Hospitality Learning Online

As we reviewed in previous chapters, Front Office carries multiple roles and responsibilities. To ensure all tasks are complete between different shifts daily checklist is used on each shift. Your daily checklist will include all the necessary steps to take to ensure you and your next shift are set up for success!

Further, we will review all checklist items that are completed at the desk, with a detailed explanation of each. 

 

Emergency Reports/Downtime Reports

As a must, first thing before you start anything, it is necessary to print your reports. Downtime reports will consist of Arrivals, In-house guest report, Room Status report and depending on your property few other reports. However, they are very valuable tools to have when you are in need. Whether it is system outage or power outage reports will allow you to operate in manual mode and not stop your operations. Although this reports could be 100 pages long ensure they are printed and not saved, as in case of power outages, you will not have access to the system.

 

Arrival Report

Is used to review all arrivals for the day and ensure necessary blocking, comments with special requests are taken care of.

 

Special Services

Will include all special service codes set for your property and allow you to prepare for the day. Some of the general Special Services are Connecting Rooms, Feather Free Rooms, Close to Elevator, Far from Elevator, Connecting Room. Keep in mind in addition to general Special Services there are property specific as well. Such as Green Choice Program, Airline Rooms etc.

 

VIP Report

VIP Report will show all VIP's arriving for the day. Depending on your property specifics you will need to take appropriate action on each. Typically there will be several different levels of VIP guest and standard procedures appropriate steps to take for each guest. One tricky thing to know about this report is that if a guest isn't noted as a VIP on the reservation, he/she will not appear on the report. It is necessary to ensure whether reservations are done at the desk or by reservation in-house that those reservations are noted accordingly.

 

Reservations without Routing

Depending on your property management system you might have a separate report that you can run and check on third-party reservations to ensure routing is done properly. In some other cases, Arrival Report will be utilized for this purpose. It is necessary to route all reservations to ensure guest cards are not being charged.

 

Loyalty Member Reservations

Each Brand offers discounted rates, complimentary nights or combination of points and cash to their most loyal members. In this case, reservations will be routed to the Master Account/Direct Bill, and a guest will receive complimentary stay; however, the hotel will receive credit for the reservation. If your property does not have a separate report for this purpose, you can print Arrivals Report and ensure to check the filter with specific rates, so only those reservations show on your report.

 

High Balance/Credit Limit

This report allows us to identify those guests that are running out of funds or approaching approved funds limit and it is necessary to take action. First, you will need to know the approved limit for your property. Next review your Credit Limit Report and identify those guests that are approaching limit balance. Authorize card for additional funds. If card declines, proceed to Lock Out Procedure.

 

Back to Back Reservations

Back to Back reservations occur when a guest makes multiple reservations for different dates, maybe under different rates, when guest departure date coincides with arrival day. It is necessary to get ahead of this and advice your Housekeeping department; otherwise, it is possible your Room Attendant will be waiting for a guest to depart to clean the room. 

 

Duplicate Reservations

To ensure your guests are not double charged and you do not end up with empty rooms it is necessary to ensure all duplicate reservations are cleared. Often guests will make multiple reservations at different rates, or someone else will make a reservation for the guest as will which will cause duplicate reinsertion situation.

 

3 day Blocking

Blocking/assigning guests for few days out is necessary to ensure guest will receive a request or room type ( if you are limited on specific room types) and ensure