24 hour time in guest requests
Personally, I love 24 hour time. There are 24 hours in 1 day, and so let's all refer to each hour as it is sequenced within the day. I realise 24 hour time is is well known in Europe, but this isn't the case in many other parts of the world.
Unfortunately, many of our guests struggle with the 24 hour format. And so I frequently get check-in requests at 2:00, 6:00 etc... I find myself confirming these times with the guests, and more times than not, the guest means to request a late check-in in the evening rather than an early check-in.
I have not seen the guest user interface for the special request selection, however I'm guessing it's a text input field which auto completes based on the time entered. Perhaps this interface can be improved for the 24 hour challenged? Maybe the am/pm equivalent could be displayed in brackets. The alternative is to modify the time input format using internationalisation rules and the default time format could be modified based on the location of the guest?
Is this an issue for any other hotel/resort? I regularly receive incorrect time check-in requests, Just this morning I received a check-in request 4-5am, which turned out to be 4-5pm. I only receive such requests from booking.com enquiries which points to the possibility that there is something wrong with the booking.com guest interface.
This is an almost daily annoyance for me. People in the USA use a.m./p.m. and completely unfamiliar with the concept of say 1430 hours. My check in is at 2pm so people ask for 0200 and get a denial. I have a standard response to say that is too early, but then I have to manuall follow up to clarify that 2 pm is 1400 on Booking. I had a 0100 reservation yesterday that showed up at 2:45 pm. He thought 0100 was 1 pm. Booking needs to speak OUR language.
what a load of utter nonsense.
It has nothing to do with country, and everything to do with the individual, just being lazy.
i do agreed its 2021, and everyone under the age of at least 50 should have a basic understanding of math and time zone.
its not hard to remeber lunch time 1pm is 12 noon +1 = 13 and go from there, and then just memorise basic time points like :
1PM 13:00
6pm : 18:00
9pm 21:00
this is not a BdC issue, its a lazy ass guest problem. :) Kind Regards