Week 4 - Wiki Assignment

Q1. Update your wiki about the following departments and their functions: Front desk, reservation, cashier, concierge, housekeeping and laundry.

Details and function for different departments in the hotel

1. Front Desk

The front desk for any business is very important as customers are going to judge a company by how its front desk runs. This is especially in hospitality industry, which the first impression for customers is extremely important. It is a department that has to deal with the customers’ requests in the very first place, so the staffs who work in front desk got to have a very outgoing personality as well as strong problem-solving skills.

Function:

1. Greet and serve guests when they arrive in the hotel

2. Help the customer to finish the registration process

3. Handle guest check-ins as well as the guest check-outs procedure

4. Take calls and provide information, as well as transfer calls to different departments

5. Answer questions regarding to the hotel’s services, charges, dining facilities etc.

6. Manage bills and payments

7. Refer customers to the right department according their needs or complains

8. Contact housekeeping or the maintenance department to deal with the problems reported

9. Explain the use of the room keys and make sure the guests are satisfied with the room that allocated

2. Reservation 

The reservation department is normally the first point of contact between the potential guests and the hotel, hence the responsibility for creating a professional image for guest falls to the staffs who work in reservation department. Good telephone skills and sales ability is very crucial in providing a positive image to the potential and existing customers.

Function:

1. Handle and process all the reservation and requests from guests

2. In charge of handling and controlling the room availability

3. Make use of up-selling as well as yield management in order to maximize the room sales

4. Update the guests information and make sure there will not be room shortage

3. Cashier 

The cashier in hotel handles all kind of spend that guests may incur during their stay. For example, fee for accommodation, parking, room service, telephone or computer use etc. Besides, the cashier also has to keep an eye on and record the financial transactions that happen in the front desk. The daily routine for cashier will normally be answering questions regarding the charge of the service.

Function:

1. Preparing and submitting daily bank deposit for the hotel

2. Prepare financial record, like cash report etc.

3. Responsible and guarantee the security of the subject that guests stored in the safe-deposit boxes

4. Concierge 

The concierge in hotel is responsible for providing customer services while helping guests with different arrangements. And sometimes have to deal with emergency cases as well as encountering some challenges.

Function:

1. Assisting guests to transfer their luggage to their room

2. Advising local tour and sightseeing venues for guests

3. Providing good service to VIP, like deliver the assorted amenities that provided by the hotel

4. Help to deal with emergency situations, by recommend and schedule appointment with doctor etc.

5. Housekeeping 

The housekeeping is definitely a very vital part or a hotel. Strict cleanliness is the basic standard for operating a hotel, and for sure affecting the hotel image and reputation. Beside the physical cleaning procedure, the housekeeping department provides other important services, like scheduling and planning.

Function:

1. Keeping the hotel area clean, as a kind of customer service

2. Responsible to return the room back to original after used by guest

3. Responsible to fulfil the need of guests, like providing extra pillows etc.

4. Supervising the progress for room cleaning, and make sure the room can be provide to guests on time

5. Responsible to keep adequate quantity of cleaning equipment in hotel

6. Handling complain regarding to the cleanliness of the room

6. Laundry 

The laundry department actually can be put under the housekeeping department, as these two departments are closely related. It’s somehow a sales department because revenue can be generated within the services the laundry department provides.

Function:

1. Responsible to do laundry for the objects in the room, such as towels, pillow case etc.

2. Providing the guest laundry services, including wet cleaning, dry cleaning and pressing

3. Handling and taking good care of the uniforms for staffs

4. Controlling the inventory level perfectly

Q2. Explain the functionality of EMS, PMS, CAS and GDS, CRS.

EMS: Energy Management System

EMS is a system designed for Automated Control and Monitoring of energy consumption objects

• Automatic Lighting Control
• Display Guest room status 
• With all rooms installed with a motion sensor, housekeepers can have an overview of occupancy rate in all the rooms.
• "Make-Up-Room" or "Do-Not-Disturb" buttons on electronic touch panel
• The system will feed back all information to the Housekeepers. Touch panel installed into individual rooms against traditional place-cards. They will have an overview of status of the entire floor.
• Report to chamber room of customer's request - "room service"
• Mini-bar Access Reporting (Link to PMS)
• Smoke Detector Alarm Reporting
• Central Electronic Lock Control

PMS: Property Management System

 1. Management of Room's Allocation

• Computerized System Central Manager - A computerized system used to manage guest bookings, online reservations, point of sale, telephone and other amenities
• Property-Centric (Tracks rooms)
• Assist Front Office Operations
• Manage Online/Telephone Bookings and Reservations
• Overall view Of Rooms Availability
• Interface with CAS/ CRS/ EMS

2. Front Office Operations

• Guests Reservations Display
• Graphical Room Plan with Availability Display
• Rates in the Selected Currency
• Easily Retrieve all Bookings Statements
• Invoice managed in multiple currencies and languages
• Drag And Drop
• Generating Statistics (sales, accounts, segmented activity and generate management reports)

3. Customer Relationship Management(CRM)

• Stores Data For Individual Customers
• Historical/Current Bookings
• Guest Preferences(smoking/non-smoking)
• Special Requests
• Vital information needed for optimum operation at the manager's fingertip 

CAS: Core Accounting System

• Back Office System
• Track Guest Phone Charges 
• Outbound and Inbound Calls, Detects Call Ring Out, Call Routings, Abandon calls and other activities
• Captures, Records and Costs Telephone Usage
• Coordination with PMS
• Better Facilitate The Management Of Cost Billing
• Billing
• User friendly to navigate
• Easy to assign any combination of markups /surcharges to all types of calls using any one of the 25 customizable rate categories.
• Users can also customize charges for VIP or frequent guests
• Checking In, Checking Out
• allows for accurate and speedy reporting and invoicing for phone usage.

GDS : Global Distribution System

• Distribute reservation and information services to sales outlets around the world. 
• Distribute more than one CRS to users, which formed from the airlines of several CRSs, each of which had its airline backer, e.g. Amadeus, Galileo, Sabre and World Span. 

CRS: Central Reservation System

• Store and retrieve information and conduct transactions related to travel
• Provides up-to-date information on room availability, room rate and offering the capability of booking reservations.
• Major CRS operations that book and sell tickets for multiple airlines are known as GDS.

Q3. Discuss how hotels using yield management to maximize their profit.

Yield Management defined as selling a product or service to the right customer at the right time and price. This strategy can be applied on hotel industry and help hotels to maximize their profit.

First, yield management strategy is very suitable to apply on hotels management. As hotel has fixed number of rooms to sell which the value of rooms are time-constrained, meaning that the rooms value loss forever after a certain time. It generates opportunity cost. Most important is that different customers who visit the hotels are willing to pay different prices for getting the same room.

The objective of this strategy is not just simply increase the number of rooms being occupied but is to maximise the average revenue per each available room. In order to match different customers with various price, the hotel need to have sufficient booking information to know the pattern of customers’ reservation. By gathering all these historical information, this help the hotel can build forecasts for each of the market segment in which the demand forecast is the important element of yield management. With good and appropriate demand forecast supported by power historical data,the hotel can illustrate different prices to different segment in different time in order to maximize its profit.

Q4. Discover the recent trends and development about operating rooms division in hotels.

The Rooms Division Department is more or less composed of the following five departments; front office, reservations, housekeeping, uniformed services and telephone. All of which have been applying new techniques etc, to increase productivity and more importantly, revenue. Below are some of the said techniques.

1. An increase in the use of technology in operation

The Internet has become the primary method to make a reservation, not to mention, Point-of-Sale (POS) System is used, which integrates property management in order to achieve more effective management.

2. A desire to increase productivity

Innovative methods are utilized to increase productivity of departments, as well as individual employees.

3. An increased use of revenue management

Effective pricing is being used to manipulate revenue management.

4. Energy saving/ Greening of hotel rooms

The use of environmentally friendly amenities is increasing as well as recycling used amenities. As for guest rooms, infrared sensors are used for better utilization of energy, for instance motion detectors are used to determine whether A/C or lighting is needed.

5. Diversity of guests

Hotels are offering their services to a variety of guests from last minute bookings, travel groups, not to mention long staying guests, which pulls in varied sources of income.

6. Hotel websites are being promoted more vigorously

Hotels are encouraging potential guests to use the hotel’s website to make bookings as opposed to third party websites, such as orbits.com, this allows them to avoid paying the referral fees to the said third parties.

7. In room technology

In room entertainment as well as Wi-Fi has been highly appreciated by guests and continue to impress guests who look for such conveniences.

Reflection:

This week, we have learnt about room division operations like the main functions of the rooms. We did not know that there are so many divisions in a hotel. There are a total of seven departments including front office, reservations, housekeeping, concierge, guest service, securities and communications. There is a director of each department. We have learnt more about the duties of each position and have a deeper insight to the operation of each room division. For example, the night auditors who post charges and close the book every night, usually have a lower academic qualifications as the work is rather simple and routine. Also, the concierge and the front desk are the funniest place to work in a hotel as the receptionists have to deal with a lot of people from different backgrounds. Many interesting things happen there every day. Some “troublesome” clients will be recorded by them or even blacklisted if they have too much nonsense behavior. We certainly enjoyed this week lecture and had great fun in lesson.