Principles of Hotel Management

6
H
OTEL
O
RGANISATION
The Front Office in a hotel is the department responsible
for the sale of hotel rooms through systematic methods of
reservation, followed by registration and assigning rooms to
customers. The term ‘sale of rooms’ may appear misleading to
those unfamiliar with the industry. ‘Sale’ here means the use of
hotel rooms at a price. A room is termed ‘sold’ for the day when
a guest leases the room for stay in the hotel. “Room tariff” i.e.
rate charged per room is computed for a “revenue day” which
begins at noon of a particular day and ends at 12.00 hrs. the
next day. In other words room charges are levied for a revenue
day which is between noon and noon. Of course, a room may
be sold for half-a-day as well, for which special rates are
applicable. Such rates are referred to as “half-day” rates.
The front office in a hotel holds prime importance in view
of the basic nature of business of a hotel, i.e. to sell rooms.
Revenue collected from the sale of rooms contributes to more
than 50 per cent of total hotel sales. The profit percentage from
sales of rooms is very high. It has a complementary role of
image-building, which is the first and last point of contact of

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Principles of Hotel Management
every guest. If one looks at each component of a front office
role, one could have a better perception of this department.
While the title Front Office is a generic term to include a number
of activities, smaller hotels are satisfied to call it simply Hotel
Reception. Thus the role of the front office is thus to reserve,
receive, register, assign rooms to guests and act as a continuous
source of information to guests during their stay at the hotel.
A section of the front office is called the Reservation. This
section is the hub of the department. Requests for reservation
of rooms from various sources are received and the information
is processed, properly documented, stored and retrieved at the
appropriate time to ensure a guest his room upon arrival. Room,
the chief product of a hotel, being a highly perishable commodity
(as its sale is linked with a time element) the reservation
department ensures that rooms are not allowed to “perish”.
This activity is handled by the section called Reception. The
personnel in this section actually welcome and receive the
guests and assign them a room after a few registration formalities.