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Online check-ins without the companion's dates of birth

  • 27 February 2023
  • 36 replies
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A
Userlevel 3

We’re located in Austria, and we have to report a name and date of birth for each guest to the tourist office. 

Right now we are using the Mews online check-in for our self-service apartments. 80% of our guests start with the online check-in, but we’re seeing a very low completion rate. Mostly we get all the details of the main booker, and the names of the companions. But no dates of birth.

This is because, it is actually impossible for the main booker to add dates of birth for the companions.
You can give a name, and an email address. Then the companion gets an email and performs a seperate check-in process.

So what happens if the companions are children? You have to give an email address in order to fill out their details, does your toddler have an email address? No, of course not. So then you try it with your own email. Doesn’t work, has to be a unique email address. Maybe send it to your work address? But what if you don’t have five different work addresses for all 5 of your children?

In any case, it’s a hassle, and I don’t blame our guests for not finishing the online check-in. 
And to make it worse the guests think they’ve completed the online check-in. So they are annoyed when we have to ask them for extra details.

We are seeing this a lot, and I’m wondering if anyone else is struggeling with it as well? Or maybe you have a brilliant workaround. Please share it!



I’ve added a date of birth field for companions as an idea to upvote:
https://feedback.mews.com/forums/918733-mews-guest-journey/suggestions/46139347-let-the-main-booker-add-companion-details-during-t

 

 

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Best answer by James.taylor 13 April 2023, 17:44

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36 replies

Mariusz Siwkowski
Userlevel 4
Badge +1

Hi Andreas,

 

I like your post and I guess it would help if there would be a “Add child” next to “Add companion”.

In this case the main booker can fill in the details.

Right?

 

Best

Mariusz

A
Userlevel 3

Hi Mariusz,

Sure, that would help. Or simply add a field for date of birth for all companions. And make the email address field non-mandatory.
That way we might collect a few less email addresses. But at least we’ll have all the legally required guest details.

S
Userlevel 3

We’re located in Austria, and we have to report a name and date of birth for each guest to the tourist office. 

Right now we are using the Mews online check-in for our self-service apartments. 80% of our guests start with the online check-in, but we’re seeing a very low completion rate. Mostly we get all the details of the main booker, and the names of the companions. But no dates of birth.

This is because, it is actually impossible for the main booker to add dates of birth for the companions.
You can give a name, and an email address. Then the companion gets an email and performs a seperate check-in process.

So what happens if the companions are children? You have to give an email address in order to fill out their details, does your toddler have an email address? No, of course not. So then you try it with your own email. Doesn’t work, has to be a unique email address. Maybe send it to your work address? But what if you don’t have five different work addresses for all 5 of your children?

In any case, it’s a hassle, and I don’t blame our guests for not finishing the online check-in. 
And to make it worse the guests think they’ve completed the online check-in. So they are annoyed when we have to ask them for extra details.

We are seeing this a lot, and I’m wondering if anyone else is struggeling with it as well? Or maybe you have a brilliant workaround. Please share it!



I’ve added a date of birth field for companions as an idea to upvote:
https://feedback.mews.com/forums/918733-mews-guest-journey/suggestions/46139347-let-the-main-booker-add-companion-details-during-t

 

 

Hello! We have exactly the same problem but somehow mews ignores it. Any ideas how this could be improved? With this major error the online check-in somehow does not really make sense….

A
Userlevel 3

Hi Samoanprincess,

We haven’t found a solution with Mews for this, nor a proper response from them.

Edit: They actually responded that they will not change the online check-in, in this idea (which is the 2nd most upvoted idea in the feedback portal):
https://feedback.mews.com/forums/918733-mews-guest-journey/suggestions/36659824-customizable-online-check-in-requirements


We’ve decided to move forward with a third-party online-check-in system. Which seems silly, we are paying extra, and a lot of the payments will now go through the third-party system. So both us and Mews are missing out.

James.taylor
Rank
Userlevel 5
Badge +2

Hi @andreas 👋

I’m one of the Product Managers in the Guest Experience team at Mews.

Thank you for raising this question and for painting a clear picture of the challenge this causes you and your guests.

I apologise that it’s taking so long to have a response from us that you’ve looked for an alternative provider. However, I can tell you that this is something we’re working to resolve right now.
 

What are we doing?
We are updating the Online Check-in to let the main guest complete the details of all other guests on their reservation. In your case, the main guest will be able to provide the names and dates of birth of any other guests on their booking.

They will also still have the option to send an email invitation to other guests on their reservation if they prefer.

 

When would this be available?

Our development team is building this right now and we expect to have a version ready to pilot by the end of April. 


Please let me know if you would still be interested to try this out and I can follow-up with you once this is available?

A
Userlevel 3

Hi @James.taylor ,

That’s great to hear! Yes we would definately be willing to try out an updated check-in version. And I would be happy to hear more about it from you.

P.S.
I think a lot of other people would like to hear this, you might think about posting something in this thread:
https://feedback.mews.com/forums/918733-mews-guest-journey/suggestions/36659824-customizable-online-check-in-requirements

S
Userlevel 3

Dear James!

So happy that something is moving now! Please, also add us to the try out section ;)! Thank you and we are really excited that it´s rolled out soon. It would really make our work with mews so much easier!

Christina 

mauritsbots
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@James.taylor is this going to be possible also for other properties where this is no legal requirement, but still very much a request? 

Questions? Brainstorm? Contact me!
iglucamping.com
Userlevel 3

For us it’s also very confusing for the guests. Also because the guest is asked again and again to provide the credit card information olthough the payes externally… This causes confusion by nearly every guest not payping with credit card… Also this is just a parameter “do not ask for credit card when payment is made externally” in the MEWS settings… Would be fine...

I figured out that for us as a small customer MEWS does no longer really care for needs and local regulations as a few years ago.

Only for big cities they implement the local taxes (Kurtaxe). We had to programm something by ourselves to get the right data out of mews.

They seem to be hardly more focussed on business Hotels than on leisure/tourism…

Kai

James.taylor
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@andreas, @samoanprincess, thank you both for expressing interest in this new capability. I will follow-up with you both once this nears availability so we can share more details with you.

James.taylor
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@James.taylor is this going to be possible also for other properties where this is no legal requirement, but still very much a request? 

Once fully released, this capability will be available to any property using the Mews Online Check-in. So the main guest can complete any required details of other guests on their reservation. The details currently requested during online check-in are based on the legal environment for the property. 

Is your question relating to additional data outside of these mandatory requirements?

James.taylor
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Userlevel 5
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For us it’s also very confusing for the guests. Also because the guest is asked again and again to provide the credit card information olthough the payes externally… This causes confusion by nearly every guest not payping with credit card… Also this is just a parameter “do not ask for credit card when payment is made externally” in the MEWS settings… Would be fine...

I figured out that for us as a small customer MEWS does no longer really care for needs and local regulations as a few years ago.

Only for big cities they implement the local taxes (Kurtaxe). We had to programm something by ourselves to get the right data out of mews.

They seem to be hardly more focussed on business Hotels than on leisure/tourism…

Kai

Hi Kai, I’m sorry that you’re feeling that Mews is not caring about the experience for your property, that is not how we want to represent ourselves!

My area of focus is the Mews Guest Experience and I’d be keen to understand more about the payment card issue you’ve referred to. If that’s OK, I’ll message you directly to coordinate a time for a call?

iglucamping.com
Userlevel 3

of course that’s ok for me...

Eric Kröll
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@James.taylor happy to give it a spin, if you wanna do a beta test before rolling it out.

 

Can I just drop my thoughts on the topic, since we are talking about online check-ins:

Is it possible or are you planning to mark “partially completed” online check-ins in the arrival window for the receptionists?

Due to the credit card being a mandatory field during the online check-in process, a lot of our guests also abort the process. Therefor they are just marked as arrivals even though they already signed the guest registration, but you can only see that when checking the files in the guest profile (indicator are usually 2 names already filled out in the overview).

Would be lovely if the guests, who abort at the last part (credit card) can somehow be marked as “partially completed” online check-in. As it always provides a weird encounter when you hand out the guest registration and the guest answers “oh but i already filled that out”…

 

 

And I have to agree with Kai from @iglucamping.com. Adding a parameter in the mews settings would also be a lovely feature and should not be that hard to programm. We had a lot of internal discussions regarding abortion rate caused by the mandatory credit card field. I guess this would also be a possible solution for us.

 

 

James.taylor
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Userlevel 5
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@James.taylor happy to give it a spin, if you wanna do a beta test before rolling it out.

 

Can I just drop my thoughts on the topic, since we are talking about online check-ins:

Is it possible or are you planning to mark “partially completed” online check-ins in the arrival window for the receptionists?

Due to the credit card being a mandatory field during the online check-in process, a lot of our guests also abort the process. Therefor they are just marked as arrivals even though they already signed the guest registration, but you can only see that when checking the files in the guest profile (indicator are usually 2 names already filled out in the overview).

Would be lovely if the guests, who abort at the last part (credit card) can somehow be marked as “partially completed” online check-in. As it always provides a weird encounter when you hand out the guest registration and the guest answers “oh but i already filled that out”…

 

 

And I have to agree with Kai from @iglucamping.com. Adding a parameter in the mews settings would also be a lovely feature and should not be that hard to programm. We had a lot of internal discussions regarding abortion rate caused by the mandatory credit card field. I guess this would also be a possible solution for us.

 

 

Hi @Eric Kröll, thank you for sharing this context, it’s very helpful to understand!

 

The suggested change to have a “partially completed” state for the arrival window is not something we’re currently working on, but I will have a look into this further with the relevant teams. I understand the scenario you’ve shared and can see why that’s frustrating for your teams.

 

I’d be keen to understand a little more about the option to disable the card details. I think the current version was built with the expectation that customers would want to have a card on file for their guests. Are there certain scenarios where this isn’t the case? Or, is it preferred to increase the Online Check-in ratio and not have a card on file.

I’d be keen to have a discussion on this if you have the time as I appreciate this exchange in a conversation thread may be challenging 🙂

MatthiasH
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Userlevel 6
Badge +3

Hi @andreas 👋

I’m one of the Product Managers in the Guest Experience team at Mews.

Thank you for raising this question and for painting a clear picture of the challenge this causes you and your guests.

I apologise that it’s taking so long to have a response from us that you’ve looked for an alternative provider. However, I can tell you that this is something we’re working to resolve right now.
 

What are we doing?
We are updating the Online Check-in to let the main guest complete the details of all other guests on their reservation. In your case, the main guest will be able to provide the names and dates of birth of any other guests on their booking.

They will also still have the option to send an email invitation to other guests on their reservation if they prefer.

 

When would this be available?

Our development team is building this right now and we expect to have a version ready to pilot by the end of April. 


Please let me know if you would still be interested to try this out and I can follow-up with you once this is available?

Hi @James.taylor

Glad to hear. Can add us to the potential test list? We would be highly interested. 

Tech savvy hospitality enthusiast who is excited about the future of hospitality
James.taylor
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Thank you @MatthiasH, I’ve added you to the list and will be in touch shortly.

James.taylor
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Hi Everyone 👋

 

I know there was a lot of interest in this conversation thread to try the new capability where the main guest of a reservation can complete the details of all the guests on that reservation.

They can still invite guests via email, but they will now have the option to add the details themselves and see that their online check-in is incomplete without them.

 

The team have wrapped up testing and we’re ready to enable this from Monday 🙂

 

If you have multiple properties, please reach out to me if you only want this to be enabled for certain properties with which ones you would like it enabled for.

Also, please let me know in this thread if you have any questions!

@andreas @samoanprincess @mauritsbots @Eric Kröll @MatthiasH 

S
Userlevel 3

Dear James! Oh great! Please add my property! Thank you. Christina 

MatthiasH
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Hi @James.taylor ,

You can definitely enable the function as of Monday. Really looking forward to it! 

Tech savvy hospitality enthusiast who is excited about the future of hospitality
Eric Kröll
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Hi @James.taylor ,

You can enable it in the Adlers Hotel as of monday. Regarding a rollout, I will get in touch with you after testing it in one property.

James.taylor
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Userlevel 5
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Good morning,

I have just enabled this for your properties @samoanprincess and @Eric Kröll.

I will send you a message @MatthiasH.

S
Userlevel 3

Dear James! Oh great! We will investigate how our guests handle this option now and let you know! Christina

mauritsbots
Rank
Userlevel 5
Badge +2

Hi Everyone 👋

 

I know there was a lot of interest in this conversation thread to try the new capability where the main guest of a reservation can complete the details of all the guests on that reservation.

They can still invite guests via email, but they will now have the option to add the details themselves and see that their online check-in is incomplete without them.

 

The team have wrapped up testing and we’re ready to enable this from Monday 🙂

 

If you have multiple properties, please reach out to me if you only want this to be enabled for certain properties with which ones you would like it enabled for.

Also, please let me know in this thread if you have any questions!

@andreas @samoanprincess @mauritsbots @Eric Kröll @MatthiasH 

kindly activate this for Hotel Arsenaal and WestCord Fashion Hotel. Thanks!

Questions? Brainstorm? Contact me!
S
Userlevel 3

Dear @James.taylor The new version is no working great. From i.g. daily 6 check-ins now 4 of them complete the online check-in completely, even if there are 2 of them. I do hope this good progress proceeds… 

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