In our another article, Coordination Between Front Office with Other Departments in Hotel, we have shown how to establish good coordination between front office and other departments. Today we will analyze interdepartmental coordination in front office department.
As you know, running a successful hotel business is all about making best use of all departments, its manpower. If one department fails another department will never be sufficient to cover up. Same principle applies in individual department as well. A big department like Front office needs to deal with many parties. To ensure smooth operation, there should be good coordination between each concerned parties.
Doorman/Bellman: While the taxi or private car stands at the main door of the lobby—the doorman should open the door of the car with proper care and wish the guest and then open the main lobby door. At this point the bellboy escorts the guest with his/her luggage to the front office. As soon as the registration is done at the front desk—the front desk personnel inform the bellboy of the room number and the bellboy escorts the guest up to the room with all luggage. Sometimes the receptionist also escorts the guests up to the room and informs his/her about the facilities about the hotel in short. Usually when the guest wishes to check-out calls the bell-desk to get his luggage down. But sometimes guest also informs the front office directly. However, then bellboy informs the front office to prepare his/her bills after settlement of guest’s bill and having received the room key the front desk personnel issues a check-out slip to the bellboy to remove all luggage of guest to his/her departing vehicle.- Room change: Changing of room often takes place in every hotel. Sometimes guests wish to change the room for various reasons. However due to unavoidable circumstances (or sometimes for different reasons) the front office department needs to change guest room to solve certain accommodation problem. In this case the chief front desk executive or the shift duty manager will make a polite approach and explain the guest to make him/her understand the situation. Then with guest’s consent the receptionist will issue a room change slip to the bell captain. The bellboy will shift all luggage to the new room and distribute the room change slip to all concerned departments so that all concerned personnel can be informed about the change of room.
- Escape check-out: There are some guests (although not very much) who try to leave the hotel without paying the bill. This kind of leave may be possible because of his/her small or scanty luggage. Guest himself can carry the baggage and secretly check-out without the notice of bell boy or the receptionist. In such situation the bellboy should inform to the front office about the scanty baggage of the guest so that the front office personnel can take some advance money and they should keep an eye on this type of guest.
- Co-ordination between Reception and others: As soon as the reception receives any message, fax, E-mail postal mail or any kind of article for guest, the receptionist can take the help of bell boy to send them to the guest room or, these can be collected by the guest from the reception key-hole. There is a system called “paging”. This paging takes place when a phone call is received demanding a certain guest. In this system the name of the guest is displayed in a small board with a long handle and there is a small bell at the corner of the board. Now the page boy holds the handle and rings the bell to draw the attention of the guests to the board. The page boy does the paging in restaurants and in public area. As soon as the concerned guest notice the board—he come to receive the telephone.
All the above co-ordinations are needed in between reception, bellboy, page-boy, doorman and front office cashiers.
thank you for your help , this is very important for us hospitality students