2022 Akia Year in Review

Over the past year, we have been working hard to enhance the features and capabilities of our products, and we are excited to share some of the key updates with you.

Listed below are some of the biggest improvements we’ve released on the platform throughout 2022 and see what you could add to your property’s workflow.

We added a lot more automations to enable more customization and personalization when you communicate with your guests. Some of the most notable automations from 2022 are:

To complement the above automations, we also added more actions that execute when the automation has been run:

Learn more about Automations here: Create and Edit Automations, Reservation Triggers, and Event Triggers

Have daily or weekly tasks your front desk or housekeeping staff needs to complete? We released the Recurring Task feature to automatically create a new task for your team at a specified time interval to ensure nothing is forgotten.

Learn more about tasks here: Create and Manage Tasks

The final Automation update was the addition of Automated Routing. Specify rules on which Akia user gets what guest conversation first so that your newest front desk staff isn’t the first touch on a VIP guest or Owner. Alternatively, if certain rooms have a specific concierge assigned, you can specify guests with an exact room number to have their conversations automatically routed to the appropriate concierge.

For more information on setting up automated routing, click here: Automatic Routing

Akia is now able to manage payments in your Agreements and Menus via Stripe! Automatically process payments if a guest selects an upsell in an agreement, orders breakfast from the menu, or tips your staff.

The payment flow supports credit and debit cards, mobile wallets (Apple Pay and Google Pay), and US bank accounts via ACH to make it more convenient for everyone!

Want to process a guest’s unpaid balance when they sign their registration card before arrival or place a security hold on the day of their arrival? Select Process Payment in the Agreement editor and use the {{customer.balance_due}} Message Token to dynamically charge the guest based on the balance due received from your PMS. If you want to place a hold, specify that amount in the field and choose Authorize Only.

Have a checkout form guests need to complete on the day of departure? Choose Collect Tips in the Agreement editor to have the above widget populate in your checkout form encouraging guests to leave a tip for the staff.

Learn more about payments, tipping, and installing Stripe here: Payments

Customize and filter reports based on your specific guest tracking needs. Personalize your report with various columns and chart styles.

Monitor and keep a track of individual responses for Agreements and Surveys in the Reports tab as well.

To better assist your team with understanding how guests interact with Akia’s Mini Apps, you can now view where the guest has signed their Agreement or where they first opened the Booklet by hovering on the checkmark or eye icon, respectively.

View more information about our Reports tab here: Reports

There have been quite a lot of Mini App updates in the past year so we’ll quickly go through the most significant ones!

Customized branding! You can now customize the font type, size, and color along with the background color and button color for your Agreements and Booklets.

Accidentally create an Agreement for a guest and need to remove it before they get “Unsigned Agreement” messages? In the Agreement preview, you can now click “Void” to delete it from the guest’s profile without them knowing.

More customization for data you’re capturing from accompanying guests. Do you need each guest’s passport information? Enable the Image field and set it as required to ensure you get the ID photo prior to arrival.

Notice the party size in your PMS is greater than 1, but the primary guest has been skipping the accompanying guest section? Require them to fill out the accompanying guest table based on their party size to capture all necessary information.

Enrich guest profiles in Akia from your Agreements or Surveys by selecting which set field (or custom field) the guest’s response should be stored in. You can use this information to better track guest data for future marketing or customize your reports.

Got distracted while working on your Booklet? Don’t worry, Akia now auto-saves your work and will remind you if there are any unsaved changes on the page. Clicking Publish will allow guests to see your updates.

Add social links to a Booklet to encourage guests to interact more with your property! Include links in your Hotel Configuration and then select them in the Booklet editor to display.

New Booklet components:

View all of the available components here: Booklet Components

Want to create a Booklet but not sure what to include/how to begin? Select one of our pre-made templates to get inspiration on welcoming guests to your property and recommend local activities.

For more information, browse our Mini Apps here:

Create and Edit Agreements

Create and Edit Booklets

Create and Edit Menus

Create and Edit Surveys