We refer to Autohost as an intelligent guest-screening assistant, but what is guest screening? It is the process through which you assess a reservation’s risk level by investigating the guest in a detailed, legal and non-discriminatory way.
While the concept is fairly straight-forward, it does involve a lot of unpacking. What does it mean to “screen a guest”? Why do we screen guests? What constitutes “good screening practices”? What’s the end goal? If we identify someone as “good,” how does that affect the screening process? If we catch someone “bad,” do we cancel their reservation or just charge them a security deposit? And what is “bad” anyway?
As a business operating in the hospitality industry, these are the questions you should be asking yourself with every check-in. You need an effective guest-screening process to protect your company, properties and community from bad guests and the associated risks. The end goal is to book guests who abide by your rules and respect your properties.
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To accomplish this, we use a set of guiding principles that allow us to effectively screen guests. This involves reaching out to the guest to confirm their personal and contact information and clarifying their travel details and the purpose of their trip. After confirming the contact information for every guest entering the property, we have the guests explicitly agree to our house rules by signing a legally binding rental agreement, making them responsible for their actions. Finally, we collect and validate the guests’ IDs, scanning them for frauds, and then collect a security deposit for safe measure.
To us, guest screening is both an art and a science. It’s all about walking that fine line between preventing bad guests from slipping through the cracks and not scaring the good ones away through over-screening. This means asking probing questions without becoming invasive. You don’t need to run a criminal record check on every guest who books. Instead, effectively assess how risky a reservation is using the steps above, and then acting accordingly.
Guest screening is a lot of work, but Autohost streamlines this work for you. As your first line of defense, Autohost knows when you need to keep your guard up and when to avoid unnecessary aggravation. On top of that, our clients can choose to loosen their booking restrictions and focus on maximizing profits. Since we keep our guard up for you, effective guest screening will give you confidence in your operations. With all risks flagged and handled, you can focus on growing your business.