The COVID-19 pandemic is still affecting the hospitality industry, and will arguably continue to do so in 2022. The industry has been forced to adapt to world-wide travel restrictions, with the biggest impact not only being on the travellers and tourists, but also on the accommodation providers who want to host them. Everyone is preparing themselves for the new ‘protection framework’: COVID-19 related rules depending on the current traffic light level (accommodation at orange and red) for accommodation providers and travellers to be able to welcome each other again.

We at Abode as a PMS service provider have to adapt to the new needs of our customers, too. Over the last months, we integrated a few changes and added new features to Abode to make “the new normal” for accommodation providers easier to navigate.

In New Zealand in particular, accommodation providers can choose to make sure their guests are vaccinated. We have integrated a feature that enables to mark each guest once checked if vaccinated. To remind guests in advance of their arrival to bring their vaccination certificates, our PMS users can set up an automated email.
In general, Abode offers pre-arrival email templates that can easily be set up – not only to remind guests of bringing their vaccination passport, but also to promote specials or any other upcoming or current events.
Another feature we integrated is to send an email to multiple bookings selected via the Guest Information report (bulk emailing). This feature is very helpful for a wide range of scenarios where properties need to send announcements to multiple bookings at once; e.g. to keep guests informed about important changes, such as updated requirements affecting guests and properties due to COVID-19.
In case of a confirmed positive case that stayed at your accommodation, the Guest List under reports can inform about who stayed at the accommodation at any given day. This makes contact tracing easy and reliable – and with the bulk email feature, you would be able to email only those guests affected.

As always, if you have any questions or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.