signature.
Secure Payment Process
In the fourth step, you can offer guests additional services as upsells before finalising their credit card payment. During the check-in process, guests can download a draft invoice for their stay and complete the payment via a 3-D Secure Link using a credit or debit card. Zeevou integrates with various merchant accounts, enabling business owners to choose the most suitable payment options for their properties.
The 3-D Secure process for all credit and debit card payments ensures that Zeevou complies with PSD2 regulations. When guests pay, their financial institution verifies the payment information by requiring them to enter a password or one-time passcode. This extra security layer ensures that the financial institution approves or declines the transaction, protecting small businesses from chargeback issues and reducing the risk of fraud.
3-D Secure payments transfer most of the responsibility for unauthorised card use from the merchant to the cardholder and their card provider. So, it enables stronger online authentication and a reduction of financial risk for you as the host.
Guests can also pay through Bank Transfer if you have set bank account info for payment. Zeevou integrates with a number of payment gateways, so you can decide which one you prefer to work with. We also allow you to route payments for specific properties directly to the owner.
Managing the Security Deposit
While difficult, it is possible to automate steps 1-4 using a mixture of other systems. However, one of Zeevou’s unique features is that we enable you to fully automate your security deposits. You can set the security deposit pre-authorisation and release timeline, like one day before arrival to two days after departure.
Guests can choose whether to use the same credit card for the security deposit pre-authorisation or a different one. Zeevou also offers business owners a variety of payment options by integrating with multiple merchant accounts and payment gateways, allowing you to route payments directly to property owners or use different gateways for credit or debit card transactions and security deposits without the need for external card readers.
Tell Quickly When Your Guest Is Ready to Check In
Zeevou’s Check-In Ready feature provides a visual tracking system that shows the status of each guest’s check-in process. The system displays guest status with colors – green, yellow, or red – based on the check-in progress. This data easily integrates into the overall view of bookings and the Arrivals list, giving hosts a clear overview of guest status.
With this feature, you can also choose to automatically provide check-in instructions depending on predetermined parameters. For instance, when a guest completes steps like signing the agreement, the system automatically sends the check-in instructions.
Designed by FreepikAs with every feature in Zeevou, we strive to make our system highly customisable. In this instance, you can decide which steps of the online check-in process you wish to activate.
As soon as a booking reaches Zeevou, the system sends an email to the guest, outlining the conditions already met and the steps that remain. For a repeat guest, the guest verification will show as done. However, the guest must complete the remaining steps to confirm the booking.
A Complete Self Check-In
As part of Zeevou’s comprehensive check-in management, hosts can automate handing the keys and provide contactless check-ins. Zeevou and RemoteLock integration enables you to link your system to many smart locks. So, you can set up custom access schedules with no need for staff in place.
An All-in-One Tool
Zeevou is a world-class PMS that automates the online booking process and your Airbnb business management. Zeevou provides a unified system that aligns your distribution and marketing efforts. Selecting a unified system also eliminates the hassle of dealing with multiple companies. It means one-on-one communication with one partner, one support team, and one global community.
Personalised Onboarding and Support
For you to make the most of the software on your own, you must become familiar with all the features. Besides Free Demos for non-users, Zeevou’s skilled staff are available to take new users through the setup and training.
Time is of the essence when facing an issue or having a technical question. If there is a problem on our side, a couple of dedicated staff members will be there to support you. Thus, you’ll know who to contact whenever you have a concern.
If you require further information, Book a Free Demo to have all your questions addressed.
Image by pch.vector on Freepik.
