The Front Office, one of the core departments of the front office is the face of the Hotel. One of the sub-department is called the Reservation department. The term reservation interprets “ Booking or Blocking” as a room for a guest, for a definite period of time.
The reservation system allows hotels to ensure a steady flow of guests into their respective property, they will accept reservations in order to achieve high occupancy to increase the Revenue. The hotel data bank helps in fulfilling the customer’s need and also helps the hotel to reach the daily target. Every hotel has PMS (Property Management System), in this system the hotel data like booking, booking status, check-in and check–out, occupancy rate, yield percentage, Rev PAR, etc have access to understand, daily account, and reservation status.
The image of the hotel depends on his/her personal qualities. They are the ones who first and directly deal with the guests. They work as a salesman too. For these special qualities, they get basic education and training in a good college/Institute. Kindly, click the links for a good institute
The basic duties and qualities, apart from the above details of the Reservation department are given below.
Duties and Responsibilities
- They are responsible for handling front office reservations and administration duties.
- Booking of rooms directly, emails, travel agents, from the portal, and from the hotel sales department.
- Create and maintain reservation records.
- Assisting in preregistration activities appropriately and do processing in advance reservation deposits.
- Understand the hotel policy like credit, booking, and how to code each reservation.
- Greeting the guests, answering phones, handling company inquiries, and sorting and distributing mail is the basic agenda.
- Selling the rooms and boosting the revenue. Their basic goal is to sell the rooms and for that, they set goals and targets for selling and to see that their target is been met and if not then they find out where do they lack.
- Accurate job knowledge and product knowledge. These people know their job thoroughly. For this, they are trained and make ready for the front. They know their product well for instance Types of rooms, Rooms rent (season, semi-prime, and prime season), Facilities, attachment, etc…
- To excel in the potentiality, the associate is given a chance in all the sections of the front office and to see where he/she is most suitable. This way they become professional and give the best performance. The management also does the evaluation of staff at the supervisory level and then at the department head level.
- To see where the weak points of the hotel are and where the regular complaints are generating from is it due to manpower, property-related or any other reason and how to rectify, how to make it possible that this doesn’t happen again.
- From time to time they are given Counselling, Training, and Motivation in different sections. Training of the staff as high turnover at the front desk which is very important.
- Providing guest services relating to the internet, fax service, secretarial service, and these services are for every guest in the house.
Mr. Kishor Saha
Dean- Hospitality studies
Shree L. R. Tiwari Degree College of Arts, Commerce and Science