Coronavirus | A message from Criton CEO Julie Grieve

The outbreak of Coronavirus (Covid-19) is having an unprecedented impact on a global scale that is leaving no sector untouched. Businesses of all kinds are suffering and in our sector, hotels we speak to are seeing occupancy levels plummet from cancellations and limited pickup, with corporate travel moving to essential only and leisure travellers being unable to travel even if they wanted to.

I am sure, like me, you are worried for your family and your business and, on behalf of all the Criton team, I would like to let you know that we are here to help you. We believe that the best way to do that is to offer all of our customers a 3 month payment holiday, therefore they will not be charged for April, May and June. 

In addition to this, to support all hotels or serviced apartment operators who decide to adopt Criton and create their own app, we are offering 2020 completely free of charge. 

After setting up and running a luxury serviced apartment business in the centre of Edinburgh, I set up Criton to help operators use technology to overcome the challenges of our time and for me, this is now more important than ever before. Since I launched Criton, our mission has been and remains to give independent operators access to the same technology that large hotel chains already adopt, so that they can enhance the guest experience, drive more direct bookings, increase in-stay spend and streamline operations. 

In these challenging times, we believe that Criton can help in a slightly different way.  With concern growing over how the virus spreads, the guests you do have will want to touch as little as possible. Criton enables you to offer an end to end digital guest journey, our base product allows you to remove the in-room directory, removing the risk of guests touching something that has been touched by many other people before, and use their own device for everything they need. 

We’ve also looked at how Criton can help in other ways, and below are some tips on how Criton may be able to reassure the guests you have in these difficult times. I hope you will find them useful.  

1. Remove the in-room directory, ensuring your guests get the information on their own phone. We can produce in-room strut cards quickly if you require them.

2. Add a chat/ordering system, e.g. Whatsapp or our system Loop so guests can chat via their phone rather than use the phone in the room.

3. Use location-based push notifications to update your guests, who are in stay, on the measures you are taking to safeguard their welfare.

4. Add pre check-in and where possible activate your digital key system as we move to social distancing.

5. Ensure guests can book room service via the app, so that guests who do not want to eat in the restaurant can still use your services.

6. Reassure guests around your coronavirus policies such as cleaning procedures and food preparation by giving them access to that information on their phone before they arrive and during their stay. Make changes quickly to keep the information up to date in this fast-moving situation.

On behalf of the entire team at Criton, we hope you, your team and family stay safe, and we all hope this situation will end very soon. 

Please do not hesitate to contact me or any of the team if we can help in any way at customer@criton.com

With my very best wishes,

Julie Grieve, Founder and CEO of Criton