Yelp has announced a new feature that will allow businesses to post their COVID vaccination policies on their profile, as The Verge reports. Yelp has been adding pandemic related features to business pages over the last year, and this is the latest effort. This is yet another tool for restaurants and hospitality businesses to manage all of the risks and intricacies that are a sad reality of the ongoing pandemic, especially as things like mask mandates and vaccination policies are becoming increasingly controversial.
There are actually two new areas of info for businesses to customize; their vaccination policies for staff and their policies for customers. Those policies may be different for each business depending on the type of work and how staff interact with customers. For example, a restaurant may require staff to be vaccinated since they are working together in close quarters for longer hours, and are doing food prep. That same business may just ask unvaccinated customers to wear a mask, rather than lose their business completely. Other businesses may require both staff and customers to be vaccinated before they are allowed on site.
As vaccination rates slowly increase across the country, more and more Americans are hoping to get out and return to aspects of normal life, like dining out. Tools like what Yelp is providing are important for restaurants who want to advertise that they are doing what they can to promote safe dining practices. With the restaurant and hospitality industries being hit so hard by the pandemic, any help they can get to reassure their customers is welcome.
