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How to run a lost-and-found system during COVID-19

Wanny Mei
BY
Wanny Mei
August 31, 2020
person holding a compass
Running a lost-and-found system in a hotel can be challenging, especially right now. How should hotels deal with guests’ lost items while trying to maintain higher levels of cleanliness? Although there’s still more to learn about how COVID-19 works, the CDC has found that the disease is less likely to be spread from touching surfaces than from close contact between people. Considering this, running a lost-and-found system is not too risky for your staff if it’s properly maintained.


Experts have found that the disease can last on surfaces and objects anywhere from a few hours to a few days, so it’s best to leave items untouched for about 72 hours to let the virus naturally die. If this isn’t possible, bag up lost items and label the bags with the name of the guest and the room number. Make sure that your team is wearing masks, gloves, and other protective material to handle such lost items. After touching these items, disinfect or change gloves so as to not potentially spread the virus to other surfaces, especially commonly touched ones like doorknobs or light switches. Keep these bagged up lost items in a single and separate location, and keep a log of all the items.


using team chat to notify others about a lost item


To facilitate the communication and organization around a lost-and-found system, Akia’s team chat can help the housekeeping team keep track of lost items and the process around them. The team can create tasks around handling and returning lost items, and they can use the guest messaging feature to easily and directly communicate with guests via text-message and quickly get their lost items back to them. Guests will appreciate your efforts in getting them their possessions back, and maybe they’ll even share how great the customer service experience was with other people.

hotel front desk staff on the phone

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