Job descriptions: In determining who will be responsible for what duties, you are to compile a Job description for the Assistant Front Office Manager, The Front Desk Agent, The Reservations Agent and The Night Auditor.

 

ASSISTANT FRONT OFFICE MANAGER

The Assistant Front Office Manager is responsible for assisting the Front Office Manager. His/her assistance includes leading and managing all sections of the Front Office Department in order to ensure the highest standards. (N/A, 2021)

1.Ensures good performance in management, meaning he/she can conduct one on one training and even conducting counsel of appropriate personnel in the organization. In addition, he/she may conduct performance review.

2. May assume the duties of the front-line manager especially on operational decision making when the front-line manager is absent.

3.Embark on the task of hiring, coaching, developing, and performance management of the Guest Service Supervisors, and Guest Services Agents.

4.Entitled to conduct interview on candidates, managing performance of the fellow colleagues, and also conducting of training.

5.Help the Rooms Division Manager to plan and execute all activities for the smooth functioning of the Front Office department

6.. Take control of departmental budget including but not limited to scheduling as per labor standards and assisting to manage the Royal Service payroll.

THE FRONT DESK AGENT

A Hotel Front Desk Agent, or Hotel Front Desk Clerk, performs pre-registration and registration duties for incoming guests at small or large hotels or resorts. They essentially check guests in and out, make room reservations and track and report room statuses and rates. (N/A, 2021)

1.Give information on the establishment, such as the position of departments or offices, workers within the organization, or the undertakings of the organization.

2.Welcoming people coming to the establishment, finding out the purpose and the nature of their visits, and direct or escort them to their desired locations.

3.Answering the telephone switchboard for operation purpose, screen and forward calls, providing information and taking messages.

4.Administer the progress of the projects as their responsibility assigned to them.

5.Incharge for reviewing, maintaining and giving company directions.

6.Attend their customers by resolving their problems.

7.Send information or documents to customers, using computer, mail, or facsimile machine.

 RESERVATION AGENT  

The main responsibility of a hotel reservation agent is to help customers with planning and booking reservations for a hotel. Agents work with customers to plan out the duration of their stay and then send booking confirmation to guests after processing payments. They are often the first person a customer will contact to sort out any issues with a reservation. (N/A, 2021)

1.Uses mails reservations to process, telephone, telex, cable, fax or central reservation systems referral.

2.Conduct the sales office reservation process, other hotel departments, and travel agents.

3.Has information on the type of rooms available as well as their layout and position.

4.Fully informed on the selling status, rates, and benefits of all plans of packaging.

5.Has knowledge of the credit policy of the hotel and how to code every other reservation.

6.Formulate and maintains reservation records by date of arrival and list of alphabets.

7.Make decisions of the room rates based on the selling tactics of the hotel.

8.Confirmation letter preparation.

  NIGHT AUDITOR

A night auditor is the first point of contact for late-night hotel guests and manages many aspects of their visit. A night auditor acts as a front desk agent, with the added responsibility of balancing reports from the previous day’s shifts. (N/A, 2021)

1.Conduct night audit of hotel and outlet for revenue as per the procedures laid down.

2.work on pre post room revenue report audit and assess adjustment after posting of revenues.

3.Daily coordination of performance auditing of housekeeping report and study occupancy reports to ensure accuracy.

4.Compile and administer daily Restaurant Revenue Report data and perform audit on Service journals and r tapes to classify under different heads.

5.Ensure there is auditing of journals and reports from front office computer system and point of service.

6.Carry out adjustments and corrections and rectify all computer problems that occur during night shifts.

STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURES

Registering a guest and checking them into the hotel

• Great the guest.
• Enquire about the Last name / First name of the guest.
• Search for the reservation record and print registration card (if the same is not pre-printed)
• Present the Registration Card to guest for verifying/reconfirming preprinted details Like:
• Arrival Date. Time.
• Departure Date, Expected time of departure.
• Room Rate.
• Room Number.
• Room Type.
• Method of payment.
• Billing instructions.
• Meal Plan
• Request for ID Proof for local guests and Passport and Visa details for foreigners.

WAYS OF CONTROLLING GUEST EXPENSES IN A HOTEL

All transactions in the Hotel should be recorded in the relevant books, with support documents. Management Account should be presented. Room sales should be recorded once a guest book in. Daily monitoring of the status of rooms, and reconciling other income with the cashier report. Use of requisition and payment vouchers. Approval and Budgetary control should be in place for expenditures.

 GUEST CHECKOUT AND ACCOUNT SETTLEMENT

GUEST CHECKOUT PROCEDURE

PROCEDURE AT CHECKOUT INCLUDES:

•  Greet guests with a smile and always try to use their names.
•  Confirm guest details- name and room number- against the guest’s account. Inquire about the guest’s stay at the hotel.
•  Check departure date. If the guest is leaving earlier than expected, other departments will need to be informed.
• Check whether late checkout charges should be applied. If the guest is leaving after 12-noon check out time and is not a frequent guest, add the relevant late checkout charges to the account.
•  Check for late charges-you can even inquire from guests. Examine current entries on a guest’s folio and check for any mini-bar, breakfast, or telephone charges.
• Give the guest folio and/or master folio for checking. (When the guest checked in, the

receptionist will have determined whether one or two folios are to be produced.) All queries must be handled without fuss and in a pleasant helpful manner.

•  Complete guest settlement of accounts (using the appropriate method).
• Provide front office services upon guest departure such as receiving the guest’s key and checking if they have used a safe deposit box which now needs to be emptied or if they have returned any housekeeping items such as hairdryer, hand iron, charger, etc.
• Offer the assistance of the bell staff to collect the luggage.
•  Inquire if the guest would like to make a future reservation or an onward reservation in another hotel within the chain.
• Update front office records. The most important records to update are the room status list and the residents list in order that other departments can accurately know the room and guest status.

METHODS OF GUEST ACCOUNT SETTLEMENT

• Cash payment in full at check-out is the most direct way to bring a guest account balance to zero. When processing a cash payment in full, the front desk agent should mark the folio as paid.
• Credit card: Even though credit card settlement brings a guest account to zero, the amount of the charter must be tracked until payment is actually received from the credit card company.
• Direct Billing: Like credit card settlement, direct billing transfers a guest’s account balance from the guest ledger to the city ledger. Unlike credit card settlement, responsibility for billing and collecting direct billing lies with the hotel rather than an outside agency.
• combined Settlement Methods: A guest may elect to use more than one settlement method to bring the guest folio balance to zero. For example, the guest may make partial cash payments and charge the remainder of the account balance to a credit card.

Front office audit, or more commonly night audit in a hotel, is a significant part of a hotel’s accounting section. This process records, reviews, and collates all financial activities of the hotel that have taken place in one day and posts them on appropriate account heads.....

Checklist that are to be used by the Night Auditor in conducting Night Audits....

• Complete Outstanding Postings: ensure all guest transactions from the day (i.e.: parking fees, room service or mini-bar charges, laundry, telephone or internet charges, etc.) have been correctly posted to guest accounts.
• Reconcile Room Status: reconcile occupancy and housekeeping reports and verify any “no shows” to confirm actual room statuses and overall hotel occupancy rate.
• Verify & Post Room Rates: reconcile guest registration records to room reports to ensure the quoted and charged room rates match, and if not, then confirm the discrepancy (ie: room reserved at standard rate, then booked with a corporate rate discount upon check-in). Post accurate room and tax charges to appropriate guest accounts.
• Balance All Departments: close out and balance all revenue center departments, such as food and beverage outlets, comparing POS software totals to transaction slips or reports within PMS.
• Balance Processed Payments: tally cash on hand and run a batch close on all payments processed; reconcile all settled payments.
• Run Reports: run management reports, such as hotel trial balance, and generate guest folios for following days’ check-outs....

Planning is one of the most important management functions in any business. A front office manager’s first step in planning should involve determine the department’s goals. Planning also includes determining the strategies and tactics the department will use to attain the objectives. The Revenue Manager indicated that the establishment has the ideal of maintaining an average of 80% occupancy during the upcoming year. Management are to make use of the market condition approach in pricing the rooms.

As the front office manager, you are to research strategies and make recommendations on how this outcome can be achieved. The information obtained are to be compiled into a 5-10-page report that will be presented to the senior board of directors at their next strategic meeting. Headings that are to be used in the report are:

• The Target Market: Who the Hotel will be marketing their products to and how the hotel could reach the ideal target market.
• Technology that can be used to market the hotel.
• Promotions that the hotel can run through the year, keeping in mind the yearly calendar and events happening in the area.
• Customer satisfactory feedback.

THE TARGET MARKET: WHO THE HOTEL WILL BE MARKETING THEIR PRODUCTS TO AND HOW THE HOTEL COULD REACH THE IDEAL TARGET MARKET.

Most front office managers will readily admit that they rarely have all the resources they feel are necessary. Available resources include people, money, time, materials, energy and equipment. But all these are in limited supply. An important part of a front office manager's job involves planning how to apply these limited resources and to generate maximum revenue.  At the planning stage, the front office manager shall determine the department's goals, later he shall use these goals as a guide for planning more specific and measurable objectives. Planning in front office management involves 3 main functions. They are establishing room rates, Forecasting room availability and budgeting for operation.

1) Establishing room rates -Each hotel has different room rate categories based on room size, location, view, furnishing and amenities. Each category is assigned a rack rate based on the no: of pax occupying the room.

Rack Rate: It is the standard price determined by the management. Hotel design a standard rate for each category of rooms offered to the guest. These are the highest possible rate for each category of rooms.

Your hotel target market is one of the most effective ways of growing your business. If you’re interested in finding more prospects who will fall in love with your business, you’ll first need to get to know who you’re attracting and why. What is a hotel target market? A target market is a group of people who share similar wants and needs. They might even share similar demographics like median age, race, or income level. Target markets are often sub groups that businesses try to appeal to in marketing and sales since they are the people who are most likely to be interested in your product or service. A hotel target market refers to the specific type of people or groups who you already to a lot of business with. Or maybe they’re a type of customer you’d like to attract more of. Either way, every hotel must align their marketing and sales efforts if they want to attract and book more of these ideal guests.

Hotel segmentation 

The more hotels know about their guests, the better they can segment them. Good segmentation leads to effective pricing, and custom value add-on offers that will maximize the revenue and increase customer satisfaction.  In a nutshell, hotel market segmentation is a way of dividing potential guests into groups based on a set of shared characteristics. General marketing strategies will point to age, race, income, and general personality traits when creating these groups. For hotel marketing, segmentation is often prioritized by a particular group’s likelihood of booking. There are some common types of hotel target market segmentation. But industry research and historical sales data are also great ways to discover target audience profiles that are unique to your business.

What are the benefits of market segmentation?

Overall, the main benefit of creating and targeting groups of prospects has to do with specificity. The more specific you can be with your market segmentation, the easier it is to find more high paying customers who will rave about your hotel. Once you know who you’re trying to reach you can focus your marketing and sales efforts on appealing to these groups. The alternative is to engage the general public in the hopes that they’ll want to stay at your hotel at some point. And while you may get some bites from this approach it’s ultimately not a sustainable long-term strategy.

Instead, it’s wiser to find a few groups with potentially high ROI because:

• Marketing and sales efforts with be both more profitable and easier to measure.
• You’ll be able to invest in highly valued features, deals, and upgrades you already know guests will love.
• You’ll attract more guests and increase per customer revenue.

As you can tell, there is a lot to be gained from segmenting your pool of potential guests. If you’re wondering where to get started, you can begin by organizing your list into some tried and true hotel target market segmentation groups.

What are some main types of hotel target market segmentation?

Unlike most other industries, hotels are defined by each of the following segmentation types. These details combine to create a great outline for your ideal target market. If any of the following areas seem out of place compared to the others, you can easily spot the weakness and make adjustments where necessary so everything works together as one cohesive guest experience for your target audience.

• Location. Is your hotel in a big city or a rural town? By the beach or land locked? Walking distance from an amusement park or a popular conference center?
• Size. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a boutique bed & breakfast or part of a name brand hotel chain, as long as you understand why someone would prefer staying at a place with your max capacity.
• Preferred Amenities. We all know that person who refuses to book a hotel if they don’t have a hot tub. Even if it’s in the middle of the desert. During a heat wave. Certain groups of people are going to have amenity preferences. Once you define your target market you can work to add whatever is missing.
• Traveler Type. A business professional has different interests than a family of five with young children. Knowing which type of traveler your hotel currently attracts is yet another clue into who your target market is or should be.

Every hotel offers a unique combination of characteristics. So, while these categories are a good starting point, you’ll need to do a little more digging to understand exactly who frequents your hotel now and who you’d like to do more business with in the future.

Target market  

What is the target market of a hotel?

A hotel’s target market is the specific subset of all hotel customers that a particular property tries to get business from. This could be business travelers for a hotel near an airport or conference center, and families on vacation for resorts in Cape Town. A target market allows a hotel to focus their sales and marketing efforts.

What is the target market for luxury hotels?

Business travelers make up the largest segment of business for luxury hotels, particularly during weekdays. Wealthy travelers make up another significant portion of this business.

What is a target market example?

An example of a target market would be a hotel near the cape town airport looking to market itself to business travelers in town for events by partnering with event hosts, placing ads on search terms related to cape town conferences, and offering great loyalty deals for stays during the week.

  HOW TO IDENTIFY TARGET MARKET

1.Look for thoughts that have been posted on social media.

The same way that internet reviews assist gather target market information, so does social media. People love to express themselves on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. In addition, each website has its own set of analytical tools and possibilities for candid feedback. Use your gained information to improve your content by mining your social accounts for market research gold.

2. Track your customer contacts with sales and CRM software.

Again, data is your best friend when it comes to identifying your hotel's target demographic. No one understands your hotel's history better than a good sales and CRM system. Quality applications, such as Social Tables, provide simple mechanisms for collecting and analyzing sales data. The data is then transformed into visually customizable reports.

3. Use Google Analytics to learn more about your website visitors' demographics and other information.

Google Analytics is a free tool that provides a wealth of data. This tool can tell you who comes to your site, where they come from, what they click on, how long they spend on each page, and so on.

In general, there is a lot of good information here. It takes some getting used to, but once you do, you'll be fine.

4. Check out what people are saying about you on the internet.

Online reviews aren't all created equal. But it doesn't rule out the possibility of finding any hidden treasures in your Yelp or TripAdvisor evaluations. Guests will frequently describe why they chose to stay at your hotel, what they anticipated to see, and what they liked most about it. Everything is there if you take the time to search for it.

5. Enable customers to create profiles

This is one of the oldest marketing tricks in the book for good reason. Creating a fake profile of a person who is most likely to stay at your hotel is both a creative and effective tool for understanding your target market. It also presents a visual to help sales and marketing get a better idea of who they should be aiming to please. Outline who they are, what they’re like, their occupation, and anything else you deem relevant.

 HOW WILL THE HOTEL REACH IDEAL TARGET MARKET

1.Make Sure You're Reaching the Right People

What kind of hotel are you promoting, and who do you think your average customer is? Marketers of a Super 8 Motel off Route 9 must employ a different method from those of the Ritz Carlton on the Caribbean coastlines' sandy beaches. These individuals travel in various ways, book differently, and have different budgets.

2.During peak booking seasons, allocate more marketing budget.

Your peak booking seasons will be quite different if you own a ski resort in the Alps or a strip of beach rentals on the Cape. As a hotel marketer, you're probably well aware of your peak booking season, but when it comes to ad budgets, you can be a step behind. It only makes sense to spend a larger portion of your annual income.

3.Make Yourself Searchable on the Internet!

Let's face it: technology has surpassed us. The days of travel agencies are long gone. Travelers now have the ability to conduct their own comparative research without ever leaving their beds. If your hotel is difficult to discover online, it's no surprise that bookings are few. For possible bookings, you need to be everywhere relevant online so that people can find you.

4. Continuously market. Because travelers are distracted not just by common distractions (such as pop-up phone alerts and wailing babies), but also by the hundreds of other alternatives available to them, remarketing is a vital component of hotel marketing.

5.Provide incentives to get others to participate.

Why should I choose you over the hotel down the street – or one that is more convenient or less expensive? Your hotel must offer a compelling reason for customers to select you above the competition.

If you can't think of any apparent reasons, such as having the greatest rates or the top ratings, come up with some unique incentives and offers.

TECHNOLOGY THAT CAN BE USED TO MARKET THE HOTEL

1.Refurbishment of Wi-Fi infrastructure

Wi-Fi is no just a benefit for hotel customers who travel with gadgets such as phones, tablets, and computers; it is now a must-have when they check in at a hotel. Hotel visitors want to be able to connect to the internet effortlessly and without too many delays, prompting businesses to invest in better, faster Wi-Fi infrastructure.

2.Digital conference facilities

Besides being able to offer high density Wi-Fi for conferences and meetings, hotels also need to be able to offer access to audio-visual (AV) and digital facilities for conferences. While the amount of AV and digital equipment that goes into a typical conference room is fairly minimal, staging companies are often hired for various projects in order to equip the facility as required.

3.Automation and mobile communication

In many airports, there is no longer a need to line to check in, and guests demand the same level of convenience and technology at hotels. Guests want to be able to accomplish anything with a digital device, from checking in at an automated kiosk to ordering room service, rather than waiting in lines and moving about the hotel.

4.NFC stands for Near Field Communication.

NFC (near field communication) is a next-generation short-range high-frequency wireless communication technology that allows users to transfer data between devices. NFC devices can communicate at up to 424 kbits per second, and communication is triggered when two devices touch one other, allowing for mobile payments (by tapping the smart card).

5.Infrared sensors and robots

Some hotels are already providing more futuristic experiences, such as robots carrying room service orders to a guest's door. Aloft Cupertino, a boutique hotel located near Apple's headquarters and other tech businesses, features a robot butler named Botlr that can roam between the hotel's several levels in order to take products. 

 PROMOTIONS THAT THE HOTEL CAN RUN

1. Promotions tied to specific events

Throughout the year, your location is likely to be involved in a number of major events. It's a no-brainer to take advantage of these and incorporate them in your advertising. People will be investigating these events already, so if your hotel has an offer going on in connection with them, awareness of your hotel and site traffic should rise.

2.Promotions with a theme

There should be lots of opportunities to provide specialized promotions centered on certain activities or the target demographic you cater to. These will be eye-catching and extremely relevant to visitors considering a stay in the region. If you're in a romantic location, for example, you may run sales around honeymoons or anniversaries, or adventurous bargains if you're not.

3.Promotions that change with the seasons

Most sites have a low season, during which tourism is not as busy as it is at other times of the year. Your hotel, on the other hand, does not have to suffer from vacant rooms and hallways if you find the appropriate bargains. Simply lowering the room charge isn't always the greatest strategy, as it doesn't ensure an increase in occupancy. Instead, try including more eye-catching discounts.

4.Promotions for direct bookings

Including unique promotions in your booking engine on your website will encourage customers to book directly rather than through an OTA. It will also aid in the establishment of your hotel website as your primary distribution channel, as well as the growth of profit by removing OTA commission payments. The incentive may be a discount or anything additional, like a free gift.

5.Promotion of joint ventures

In most situations, your hotel will be located in a bustling region where you aren't the only business hoping to profit from the influx of visitors. Combining with other firms will lower your promotion and marketing costs while also expanding your reach, as long as your partner keeps their end of the agreement. It may also provide you with access to a new market and allow you to grow.

Customer satisfaction is the internal feelings of every individual which may be satisfaction or dissatisfaction resulting from the assessment of services provided to an individual in context to customer’s anticipation by an organization Hotels are continuously trying to improve the service just to satisfy their customer because higher customer satisfaction will lead towards customer loyalty. (Trilyo, 2021)

Every product or service is made for its customers. It's created to either solve their problems or fulfill their needs.

Your product or service revolves around your customers and their experiences, and every single day, you're making significant efforts to provide them with a positive experience.

This journey of providing your customers with a positive experience starts from the moment they land on your website and extends beyond the moment they become your customer. Without question, delighting them and encouraging them to become a loyal customer is a never-ending commitment. As Derek Sivers from CD Baby puts it, "Customer service is the new marketing." And that couldn't be truer.

The Importance of Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Your guests/customers opinions and feedback are two of the most important factors that validate important decisions within your business, catalyzing your business’s sustainability and growth. Their opinions also shape the customer lifecycle. If you don’t know what your customers think, you have a lower chance of retaining them, delighting them, and enticing them to make future purchases.

You can obtain guest feedback through a survey, in the form of comment cards, through an emailed or texted receipt, or on your handheld POS system. You can ask in person, or look around for what people are already saying on Yelp and other review sites.