Reduce Lost & Found hassle and thus increasing revenue on lost & found handling for hotels
I am not sure whether to put it here or under Commander (sorry).
But I have an idea to automate a lot of the Lost & Found processing.
In the Commander where housekeeping can change the room status, there should also be a section "Lost & Found" added. A housekeeper or the Housekeeping Manager can create a lost & found ticket so the item can be labeled with the number given by the system. This will make it easy to track.
While entering the data you will get a dropdown to select several frequently found items (this will make sure translation is correct for all offered languages) and a choice "other" that will enable a free text field.
When selecting something from the dropdown and saving, an automatic Navigator message (or otherwise e-mail) will be sent to the last guest sleeping in that specific room. "We will keep your items for 3 months, or we can calculate the shipping costs for you" with a call to action button.
=> CTA button gets clicked => Guest can double check if the address data is still correct (for the shipping), modify it or add a shipping address. And then clicks "Confirm".
=> A task gets created in the Commander, leading to a page where you can enter the cost of the shipping + handling fee (if hotel charges this).
=> Mail with payment link will be sent and payment will be processed through the Merchant
=> Payment is confirmed, a new task to ship the lost & found item will be created.
When the free text field was used, first a task will be created to insert a translation of the item to be entered in the automatic e-mail template. After this, the flow from above will be followed.
Also, this will enable hotels to look up the lost & found items in Mews when they get a call from the guest. Search possible on guest name or on room number,...
If you didn't have any valid contact information, the hotel staff can add it there during the phone call and trigger the above flow from there.

Hello from the Mews product team. Unfortunately, we are not going to work on this request in short terms (3 to 6 months). Though we might in a longer term. If it is the case, we would re-open the opportunity.
Thanks
-
Christian Furtner commented
lost items need to be connected to the room (= reservation number). Then at least there are different contact options to inform guests after checkout. Items with room "XYZ" found on XYZ is not quite accurate (Guest checked out the day before item had been found)
-
Mari Le Bris commented
This would be awesome ! We are actually registering lost and found in an excel doc, but it's quite easy to lose the track.
Lost and found items registered in the PMS will help 1000 times the staff !!
Please tell us this will be the next feature added in MEWS :)