Guest registration

The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has been occupying the world for quite some time now, and by now it has gone by a number of names: 2019-nCoV, nCoV2019, HCoV-19 and—because it would otherwise be too easy and a bit boring—mixed indiscriminately with the name of the associated disease, COVID-19.

The topic dominates the daily press, and every day there is a flood of reports about new, existing, relaxed, or tightened measures to curb the spread of the virus. Contact Tracing is the new buzzword after the Stop Corona app; avoiding clusters is the top priority, and when a case occurs, it is tracking at full speed. Let us hope that, in addition to a fine parade of Corona Anglicisms, all of this also benefits public health.

Because wherever many people who do not know each other gather and spend a longer period of time in the same room, it becomes difficult. The hospitality industry is under particular pressure, as guests in the restaurants, cafés, and hotels of this world come and go every day in a constant stream.

What can a restaurateur do to protect guests and staff as effectively as possible? Operations in restaurants, cafés, and accommodation should continue, but without unnecessary risks. What do the authorities require, and what new rules and restrictions are coming our way? Hotels and restaurants have to pull out all the stops—and that can be quite exhausting.

At Asteas, we sympathize with the more than 3,000 hotel and tourism businesses out there that use IACBOX as guest WiFi: we are doing our best to highlight all options for contactless interaction with guests, to make life a little easier for operators during this challenging time. Have you already seen our 6 tips for contactless hospitality? We published them in early summer, and now, in the Corona autumn, they are more relevant than ever.

Now, with the first decrees on guest registration, additional administrative effort for restaurateurs and bureaucracy for guests are once again on the horizon. If things proceed as they have so far, you should be prepared not to find detailed, concrete instructions for implementing such obligations in the respective regulations. Some cynics even claim that the practical requirements may not have been fully thought through in advance. Perhaps it is therefore not a bad idea to start looking into it in preparation—even if nothing specific has yet been mandated in your city, region, or country:

• The purpose is to make it easier to track and trace infection cases by keeping data on who was where, when, and with whom. This can be done under legal obligation, but also voluntarily, for example as part of a hygiene concept.
• For this purpose—depending on the region—certain guest data are required, such as name, telephone number, email address, and possibly also home address.
• Additional local information such as table number or similar may be requested in order to assess how close other guests were to a potential infection case.
• The date and time as well as the duration of the stay must also be recorded.
• These data are then to be retained by the operator of the hospitality business for a certain period of time, which in any case covers at least the incubation period (currently between 2 and 4 weeks), and kept available in case of an emergency.
• After this period, the data—which must not be used for any other purposes—must be destroyed.
• How the data are stored and/or destroyed, and whether and how this is checked, is completely unclear and presumably left to the operator’s own responsibility.
• It is also currently unclear what happens in the event of violations, such as refusal to register, providing false data, or breaches of the rules on data use or deletion obligations. Fines are being discussed, but the legal basis and the amount have not yet been fully clarified.

However, we do not want to focus on the lack of clarity, but rather take a more constructive look at what options we have for meeting the requirements formulated so far:

#1. Pen and paper

Admittedly, this sounds a bit old-fashioned, but it can be implemented quickly and—apart from the bureaucratic feel and the data protection concerns that guests may have when they have to fill out a form before they can get a coffee—is low-threshold and requires no major technical setup. The City of Vienna, for example, provides a form for download, but it can be assumed that there are no objections to self-designed forms that contain the required data.

The restaurateur should lay out the sheets and then collect them sorted by date. If an infection becomes known involving a waiter or a guest, they must provide the guest contact details for the relevant period to the authorities; after the retention period has expired, the sheets must be destroyed. Shred, burn, tear up, put in the waste paper? That is up to the individual and is not specified in more detail.

#2. Digital and online

Software and web developers are agile people, and so there are already various services that offer guest registration as a service for a monthly fee. The restaurateur simply creates an account online and receives a customizable landing page with a registration form as well as the appropriate capacity in an online database. The guest accesses the link to this landing page via a QR code that the restaurateur displays in their establishment as a sticker, table stand, etc. The service provider takes care of secure data retention and deletion after the correct period; if needed, the restaurateur can download the data and provide them to the authority via their account.

Anyone who has a web developer in-house or is knowledgeable themselves and likes to get hands-on can, of course, also provide something like this via their own website. The prerequisite, however, is that the guest has a mobile phone and can also go online via their plan.

#3. With IACBOX

Anyone operating an IACBOX has two very convenient options for implementing the registration requirement:

• On the landing page of the guest network, mandatory fields can be displayed using the integrated Data Collector, which the guest must complete before they can access the WiFi. These data are stored on the IACBOX, so no additional database is required. A retention period can also be set, after which the data are automatically deleted.
• A registration service can be placed as a redirect in front of the WiFi login page. This can be the service mentioned above, or a self-built solution. The link to guest registration is entered on the IACBOX, and the guest is automatically taken there when they access the guest WiFi. This is the smart combination with #2.

In this way, guests—even those without a valid mobile data plan—can complete guest registration smoothly and without paper.