How we came up with a completely contactless check-in solution
By: Surbhi Sethi
Tags: Check In, Contactless, Hotel, Hospitality, Coronavirus

“The scariest part about travel in the covid times is the long check-in process — really crowded reception area, the wait period and the full-of-contact process”

— a frequent business traveller

During a brainstorming session about how we can make travellers more comfortable about staying in hotels in these turbulent and precarious times, we came up with 2 ways of doing this -

Tech-enabled stays which ensure minimum contact & minimum time spent at any public area during the entirety of a guest’s stay.

Completely changing the way hotel operations are run and introducing revised SOPs for each and every leg of the guest’s stay.

While the latter was more operational, and ended up in us releasing fully revised hygiene processes across all our hotels, encapsulated under the Treebo Hygiene Shield offering, the former was what got us racking our brains.

The first problem to be solved here was the elaborate & lengthy check-in process at a hotel. The normal check-in process currently consists of the following steps -

Upon arrival at the hotel, depending on the queue at the front desk, you have to wait out your turn to check-in. At your turn, the hotel asks for your basic personal details and fills out your guest registration form(s) or the Arrival & Departure register. You are then required to sign this form/register. The hotel collects all guests’ ID proofs to make & keep a copy, for legal purposes. If you have a room preference, you communicate the same, rooms are assigned for your booking & finally, the keys are handed over to you.

Hence, following were the considerations while building the solution -

Guests should be able to complete the process effortlessly, using their own device - without having to download any app or software.

Time taken for check-in should be minimized — all aforementioned steps need to be handled through tech, and done before the guest physically arrives at the hotel.

Contact with the hotel staff should be reduced to the lowest possible — collecting the clean & sanitised key should be the only contact-based step guests need to undergo at the hotel.

Since there are legal implications involved, there should be a verification step for the guest details and ID proofs submitted during web check-in.

In case of any discrepancies in the details the guest has provided during web check-in, the guest should be informed of the same before the actual check-in at the hotel, and asked to correct them.

Hence, the solution consisted of the following steps -

Guests receives a link to web check-in 48 hours before their check-in date, which can be accessed from any device. He/she can fill in their basic details like nationality, address, where they are coming from and going to etc, and upload ID proofs through a simple and intuitive UI. Next, they can select the room(s) of their choice, specify any special requests they might have for the hotel, and select the tentative time of arrival at the hotel. Finally, the guests provide their signature, and complete web check-in.

That’s it! The process is seamless and takes just a few minutes to complete.

On the hotel side, there should be a single flow to manage all things related to web check-in. So the approach there was -

The front desk manager gets a notification to verify any pending web check-ins which have been completed by any guest for an upcoming booking. He can verify or reject the ID proof documents and the basic details provided by the guest during web check-in before or on the check-in date. Within the same flow, he can also preview and print the guest registration card already signed by the guest. If the documents are rejected by the FDM, the Guest receives a communication specifying the reason of rejection, so that they can provide correct details. On the day of check-in, the guest simply has to show the ID proof which they uploaded during web check-in and get the key to their room.

Voila! No more touching and waiting in the long queues. A fast, simple and hassle-free check-in process, soon to be launched across all our hotels.

Interested in working with some of the best technology & business talent in the country? Checkout the current openings at our careers page. We are always on the lookout for Engineers & Product Managers. The Web Check-In solution was brought to life by the super-awesome engineering, design & product team of Kapil, Dhwanil, Ankita, Sahil, Prateek, Praveen & myself.

Special thanks to Dhwanil & Kapil for helping write this post.