Ranks and Responsibilities

Let us discuss a few prominent ranks in the front office department and their respective responsibilities −

Reservation Manager

In the context of hotel, the term reservation is used for booking a particular accommodation in the hotel by a guest for a period of time. Reservation section does not directly deal with the guests.

Some important tasks a reservation manager is responsible for are −

• Having knowledge about the reservation systems.
• Providing and updating information on tours, prices, and itineraries.
• Reviewing daily hotel reservations.
• Preparing occupancy forecast.
• Updating travel agent rates in the system.
• Handling correspondence with outside travel agencies.
• Allocating daily tasks to the reservation staff.
• Ensuring special deals with repeat guests, VIPs, or guest groups.
• Training the staff under hand.

Reception Manager

Following are some prominent roles and responsibilities of the reception manager −

• Dealing with arrival and departure of the guests.
• Welcoming the guests, escorting them to the room, and seeing them off.
• Ensuring professional greeting of clients, visitors, and guests.
• Coordination with housekeeping department for cleaning rooms.
• Filling registration cards for the guests with reserved accommodation or help the guests to fill it up.
• Arranging surprise gift for the guests on their special days.
• Training of receptionists.
• Handling appraisals and performance rewards of the staff.
• Reviewing current standards of front office services and procedures, and implementing new practices if required.
• Ensuring and Scheduling front office desk staff.
• Managing VIP functions and events taking place in the hotel.
• Upgrading software if required.
• Updating backup database regularly.

Guest Services Manager

The responsibilities of the guest service manager include −

• Handling guest mails, letters, and couriers.
• Ensuring guest messages are delivered at the right time.
• Training the guest service staff such as concierges, bell staff, wallet parking staff, and porters.
• Maintaining guest service suggestion cards and guest complaints.
• Scheduling and appraising guest service staff.
• Ensuring the staff delivers services, accurately and timely.

Night Audit Manager

This manager works during the night hours. The typical responsibilities of a night audit manager are &mnus;

• Posting accommodation charges, taxes, and other paid services such as restaurant, Internet charges to each guest's account accurately.
• Taking the responsibility as a duty manager for night shift.
• Settling guest accounts if required.
• Authoring security of the hotel during night shift.

Communication Manager

The communication manager is responsible for −

• Keeping in check all communication facilities such as PBX, facsimile, internet in the hotel.
• Training and scheduling telephone operators in case of large hotels.
• Ensuring immediate delivery of fax to the guests, if required.
• Appraising telephone operators.
• Changing the communication systems to the latest technology for easy use.

Front Office - Staff Qualities and Competencies

Being a part of the service industry, the front office staff needs to have the following qualities and competencies. The front office staff members are required to −

• Understand their respective roles and responsibilities in the hotel and front office as an operation.
• Equip themselves with basic etiquettes and mannerism.
• Possess pleasant, polite, and cordial personality.
• Wear clean and neat uniform with same accessories and footwear.
• Conduct themselves with professionalism, positive attitude, and cooperative nature.
• Possess extraordinary communication skills.
• Be a team player.
• Possess the ability to tackle tricky situations.