Managing COVID-19 Closures

Managing COVID-19 Closures

The COVID-19 outbreak has seen the enforced closure of accommodation across all tourism sectors. In order to help manage these changes, some additional functionality has been added to RIBOS.

Options

There new setting in Options, under the [data] tab:

  1. covid-start - sets the start date (there'll be an end date later) of the period when establishments were forced to close.
  2. covid-mode - sets whether lockdown days are recorded as Closed or Open (more below). There's also an option for None which turns off the COVID-19 functionality.
If you choose Closed then data forms marked as 'Covid closed' will not be included in the analysis. For part months (i.e. March 2020 and if the date of reopening is mid-month) the occupancy results will not be affected, i.e. occupancy will be similar to a normal month).
If you choose Open then data forms marked as 'Covid closed' will be included in the analysis, resulting in lower occupancy for the part months.
It is recommended that the mode is set to Open.

Data Forms

If covid-mode is not set to None a new tick box shows on the [summary] tab to mark a form as closed due to the outbreak. Ticking this box prevents Closed being ticked too, and vice versa.


When searching for data forms, the ones where Covid-19 is ticked are identified by a small red virus icon to help identify ones that do not have this ticked when they should.

For Serviced, Hostels and Touring the effect of ticking the COVID-19 box is to automatically fill in any days on or after the COVID start date as either:
  1. zero occupancy if the mode is set to Open (rooms and beds available but no occupancy), or
  2. marked as closed days if the mode is set to Closed (rooms, beds and occupancy all set to 0)
For Self-catering there's nothing is added if the mode is Open, but if set to Closed it will add one closed let for the lockdown days.

Results

There are new gross occupancy results for Hostels, Touring and Self-catering but these won't be relevant in most circumstances.

For the participants, they just need to be told about the new tick box and that they should tick it if they are closed for part or all of a month affected by the outbreak, and that this will automatically create some daily entries for them.


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