Pre-arrival forms and signed group booking terms

How Achekam's Hospitality pack confirms a booking, collects pre-arrival details, and has group or long-stay booking terms signed electronically.

By Achekam · 11 October 2026 · 4 min read · For Hospitality businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya

Launching soon. The Industry CRM add-on described in this article is launching soon. This article describes it as it will work at launch.

The difference between a smooth arrival and a chaotic one is usually decided days before the guest turns up. Does reception know the guest is landing late? Does the kitchen know about the nut allergy? For a group, does everyone agree what happens if half the party cancels, or if the rooms are left in a state?

Venues that get this right do three things before arrival: confirm the booking clearly, ask the guest for the details that matter, and, for groups and long stays, have the terms signed. Achekam's Industry CRM, with the Hospitality & hotels pack, does all three. This article explains each step, for guesthouses, lodges and hotels in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya.

The booking confirmation

The pack sends a booking confirmation. It is the guest's first written record of what they booked, so make it complete: dates, room types, number of guests, what is included, what has been paid and what is still due, check-in and check-out times, and how to reach you.

A confirmation that answers the obvious questions saves your reception team a string of phone calls. It also settles disagreements later, because the guest received the details in writing.

The pre-arrival form

Next, the pack sends a pre-arrival form. In the Industry CRM, a workflow step can send the guest a request, and the guest's reply moves the task on. Reception does not have to check an inbox to know whether the form has come back; the task shows it.

Useful things to ask:

• expected arrival time and how the guest is travelling;
• dietary requirements and allergies;
• the reason for the stay, if the guest is happy to share it;
• special requests, such as a cot, an early breakfast or a ground-floor room;
• for groups, a rooming list showing who shares with whom.

Replies only help if they reach the right people. Pass dietary needs to the kitchen, arrival times to reception and room requests to housekeeping as each form comes back, not on the morning of arrival. If a form has not come back a few days before the guest is due, a short phone call usually does more than a second e-mail.

Signed terms for groups and long stays

For groups and long stays, the pack can have booking terms signed electronically. These are the bookings where a misunderstanding costs most: a group cancelling late, a long-stay guest leaving early, damage across several rooms.

Achekam's e-signing places signature and initials fields on the document, sends it to one signer or several, in order or all at once, sets an expiry and sends reminders. The signed PDF and a completion certificate are filed back into Documents. A signer from outside the business has to be linked to a guest or a CRM lead before the envelope goes out, so make sure the group organiser is on record first.

Typical points for group and long-stay terms:

• the deposit and when the balance falls due;
• what happens if the group shrinks, and by when numbers can change;
• the cancellation policy, with dates;
• responsibility for damage and for guests' behaviour;
• for long stays, how often rooms are serviced and how extensions are handled.

Deposits themselves are invoiced; group booking deposits without a pro-forma explains how.

Starter wording you must make your own

Every contract or agreement in the Industry CRM's packs is marked as starter wording that the business must review before use. The booking terms in the Hospitality pack are no exception.

Treat the starter wording as a checklist of topics, not as finished terms. Replace it with your venue's actual policies, have it reviewed by whoever advises you on contracts, and use your own business name and details throughout. For Nigerian and Kenyan venues, note that the signing completion certificate currently describes signatures under South Africa's Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, whatever the workspace's country, so ask your adviser how electronic signatures on booking terms are treated where you operate. South African venues can read section 13 of the Act, which sets out when an electronic signature is valid and when the law requires an advanced electronic signature.

What to ask, and what to leave out

A pre-arrival form is tempting to over-fill. Every question adds a reason for the guest not to finish it, and every answer is information you then have to look after.

Ask for what you will use before or during the stay. Leave out what you will not: there is rarely a reason to collect card numbers, copies of identity documents or detailed health information on a pre-arrival form. If you need something sensitive, ask for it in the way your own policies and your legal adviser require, and record why.

A useful test for each question: who at the venue will read the answer, and what will they do differently because of it? If nobody can say, drop the question.

Who does what before arrival

When a group's stay includes a conference or a function, the event side follows its own route through a proposal, an agreement and a function sheet; see conference and event enquiries to function sheet. And a group of any size means extra deliveries to the kitchen; paying food and beverage suppliers in parts covers how those are recorded.

Rewrite the starter terms in your venue's own words, trim the pre-arrival form to the questions someone will act on, and decide who reads the replies. The guests will not notice the paperwork; they will notice that you knew they were coming.

General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.