The Front Desk Essay Example for Free

The Front Desk Essay The front office department is the most visible department in a hotel. The focal point of activity within the front office is the reception desk. The reception desk is usually the place at which the guests form their first impressions of the hotel. It is also the communication center for the hotel’s operation (Baker, S, Huyton, J and Bradley, P, 2000, p. 22). The reception/ front desk: The reception desk may comprise: Cashiering; mail and information; registration; and room assignment. The reception desk is located in the busiest area of the hotel’s lobby. The main financial tasks which are handled by front office staff include: receiving cash payments, handling guest folios, verifying cheques, and handling foreign currency and credit cards (Baker, S, Huyton, J and Bradley, P, 2000, p. 22). The front desk is controlled by the front desk manager. It is the duty of the manager to make sure that a hotel achieves the maximum revenue and the highest level of room occupancy possible. It is also the responsibility of the front desk manager to monitor and motivate the staff as well as to maintain a high profile with the guests. This helps to ensure that a quality service is being given by the front office departments in particular and the hotel in general (Baker, S, Huyton, J and Bradley, P, 2000, p. 52). The specific responsibility of the reception supervisor is to guarantee the smooth running of the front desk. Apart from this overall duty, they would organize duty rotas, and handles complaints or difficult customers which a receptionist may not be able to deal with. The notification and greeting of important guests would also be the duty of the front desk supervisor (Baker, S, Huyton, J and Bradley, P, 2000, p. 52). The senior receptionists are in charge of each shift of staff. The senior receptionists are in charge of each shift of staff. The senior receptionist will take responsibility of assigning rooms to guests, dealing with group arrivals and handling guests’ immediate problems or queries (Baker, S, Huyton, J and Bradley, P, 2000, p. 52). During a hotel stay, guests may require certain services from, and engage in various transactions with a hotel. These are mostly handled by the front office. It is important to note that each section of the front office has an area of task responsibility (Baker, S, Huyton, J and Bradley, P, 2000, p. 0). The main roles of receptionists (or front desk agents) are involved in taking enquiries and reservation requests from hotel guests; preparing for the arrival of guests; greeting guests on their arrival; checking guests in (registering them, allocating suitable rooms and checking methods of payment); selling the facilities and services of the hotel; responding to guest problems and queries, or referring them to other departments that can do so; providing information about guests to other front office units and departments of the hotel; and maintaining guest records. He customarily answers phone inquiries, greets guests as they arrive to check in, and assigns rooms. When guests depart, the agent is typically the person who settles their accounts before they leave (BPP learning media, 2010). In addition to handling arrivals and departures, the agent is customarily in charge of general front desk guest relations. He traditionally controls the guest room keys and keeps track of how many keys have been released for each customer. Handling and distributing guest mail and messages are customarily the responsibility of the front desk agent (BPP learning media, 2010). Front desk supervisors typically serve as the face of a hotel. They provide customers with a first and last impression as both greeters of new guests and well-wishers to departing ones. Front Desk Supervisor These hotel employees oversee that guests are welcomed, registered into a hotels computer system and assigned an appropriate room or suite. They also perform or delegate various tasks, such as making or confirming reservations, verifying and collecting guests payments, issuing room keys and contacting housekeeping or maintenance when guests report a problem. Front desk supervisors must be resourceful, take ownership of problems and issues that arise and have excellent problem-solving skills. In addition to managing the daily operations of the front desk, these supervisors provide hotel clerks with necessary training and support. They maintain all essential front desk equipment and supplies, as well as controlling guests access to safe deposit boxes. Other responsibilities might include tracking and posting appropriate food, liquor or telephone charges to guests accounts; completing bookkeeping duties, like balancing accounts and conducting nightly financial audits; and recording and referring patron comments and complaints to the appropriate hotel manager. Hotel front desk supervisors must be friendly and outgoing and possess excellent communication skills. Perhaps the most important guest service function that can be provided by a front desk agent is that of properly registering guests. This is a five-step process of registration of a hotel guest which is stated by (Hayes, D. K. and Ninemeier, J. D. , 2007) consists of: 1. Greeting the guest: When the guest arrives at the front desk, a professionally dressed, well-trained staff member should greet them in a friendly way. Because most hotel guests arrive in the evening and check-in time can be very busy, it may not always be possible to avoid guests having to wait in line for registration. Proper staffing, however, should minimize the wait. When it is their turn to be registered, guests should, above all else, be made to feel welcome! 2.  Confirming the information on the registration card. This includes the spelling of the guests name, their arrival date, departure date, and room rate, and any other information related to that specific guest. Since the registration card will serve as the record of the guests stay, it must be complete and precise. In addition, misunderstandings regarding room rate can be minimized if the room rate is clearly communicated and understood by both the hotel and the guest prior to room assignment. It is critical that all information on the registration card be accurate and complete. 3. Securing a form of payment.  In most hotels, guests must either pay for their room in advance or provide a valid alternative source of credit at registration. While many hotels accept checks, the most prevalent source of credit provided by guests is that of a credit or debit card. These cards must be legitimate, however, before they represent an acceptable form of payment. To establish the cards legitimacy, the desk agent should authorize the card at the time of guest registration. 4. Room assignment. Once a guests registration information has been confirmed and an acceptable form of payment has been offered, the guest should be assigned to a specific guest oom. In some hotels, all guest rooms are identical, and room assignment is of little consequence. In other hotels, the room types may vary greatly in perceived quality and/or rate based primarily on the rooms location, view, bed type, amenities 5. Issuance of keys. The final step in the registration process is the issuance of their room keys. The actual number of keys to be issued is a matter of hotel policy and guest preference. It is important, however, that the issuance of guest room keys be tightly controlled because the theft, loss, or unauthorized duplication of keys could seriously threaten guest safety. Upon receiving room keys, the guest would be taken or directed to their room. ?A reservation in the context of the front office of a hotel means the booking or reserving of a bedroom (accommodation) by a guest, and involves a particular type of guest room being reserved for a particular person or persons, for a certain period of time. When a reservation or room booking is made at a hotel, it is expected that the hotel will honor its commitment in accepting that reservation and guarantee that a room will be available when a guest arrives (Baker, S, Huyton, J and Bradley, P, 2000, p. 63). A contract of booking is an agreement which is entered into every time a reservations clerk offers a prospective guest a room and that guest accepts the room however, the guest must be informed of all relevant details relating to the booking, for example, the type of room, the cost, dates, VAT and service charges involved (Baker, S, Huyton, J and Bradley, P, 2000, p. 63. This contract of booking means that: * The hotel ensures there will be a room as a specified, available for the guest upon their arrival. * The guest will arrive to use the room which they have booked, on the specified day. The reservation process is of vital importance to a hotel because it gives the first impression of the hotel to guests, sells the main product of a hotel, i. e. accommodations, generates customers for other departments, and provides important management information to other departments. The reservation process is often the first contact between the guest and a hotel. It is, therefore, essential for the reservations clerk to provide prompt and accurate service in order to present a good first impression to the guest. In the hotel industry, strong competition exists for the selling of accommodation; a guest who experiences problems or slow service from the reservations section will think carefully before confirming a reservation or returning to that hotel. An efficient reservations system is, therefore, very important (Baker, S, Huyton, J and Bradley, P, 2000, p. 64). The reservations department sells accommodation and helps to generate income for other departments of a hotel, for example, the food and beverage department. Hotel rooms are a saleable commodity and are strictly limited by factor of time and quantity. Therefore, if a room is not sold on a particular night, the revenue from that room is lost forever. Reservations contribute to the three main objectives of a front office department, i. e. , to maximize rooms, beds and average room rate, thereby achieving the highest possible revenue and profitability for the hotel. In additions, other departments often benefit from the reservations department. Such details may include an accurate estimate of the number of guests staying in the hotel (Baker, S, Huyton, J and Bradley, P, 2000, p. 64). Front Desk and Guest Privacy  Once a guest has been registered for a room, the courts have ruled that these guests enjoy many of the same constitutional rights in the room as they would in their own home. It is not simply the legal thing to do, but it is the proper thing as well, to protect the rights of guests to privacy (Hayes, D. K. and Ninemeier, J. D. , 2007).? A professionally managed front office is one in which guests are confident that their privacy is maintained by all staff members. This includes maintaining a guests anonymity. Hayes, D. K. and Ninemeier, J.  D (2007) states that in order to maintain a guest’s anonymity, a front Desk agent should: Never confirm or deny that a guest is in fact registered in the hotel without the guests express permission Never give out information related to a guests stay (arrival, departure, rate, etc. ) to any third party without that guests express permission Always be vigilant in informing the guest of any unusual third-party information requests regarding their stay Just as guests expect their own privacy to be maintained, they should also feel confident that information regarding their actual room is kept confidential. This is both a safety and a privacy issue. To that end, front desk agents should: Never give out a guests room number to any third party without that guests express permission Never perform registration tasks in such a way as to allow guest room information to he overheard by others in the front office area Never issue a duplicate room key to anyone without confirming the positive identification of that person as the rooms properly registered guest Concerning the financial aspect of the hotel, accounting for guests, while less visible than providing guest services, is another critical responsibility of the front office. Accounting for guests simply means that all charges incurred by a guests use of the hotel are charged for properly. Depending on the services and amenities offered by the hotel, the source of guest charges can be numerous. The following product and services list is not inclusive, but does represent some of the many possible guest charges that must be accurately collected and posted to the guests folio. Bucket Check: A procedure used to verify, for each guest, the accuracy of that guest’s registration information. When performing the bucket check, the desk agent physically verifies that the information on the guests registration card is complete and matches that in the PMS (Hayes, D. K. and Ninemeier, J. D. , 2007). When an appropriate bucket check is performed at each shift, the number of errors related to billing guests folios is greatly reduced. Errors in recording the information related to a guests stay make the hotels accounting records inaccurate. In addition, room rate adjustments made at checkout are both annoying and time consuming to guests. The bucket is the industry term for the location of the actual registration cards signed by guests at check-in. The bucket check is simply a manual procedure for assuring the accuracy of information related to the guests actual room assignment, rate to be paid, departure date, form of payment, and any other accounting-related information (Hayes, D. K. and Ninemeier, J. D. , 2007). The front desk should be able to produce independent supporting documentation for each charge posted to a guests folio. The front desk agent responsible for checking the guest out may need to produce some documentation of the charge. In this case, the documentation would likely be the actual room service ticket signed by the guest when the wine was delivered. It is the responsibility of each shift of the front desk to ensure that all appropriate guest charges incurred are posted to the appropriate guests folio and that the documentation supporting such charges has been thoroughly reviewed prior to posting. The night auditor depends on appropriate documentation provided by each shift of the front desk to support the charges that will be finalized and posted to the guests folio during the night audit (Hayes, D. K. and Ninemeier, J. D. , 2007). One of the most challenging aspects of providing guest service at the front desk relates to ensuring that guests are satisfied during their stay. When guests experience difficulties in the hotel, they will most likely turn to the front desk and its staff for assistance. There are a variety of reasons guest may have special needs or experience dissatisfaction during their stay. During their stay, and at time of checkout, guests are likely to bring up any issues they find that detracted from their experience. Routine items such as requesting room repairs, additional room amenities, or information can, if handled professionally, actually enhance the guests experience (Chon, K. S. and Maier, T. A. 2008). The making of guest reservations is often the first thing that comes to mind when considering the major functions of a front office, and this is indeed an important and often complex aspect of the front offices role. In addition to reservations, however, it falls upon the front office to actually assign arriving guests to specific guest rooms and respond to their special needs during their stay. These needs can include anything from transportation and information to medical assistance. In all of these situations and more, the major role of the front office is to make the guests stay as comfortable and as welcoming as possible.