FEATURES OF STRUCTURAL DESIGNS IN FRONT OFFICE

Lesson Notes

FEATURES OF STRUCTURAL DESIGNS IN FRONT OFFICE

The front desk is where the guests temporarily await to find an accommodation or to clear their bill. Hence, it needs to be positioned appropriately such that the staff and the guests can use them conveniently. The basic features of structural designs in front office are as follows:-

Adequately positioned with suitable and adequate height and reach.
Well and an adequately lit-up area.
Furnishings should be conveying the theme and aesthetic
Lobby and guest elevators should be near each other i.e. preferably near the hotel lobby and lift.
Lounge or the sitting area should be easily accessible and blend with theme i.e. preferably near the sitting area.
Wide enough to make the staff member interact with the guests across the desk.
Adequately spaced sections of front guest movement.

HOTEL FRONT OFFICE SECTIONS

Front office department manager heads the team of staff working on various activities and responsibilities in the front office department. The front office includes various sections namely:-

Lobby: According to oxford advanced learners dictionary “lobby is an area just inside a large building, where people can meet and wait”. The hotel lobby is an area furnished with seating arrangements and is used as common place for meeting and waiting by the hotel guests. Lobby is located immediately upon entry into the hotel building. The front office is located within the premises of the lobby. The lobby is an important place in the hotel as it is the first and last point of guest contact with hotel. Hence, a lobby should be deigned to make to look aesthetically appealing to the guest.
Reservations: People while planning their trips to other places prefer to be sure that they will have a suitable accommodation when they reach at destination. This can be achieved by making an advance booking of the hotel room. Reservation section of front office department of the hotel is responsible for receiving and processing the reservation queries. The procedure of processing reservation queries may differ from hotel to hotel in terms reservations handling, maintenance of reservation records, confirmation, amendments, and cancellation of reservation. Functions of reservation section of front office are as under:-
- Receiving Reservation Request through various means like telephone, fax, e-mail, website, sales representative or central reservation department.
- Processing reservation request received from all means of the hotel property management system.
- Depending upon the availability of desired room type and projected sales during and around the requested stay dates, the reservation request may be confirmed, waitlisted or denied.
- Updating the room availability status after each reservation transaction, i.e., after each confirmation, amendment and cancelation.
- Maintaining and updating reservation records to reflect accurate information about room status.
- Preparing reservation reports for the management.
Reception: According to oxford dictionary “reception is a place inside the entrance of a hotel or office building where guests or visitors go when they first arrive”. This section of front office receives and welcomes the guests at their arrival in the hotel. The personnel of this section receive all necessary information about the guest to complete the registration formality. After completing the registration formalities, room is assigned to the guest and bell boy carries the guest luggage and escorts the guest to his room. The process should be carried out in professional way in a warm and friendly atmosphere to create a positive guest impression. Functions of reception section of front office are as under:-
- Receiving and welcoming guest.
- Complete the registration formalities.
- Assigning the room.
- Sending arrival notification slips to the concerned departments.
Information: This section of the front office provides information to guests. This section is manned by information assistant. In a small hotel the same function may be provided by the receptionist. The need of a separate information desk is felt in hotels having large number of rooms and the traffic of guest is higher. Functions of information desk of front office are as under:-
- Maintaining resident guest rack.
- Handling guest room keys.
- Coordinate guest mails, telegrams, faxes, couriers, parcels, etc.
- Providing information to guest regarding hotel facilities and services, city information, etc.
- Handling guest messages.
- Paging guests.
Cash & bills: It records all guests’ monetary transitions. This section maintains guest‘s folios and prepares the guest bills at the time of departure of the guest. This section is headed by cashier. This section performs the following tasks:-
- Opening and maintaining guest folios
- Posting room charges in the guest folio
- Posting all credit charges in the guest folio
- Posting all cash received from the guest
- Preparing bills at the time of check-out
- Receives the cash, travelers cheques, demand draft for account settlement
- Handles credit cards for settlement of guest account
- Foreign currency exchange
Travel desk: The travel desk deals with the guest‘s needs of transportation, air-ticketing, railway reservations et cetera. The hotel may operate the travel desk or it may be outsourced to a external travel agency. The travel desk performs the following tasks:-
- Air-port/ railway station pick-up and drop
- Providing vehicles to guest if demanded on the basis of pre-determined charges
- Making railway reservations/cancellations and amendments for guest
- Purchasing air-tickets for the guest
- Arranging the sight-seeing tours
Communication: The communication section maintains a complex communications network of the hotel. Switchboard operators may place wake-up calls and coordinate emergency communications. The wake-up calls may also be registered on the system which dials the guest extension at registered time and plays pre-recorded message when answered. The telephone operators may also protect guests’ privacy-and thereby contribute to the hotel’s security program-by not revealing guestroom numbers to any other person. Recent technological advancement in equipment have considerably decreased the responsibilities and workload of telephone operators. Functions of communication section are as under:-
- Answering incoming calls
- Directing calls to guest rooms through the switchboards/PABX system
- Providing information to guest services processing guest wakeup calls
- Answering inquiries about the hotel facilities and events
- Protecting guests‘ privacy
- Coordinating emergency communication.
Uniformed Service: Also known as the Guest Services, they include the bell desk team and the concierge.
Bell Desk: Bell desk is located in a very close proximity of the entrance gate of the hotel. This section is headed by a bell captain. Bell boys and page boys are the team member of the bell desk. They handle the guest luggage from their entry in hotel porch to their rooms at the time of arrival and from their rooms to lobby and then to the guest vehicle at the time of their departure. The bell desk person is the last front desk employee who comes in guest contact at the time of departure of guest. The bell desk performs the following tasks:-
- Handling guest luggage
- Locating guest in a specified area of the hotel (paging)
- Posting guest mails.
- Making sundry purchase for the guest
- Keeping guest luggage in left luggage room
- Escorting guest to their rooms
- Educating guest about functions of weather control, using in-house telephone directory.
- Providing information to guest about hotel facilities and services when asked by guest.
Concierge: The concept of concierges came from the European royalty days; the concierge was the castle doorkeeper. His duty was to ensure that all castle occupants are safely locked in their rooms at night. When the royal families were traveling they often took their concierges with them for security and food and lodging arrangements. As hotel industry grew they became a part of the hotel staff to provide personalized services to the hotel guest. The concierge provides following services to hotel guest:-
- Making reservations for dining in famous restaurants
- Obtaining tickets for theater and sporting events
- Arranging for transportation by limousine, car, couches, busses, airplane, or train
- Providing information on cultural and social events and local points of tourist interest

EQUIPMENTS USED IN FRONT OFFICE

For carrying out all day to day work many types of equipment are used in front office department. They can be grouped in to following broad categories:-

Manual equipments
Semi-automated equipments
Automated equipments

A. MANUAL EQUIPMENTS USED IN FRONT OFFICE

ROOM RACK

The room rack is large front office equipment located just behind the front desk.
The room rack is a wooden framework designed and contains a metallic array of pockets which contain a large number of room rack slips for showing the reservation and housekeeping status of each guestroom of a property.
The room rack slip contained in the metallic pockets shows the type of room (Double, Twin, King, Suite), the occupancy status of the guestroom (occupied, Vacant, not cleared) and the name of the guest registered in the guestroom.
The current occupancy status of the guestrooms is indicated by the coloured strips inserted in the pockets of the room rack.
It is the joint effort of the front desk and housekeeping to timely update the room rack in order to have an accurate room status position.

INFORMATION RACK

The information rack is another important device positioned in the front desk and is used by the front desk agent to track the various in-house guests of the hotel.
The Information is a revolving device that contains information about the various guests presently registered in the hotel with the name of the guests alphabetically arranged in the rack and the information taken from the upper portion of the folios of the guests.
The Information contained in the information rack are name of the guest, number and type of room occupied, rate of the guestroom, date of arrival and departure and the billing instructions.

MAIL AND MESSAGE RACK

The mail and message rack is a wooden framework containing an array of pigeonholes with each pigeonhole used to store the various mails and messages received for an in-house guest.
Previously, the mail and message rack used to contain the keys of the guestrooms in the pigeonholes and was thus called the mail, message and key rack
But nowadays, the mail rack has been isolated from the key rack and has been moved behind scenes to present a more professional appearance and at the same time ensuring the security of the mails and message of the guests of the hotel.

KEY RACK OR KEY DRAWER

The key rack or the key drawer is important front office equipment located underneath the counter of the front desk.
The key rack as the name suggests, is a wooden or metallic framework containing an array of slots used for keeping the keys of the guestrooms in sequential order of the guestrooms present in the hotel.
This rack is maintained by the front desk in hotels where metal or hard keys are used and is thus essential front desk equipment for such hotels.

FOLIO WELL OR FOLIO BUCKET

A folio well or folio bucket is also an important equipment used in the front desk cash section.
This equipment contains a large number of slots where the folios are arranged sequentially according to the room number.
The folio well is used by the front office cashier to store and tack the folios of the various registered guests of the hotel and is used to maintain the folios safely for future use and reference.

B. SEMI-AUTOMATED EQUIPMENTS USE IN FRONT OFFICE

POSTING MACHINE

The accounting posting machine is very essential equipment used in the semi-automated front office system for posting the various charges in the accounts of the guests.
The posting machine is generally used to calculate the totals of the guest accounts, departments and transactions.
The mechanical features of the accounting posting machine are arranged in such a logical sequence the job of posting the charges into the various guest accounts becomes very easy.
The line pick-up keys ensures that the posting machine is not over printing a line as the operator indicates where the accounting posting machine should start the calculation and should start printing.
There is a key pad in the account posting machine which is used by the cashier or the operator to enter the room numbers of the guests, department key (e.g. room, tax, food) and also the type of transaction ( e.g. debit, credit, transfer)

CASH REGISTER

The cash register is semi-automated equipment used optionally by the front desk.
The cash register is generally used by the front desk to record the various sales of sundries at the front desk such as stamps, newspapers, candy etc.
The various required mechanical features present in the cash register include a key pad, category key (stamps, newspapers, candy) and amount entering key.

WAKE UP DEVICES

The wake up device is a very important device used by the front desk or the telephone exchange of non-automated hotels to remind the staffs of awakening the guests at requested times.
The most famous and common wake- up device is known as the James Remindo timer which is an alarm clock with pull out pins.
Many hotels also use a simple alarm clock for awakening the guests. The guests’ requests for wake up calls are recorded in a wake-up sheet with the information of time, room number and name of the guest.
In fully automated systems, the telephone exchange automatically places the various requests of the guests for wake –up calls by automatic- voice-recorded wake- up messages. This feature is of great help when many guests have to woken up at the same time on the hotel.

CREDIT CARD IMPRINTER

The credit card imprinter is very important equipment used for the purpose of front office accounting.
The equipment is used especially when the guests present credit cards at the time of their arrival or departure to settle their bill.
The credit card imprinter makes an imprint of the credit card used by the guest as a method of payment.

TYPEWRITER

The typewriter is very important semi-automated equipment used for preparing various documents related to the front office operations and also related to the guests.
The front office employees use typewriters to prepare guest reservations confirmation letter, to prepare the registration card of the guest and also to conduct the other word processing jobs of the department.

C: AUTOMATED EQUIPMENTS USED IN FRONT OFFICE

CREDIT CARD VALIDATOR

Computerized telephone system which allows the proper billings of the outgoing calls of the guests.
The credit card validator is automated front office equipment used by the front office cashier to check the validity of the credit card presented by the guest as mode of payment at the time of arrival or departure of the guest.
This equipment is a computer terminal linked to a credit card data bank, which holds information concerning the validity of the credit card of the guest.
The credit card equipment assures the hotel management that the guest has credit balance high enough to cover the projected charges and it also verifies that the card presented by the guest is not a stolen property.

TIME STAMPING MACHINE

The time stamping is a mechanical or an electronic device which is used extensively by the front office of a hotel, records the check-in check-out time of the guests, delivery time of any mail or message for the in-house guests.
This device imprints the date and time on a piece of paper either electronically or mechanically and is thus important equipment for carrying out the operations of the front office leading to guest satisfaction.

FAX MACHINES

The full form of FAX machines is Facsimile Automates Xerox machine and is important electronic equipment used in the front desk for communication purposes.
This a facsimile reproduction equipment that operates through telephone lines and are used extensively by the front office to receive and send official documents important from point of view of the guest or the hotel management at large.
While sending a fax message, the operator dials the destination fax machine number and then sends the fax message by inserting the message page in the machine.
It is important that the destination fax machine should be switched on when the fax message is sent from the hotel.

CALL ACCOUNTING SYSTEM

A call accounting system is a fully
This type of automated telephone system has been introduced in a large number of hotels nowadays due to the reason for providing improved services to the guest.
The call accounting system is called APBX or Automated Private Branch Exchange and is used in the hotel telephone exchange section of the front office department to automatically trace and bill the outgoing calls made by the guests during their stay at the hotel.

COMPUTER

All the automated hotels around the world are excessively using computers for the day to day operations, administrations and management.
Computers are also widely used in the front office departments of the hotels for the purpose of reservations, registration, accounting and auditing.
Computers are efficient to operate and are extremely user friendly and thus help the employees to store and retrieve important data of the guest from time to time to carry out the various guest services.