1. Assume you were Frederick, what do you think of Aliyanna’s proposed policy?
2. Do you think Aliyanna’s policy is fair to all arriving guests? Explain your answer.
3. Do you think the room assignment currently in place, or Aliyanna’s proposed new policy would be best for optimizing the hotel’s revenue in the long term? Why?

“So how has your first week gone?” asked Frederick Jackson, GM of the Royal Palms resort. Frederick was talking to Aliyanna, the resort’s newly appointed FOM. It was their first one-on-one meeting since Aliyanna had been assigned to the property from corporate headquarters.
“Things are going well,” said Aliyanna, “but I did want to talk to you about a new policy on room assignments that I would like to implement.”
“Okay,” replied Frederick, “what would you like to do?”
“Well,” said Aliyanna, “the previous FOM used our PMS’s auto-assign feature when assigning rooms to arriving guests. That’s the feature the PMS uses to try to ensure that each of our rooms is rented approximately the same number of times each year.”
“I am familiar with that feature,” said Frederick, “I know the maintenance staff likes it because it spreads wear and tear on our rooms pretty equally throughout the property.”

“Yes it does do that,” replied Aliyanna, “but in my opinion that’s not the best way to do it.”
“What do you propose?” asked Frederick.
“Well Frederick,” said Aliyanna, “you know that even within the same room type some of our rooms are in more desirable property locations and have better views than other rooms. I would like to have our morning front-desk supervisors print an arrival list each day and then make prearrival room assignments based on the type of reservation made by the guest. Our best rooms would be assigned to those members of our frequent traveler program who have 5-Star elite status. Our next best would be assigned to those with 4-Star elite status. Those are the top two tiers of our frequent traveler rewards program. Continuing down the list of arrivals, I would assign the next best rooms to those who booked via a travel agent and then those who booked on our own website. The remaining rooms would be assigned to those who used a third-party or discount website to book their rooms.”