The Front Office Department in the Hotel Industry

Accommodation is of one of the primary concerns of the international and domestic travelers. It is the biggest component of their expenditure and plays a vital part in their overall experience of visiting a new place. Therefore, management of accommodation is the main aspect of hotel or tourism industry. The hotel Accor was established by Dubrule and Gerard Pelisson in the year 1967 and has established itself as one of the biggest and famous hotel chains in the entire globe (Kimes & Ho, 2017). It has 4,200 hotels in 95 different countries and each of its hospitality experts share same passion and take care of all their guests globally. Accor has one of the most famous hotels in the list of tourism industry. This hotel chain is offering the largest brand portfolio that is encompassing internationally acclaimed luxury brands to popular mid-scale and budget brands. The hotel has a list of more than 20 brands, ranging from luxury to economy, that are meeting every customer’s desires. Some of the luxury brands include Raffles and Banyan tree and that of the economy brands include Ibis, Novotel and Mama (Accorhotels.group, 2018). They consider each of their guest as unique and promises to meet their every demands. They are the true example of worldly elegance, style and hospitality.

The front office department is the most vital part of every hotel as it is the main communication center of the building (Schipper et al. 2013). It plays a very important part in the overall success of its operations. According to its efficiency, the quality and the satisfaction of guests are differed and it is one of the highly noticeable departments in every tourism industry (Bardi 2013). It consists of numerous segments, starting from the reception desk, cashier, front office manager, telephone operator etc.

The reception desk is the focal center of communication. It is generally consists of the front office manager, cashier, assistant front office manager, reservationist, and the telephone operator. They welcome the visitors and are responsible to strike the first impression about the hotel in their mind. Each of them has their own and diverse duties to conduct. They are:

1. Responsibilities of the Front office manager

It is  the duties of the front office manger to operate the front office and to ensure that all the policies of the hotel are well assembled. He reviews the status of the VIP room blocking and the availability of the rooms on a daily basis. He trains and monitors every staff as well with the highest priority of guest service and satisfaction. He must make sure that the budge and the cost effectiveness in the front office is attained (Wang and Ritchie 2012). He also approves the duty rosters, reviews the logbook and monitors each activities of the front desk.

1. Responsibilities of the Cashier

Customer Needs and Experiences in Accommodation Management

The cashier receives the payments of the guests, assimilates the gathered reports, and records on non-monetary and computes the total transactions (Perry et al. 2017). They provide checks of cash for the customers and supervise the checkout stations for them. Sorting and counting of the currencies are also one of their primary duties. With the same, often, the cashiers offer their customers to carryout the services after the competition of transactions.

1. Responsibilities of the Assistant front office manager

The responsibilities of the assistant front office manager are more or less as that of the main front office manager. However, some of the dissimilarities are- they monitors the operational activities of the front desk and monitors that whether or not highest standard of services are provided to the guests.  They look after the completion of payrolls, shift closing of the staffs, room deposits, refunds and rebates. They conducts meetings to different management issues, performs trainings and check-ins and checkouts processes. They also prepare schedules for the staffs and monitor the labor costs.

1. Responsibilities of the Reservationist

The main duties of the reservationist are to assist the customers and give them answers to the various enquiries and to advice them accordingly. They help the customers with filling up the registration forms and ensure that each of the customers have access to the hotel services without any type of jerks.

1. Responsibilities of the Telephone operator

The responsibilities of the telephone operator in hotel industry are same like that in the other places. They answer the calls of the customers, records their requests and coordinate the responses of the guest issues.

The customers and their needs play a very important role in the overall operation of the front desk in a hotel. Various segments of guests arrive at Accor. They are from multiple  entities. Some guests arrives with their families to spent their holidays, some couples come to spent their honeymoons and there are some international guests too, who either comes to explore the place, to socialize or to  attend business meetings (Diaz and Koutra 2013). Each of them has different needs, different requirements and different patterns of traveling.

1. Families:The family tourists normally plan their trip in advance and they always wants to increase their time. They are a package deal. They are very interested in sightseeing and organized tours. However, most of them consist of perpetually noisy children and their exhausted parents. Hence, they are loud and they need a little more care and space than the other segments. They require children friendly activities, local maps and information on the various sightseeing spots. Providing them with the same will provide the hotel a great opportunity to offer them great value with absolutely no cost.
2. The corporate clients:The primary purpose of traveling of the corporate clients is to attend business meetings and conferences in the city. They are always convenience conscious. Hence, they are attracted and focused more towards the comfortable accommodation, available food options in the hotel, and the local transportation.
3. The solo travelers: The solo travelers are typically young crowd. They are very price sensitive as they wants to save their money as much as possible. They are more interested in learning about the local culture, language, customs and traditions. Providing them with information like local maps, events list, and list of the sightseeing spots will help them greatly and with the same will increase the value of the hotel.  
4. The Seniors:The seniors or the elderly guests are more conscious about the staff assistance and the local transportation. Like the other guests, they too require local spot options and maps but also want options that are easy to facilitate. Tours that will directly pick them up from the hotel will be a plus. They prefer noiseless, friendly and pleasant surroundings.  

The responsibilities of accommodation managers of every sector are more or less same. They shares similar responsibilities in order to meet their customer demands in the field of accommodation. However, the duties of a true accommodation manager are to promote and develop a positive relationship with the guests and the staffs, to ensure that a smooth running accommodation facility that includes the safety of the guests and adequate security is maintained in the hotel. He must monitor the operations of the room service departments and ensure that a high quality standard of services is provided to the customers. He must also ensure that each of the customer segment’ demands are completed.

Outsourcing Services in the Hotel Industry

Most of the companies in today’s world prefers the process of outsource for the different types of  services that they provide, such as the food and beverage services, call centre services, outlet-mail services etc (Hemmington and King 2013). These processes are mainly handled by the outsource holders and the suppliers upon which they completely trust (Leeman and Reynolds 2012).

Advantages-

1. The main advantage of outsourcing is that it helps in reduction of the fixed cost (Espino-Rodriguez 2014). It will enable the hotel to run only with the expense of that is used by the guests. No other addition of expenses is required, which means that moving towards outsourcing will enable the hotel to hire different other services of other companies and that too based on their own workload.
2. The outsourcing suppliers or the professionals will supply the hotel with better quality products and services such as, at the times of advertising campaigns or marketing designs. It is observed that the tourism management is walking hand in hand with the technology. The companies who are specialized in technological services for the hotel industry will supply them with software or programs or applications in order to manage their allotment and organize the warehouses. They will also help them in controlling the other internal processes (Lamminmaki 2012).

Disadvantages-

1. Moving towards an outsourcing solution is best in every aspect but there are some bad sides too, as outsourcing may lead to loss of control of the hotel on their own business affairs. It is tough for any company to commend a third party as its becomes tough to ensure that those suppliers are delivering a standard services (Caruth, Haden and Caruth 2013).
2. There will be a high risk of incorrect alignment of the strategic aspects and the objectives of the hotel (Davila, Epstein and Shelton 2012). When the external elements start to interfere in the internal affairs of any business, it becomes difficult for the company to transmit its main objective properly. With the same, the process of monitoring and supervising will become very tough.

There is no doubt about the fact that Accor is serving best to meet its customer’s need and to satisfy them in every manner. Still, changes are important in every industry for sustaining its current position in the market as well as to achieve success. However, as it is discussed above that the front desk plays a very important part in the overall success of the hotel. Hence, it must ensure that the food supply for the customers is healthy and hygienic. For the guests who come with their families; proper room, source of entertainment like TV should be there.  During the departure and arrival of the guests, the front desk must welcome and thank them for their arrival and for providing them the opportunity to serve them. In addition, if they require any additional facilities such as the pick or drop facilities, the front desk department must fulfill them. This will develop the customer experiences and will the attention of more people towards their services. 

References:

Accorhotels.group. (2018). AccorHotels Group – Worldwide leader in Hospitality and services – Feel Welcome. [online] Available at: https://www.accorhotels.group/ [Accessed 9 Jan. 2018].

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