Operators already have to consider all aspects of health and safety, so make your COVID-19 response plan part of your existing routine and ask your guests about their personal wellbeing in your liability waiver.
Your liability waiver form already gathers their personal information and their eligibility to be part of your experience. Adding in a few questions about their potential exposure to COVID-19 will help you keep your peace of mind – and the peace of mind of your staff and guests. We’re going to examine a few different types of COVID-19 questioning and consider the pros and cons of each. We’re hoping that this helps you to make informed decisions about your liability waiver template.
What Questions To Ask
Your country or region might have specific restrictions in place, so we encourage you to remember these while you decide what questions to ask in your liability form. And remember, it might not just be whether someone feels unwell. You should consider whether they could have come into contact with it, even if the guest themselves don’t have any symptoms.
Some questions might be:
- Have you, or someone you regularly interact with, travelled interstate/overseas in the last 30 days?
If you have, where did you go? - Have you, or someone you regularly interact with, tested positive for COVID-19?
If you have, when was this? - Are you, or someone you regularly interact with, experiencing any COVID-19 symptoms? These include headaches, nausea, cough/runny nose, loss of taste.
- Please indicate if you are experiencing any of the following COVID-19 symptoms:
Headaches
Nausea
Cough/runny nose
Flu-like symptoms
Loss of taste or smell - Have you come into contact with anyone who contracted COVID-19?
How To Ask Them
There are a few different question styles you can choose from, but we recommend making your policies clear when you ask these questions. If a guest feels that they might lose their booking for knowing someone with COVID-19, they might not answer honestly!
Let them know what you plan to do with this information – would you follow up personally to check their wellbeing? Would you cancel a booking with a refund?
We’ve outlined a few question styles below, with examples.
The Checklist
The checklist means that your guests will not see a way to proceed until they have read and agreed to each clause.
Pros
You know your guests have actively agreed to everything on the page, they cannot pretend otherwise. You have ensured that each clause was communicated and understood individually.
Cons
If the guest doesn’t agree to one of the statements, they cannot proceed. Each statement here must be something the guest must acknowledge to be true before proceeding, so it’s not suitable for questions or statements that may have a varying response.
Our Advice
Use this for information that your guest must agree to.
If you’re asking guests to agree to a sentence like “I have not had a cough in the last 6 months” when they did have a cough 3 months ago, they cannot continue and have to abandon the waiver. They’ll probably contact you asking if they’re still allowed to come.
The checklist is great for showing the guests formally understand something, like “I acknowledge that, while the operator has made every effort to ensure our wellbeing, contracting viruses such as COVID-19 is a possibility, and I agree not to hold the operator liable”, because really, something like that isn’t a question.
But personal details might not be so suitable here. If your guest thinks that they won’t be able to check in unless they agree to all the above clauses, then they may lie just to continue their electronic waiver check-in process. At that point, you have lost the ability to effectively manage your guests and determine who is suited to the experience.
The Multi-Select
The multi-select page lets guests choose as many or as few options that best describe them.
Pros
This allows guests to answer honestly with whatever information is most appropriate to them. They might select just 1 option, or they might select all of them. You get a personalised response from each guest that you can plan for, such as a guest who has not been ill, or known anyone that’s been ill, but did fly through some hotspots a week ago. You know to find out a little more about their situation, and you can make a final decision on what to do about their experience.
Cons
If your guests don’t agree to something in here, then they have the choice not to select it. So if you’re looking for them to agree to wear a mask throughout their experience, this is not the place.
Because this field is optional, you’re going to want to ensure your staff are checking the waivers for responses by using your Daily Manifest. Your staff can see the guests details and check what conditions they agreed to, and which they didn’t, before allowing them onboard.
Our Advice
Use this part of your liability waiver to find out the guests honest responses to their personal wellbeing, and make sure it’s part of your staff’s routine to check the guest manifest to see if there are any risks to be aware of.
The Terms and Conditions
The T&C text is the bulk content of your electronic waiver that your guests agree to, and includes all the fine print they must confirm.
Pros
By putting all your terms and conditions into one block of text, your guests can agree to everything with one click. We use a scrollwrap in your liability waiver form to ensure guests have actively scrolled through the content before they can proceed, so they can’t pretend that they didn’t see a part of the text.
Cons
If something is explicitly important to know, then it can be glossed over. This content page is great for including the cursory information your guests need to agree to, like acknowledging that there are inherent risks in your experience. But instructions like “I must maintain social distancing at all times” may be skim-read rather than absorbed fully.
Our Advice
- Get your terms and conditions ready with headers, bullet points, and any other formatting that will increase readability.
- For explicit instructions or clauses that your guests must be firmly aware of, we recommend using the checklist in your liability waiver template.
- Use the multi-select function to find out more information about your guest’s personal conditions, and let them answer honestly.
Using your electronic waiver to get information ahead of time is a great way to prepare for the day ahead, and you can ask guests to re-confirm any details on the day using the iPad waiver app.
If you think you need to add any questions like the above to your existing Wherewolf waiver, create a help request with our support team by using the “Help” button on your Wherewolf Dashboard.
If you think it’s time to go electronic with your liability waiver form, talk to one of out product specialists here.