As the name suggests these operations involve the activities which do not take place in front of the
guests. The f
ront office activities start the moment an enquiry or request regarding accommodation is
made. This enquiry is answered keeping in view converting it into a reservation request. Although
reservation is an activity of front office, major hotel lines/chain o
f hotels have centralised reservation
system, operational 24 hours a day 365 days a year. (Reservation and its various intricacies will be
discussed in the later sections). A confirmed reservation leads to browsing of information, i.e., guest
-
record to det
ermine whether this is a repeat guest and if yes what are the personal information and
preferences of the guest. This helps you giving personal touch to guest’s stay with the hotel.
When the guest checks
-
in, his or her account gets activated. This account
keeps track of the guest’s
financial interaction with the hotel. These financial interactions involve room rent, room services,
laundry, food and beverage at the hotel’s outlet and any other facility used by the guest during his or
her stay. For instance,
these financial transactions begin the moment when he/she while waiting for
allocation of a room start making phone calls to his/her associates to inform them the arrival or order
for something in the lobby itself. The daily night auditors help the back of
the office department in the
hotel in maintaining the guest accounts. Many hotels have a credit line extended to their guests or to
the companies which they represent. The credit limit is predetermined and the hotel allows the guest
to accumulate the amou
nt before asking for either a full or partial payment. Many a times a guest is
asked to provide his/her credit card during check
-
in while cash is expected mode of payment during
checkout with multinational brands coming into India the concept of property m
anagement system has
emerged which allows night auditors to flash guest’s folio on day to day basis on their T.V. monitors.
This kind of arrangement saves lot of guest’s time at the time of checkout.
It also co
-
ordinates with housekeeping and room sales to
maintain the status of occupied as well as
unoccupied rooms. Finally, the guest record or personal data is maintained by the front office, which
is essentially a back
-
of
-
the
-
house activity. Thus, the Guest cycle which started by taking guest
booking, rece
iving guests, providing for their stay and billing them on departure gets completed