FROM well-thumbed hotel directories, spa brochures and room service menus, we have all picked them up during our stays in hospitality venues.

However, with the need to ensure hotels rooms and anything in them were completely sanitised and covid compliant, as the industry prepared to reopen their doors some were forced to re-examine their whole approach to welcoming guests and how they offered their services.

In many places gone were the information packs and anything which could have been touched as arriving guests sought reassurances of a safe stay from check in to check out.

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However, this left a gap in how hotels were able to communicate with their guests and also highlight what they had to offer.

It was a gap in the market which Julie Grieve, from hospitality app development firm Criton had already been looking into. Her firm had developed an app several years ago which was a one stop shop for guest services all there at the touch of a button on your smart phone.

While delighted to have created an app which could be useful tool for the hospitality industry as it makes technological strides, Ms Grieve could never have imagined that it could be central in how hotels responded and prepared to reopen during the middle of a global pandemic.

“We launched an app aimed at bringing guest services together hotels in 2016," she said. "It came about following a project I had worked on to create a guest book for luxury serviced apartments in Edinburgh in 2014. It got me thinking then that there was a gap in the market as we were constantly having to update the information. So at that stage I wondered if there was an app. I started to look into it and thought why don’t we build it ourselves. I put everything in to it and we launched it four years ago.”

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Feedback from hoteliers was positive and as long as Criton were supplied with the right information they were able to build the client's guest services on an app.

But Ms Grieve, founder and CEO of Criton, could never imagined just how important her app could become and as a business they also decided to give something back and offered new clients in the hospital industry the chance to use it for free given the uncertainty they face at the moment.

Criton conducted a poll in the summer involving more than 7000 travellers which showed just eight per cent of guests would now feel comfortable at a check in/out public kiosk and 80 per cent said they would download an app which would allow them to check in online – which was a 10 per cent increase on those asked pre-covid.

Ms Grieve, who is also an ambassador for Women's Enterprise Scotland which supports female led business, added: “Our app is now being used in 400 locations and demand has been phenomenal. Our use of technology supports reduced guest touch points and enables our clients to pivot, adapt and adjust their service to a market which now must meet social distancing requirements.

“We decided to go full out to support the hospitality sector, launching a base level service featuring a free period and a holiday period. Effectively enabling hotels to take advantage of technology and re-engineer their service provision to support remote but effective guest services.”

Ms Grieve also recently had the chance to raise concerns about hospitality industry support and business scale up at a Scottish business event with Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

She added: “There was small group of us at a Number 10 organised virtual event. I had two areas of interest to raise. One was the support for the hospitality industry which has faced so much uncertainty and the other focus was for me help with scaling up business. We have been fortunate that there has been a great demand for our product, but more could be done to help scale up.”

Five star hotel Glenapp Castle in South Ayrshire had already been using the bespoke guest services app for some time, but with the desire for a touch-free experience in the wake of covid, managing director Jill Chalmers said it has played a huge part in the business being able to generate revenue.

Ms Chalmers said: “We had been using the app before covid to deliver information to our guests and communicate with them, but we have really taken in on since reopening after lockdown.

“We offer a lot of activities and experiences that we arrange for guests which are a very important revenue stream and we have been able to feed that information through the app as well. We have added more information about the local area and we see people walking in their grounds on the app looking at where to go next and it is great to see. It has all been about reducing the number of touch point and the app offers everything you need to know about guest services

“It allows us to quickly engage with our guests for example join us for a glass of fizz in the bar, when restrictions are not in place. It has been very important for us at a time when I think we need more of a long-term strategy from government as there is so much uncertainty with changes every few weeks.”