The Front Desk Essay Example for Free

The Front Desk EssayThe earlier occasion department is the more or less visible department in a hotel. The focal point of activity within the foregoing office is the reception desk. The reception desk is usu distributively(prenominal)(prenominal)y the place at which the lymph nodes form their first impressions of the hotel. It is also the communication center for the hotels operation (Baker, S, Huyton, J and Bradley, P, 2000, p. 22). The reception/ battlefront desk The reception desk may comprise Cashiering mail and entropy fitting and direction assignment. The reception desk is located in the busiest argona of the hotels lobby. The main financial tasks which are handled by front office staff include receiving cash payments, handling customer folios, verifying cheques, and handling foreign currency and quote billhooks (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 su re that a hotel achieves the maximum revenue and the highest level of populate occupancy possible. It is also the right of the front desk manager to monitor and motivate the staff as well as to maintain a high profile with the invitees.This helps to attend that a quality help is being given by the front office departments in especial(a) 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 caterpillar track 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 thickenings 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 for each one slip of paper of staff. The senior receptionists are in charge of each shift of s taff. The senior receptionist allow for take responsibility of assigning live to nodes, dealing with group arrivals and handling invitees immediate problems or queries (Baker, S, Huyton, J and Bradley, P, 2000, p. 52). During a hotel hold up, customers may require veritable 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 military reserve requests from hotel lymph nodes preparing for the arrival of customers greeting thickenings on their arrival checking guests in (registering them, allocating suitable entourage 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 give notice do so providing training ab give away 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 study 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 m all keys lease 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 set as the face of a hotel. They provide customers with a first and last impression as twain greeters of new guests and well-wishers to departing ones. Front Desk Supervisor These hotel employees oversee that gue sts are welcomed, registered into a hotels computer system and assigned an entrance room or suite.They also transact or delegate various tasks, much(prenominal) as devising or confirming reservations, verifying and collecting guests payments, issuing room keys and contacting housekeeping or maintenance when guests account statement a problem. Front desk supervisors must(prenominal) be resourceful, take letership 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 demand front desk equipment and supplies, as well as controlling guests access to safe deposit boxes.Other responsibilities powerfulness include tracking and posting appropriate food, liquor or telephone charges to guests accounts completing bookkeeping duties, ilk balancing accounts and conducting nightly financial audits and recordi ng and referring patron comments and complaints to the appropriate hotel manager. Hotel front desk supervisors must be congenial and outgoing and possess excellent communication skills. Perhaps the most important guest service control 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, higher up all else, be made to feel welcome2.Confirming the information on the registration card. This includes the spell of the guests name, their arrival date, departure date, and room moment, and any other information relate 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 wander can be minimized if the room rate is clearly communicated and understood by both(prenominal) the hotel and the guest prior to room assignment. It is critical that all information on the registration card be complete and complete.3. Securing a form of payment.In most hotels, guests must either pay for their room in make out 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 tease 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, amenities5. 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 indemnity 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 ill 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 way the booking or reserving of a chamber ( readjustment) 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 evaluate 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 future 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 batten downs 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, o n the specified day.The reservation process is of zippy importance to a hotel because it gives the first impression of the hotel to guests, sells the main intersection point of a hotel, i. e. accommodations, generates customers for other departments, and provides important charge 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 depa rtments of a hotel, for example, the food and beverage department. Hotel rooms are a saleable trade good and are strictly limited by factor of time and quantity.Therefore, if a room is not interchange 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 PrivacyOnce 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 involvement to do, but it is the proper thing as well, to protect the rights of guests to loneliness (Hayes, D. K. and Ninemeier, J. D. , 2007).? A professionally managed front office is one in which guests are confident that their privacy is well-kept 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 guests 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 iterate 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 aerated 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 a ccuracy of that guests 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 secure 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 sho uld 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 take to produce some documentation of the charge. In this case, the documentation would plausibly 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 transporta tion 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.