The Guest chooses a hotel during the pre- arrival stage of the guest cycle. Choice of the guest can be affected by many factors, including previous experiences with the hotel, advertisement, word of mouth referral by friends and colleagues, location, corporate, travel agent booking, hotel name, hotel loyalty program member etc.
The guest's decision of making the reservation can also be effected by the ease of making the reservation and the way reservation agent interacted and described the facility of the hotel like room type, room rate, recreational facilities and other attractions near the hotels etc.
We can certainly call the reservation area as the sales office for non-corporate or group bookings. Its employees should be sales orientated and present positive, strong image of the hotel.
If a reservation can be accepted, the reservation agent create a reservation on the hotel management software. The creation of this reservation record starts the hotel guest cycle. This reservation contains details of guest specific request which will help the hotel to provide the guest with personalized service during his stay.
The details which is collected during the reservation also helps the hotel to complete pre-registration activities like assign room according to guest request, room rate to be charged to the guest folio during the course of stay etc.
Although the reservation details helps in providing guests with anticipatory service the primary objective of making the reservation is to make sure that room will be available when he arrives to the hotel.