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HOTEL FRONT OFFICE

Jatashankar R. Tewari,
Babu Banarsi Das National Institute of
Technology & Management, Lucknow

Copyright © 2009 OXFORD Higher Education

 Chapter 9

GUEST SERVICES

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 Various Guest Services
• During a guest’s stay in a hotel, the front office staff
provides various kinds of guest services. These services
may vary from hotel to hotel and from guest to guest.
some of the services provided by front office of the hotel
to the guest are:
• Handling Guest Mail
• Message Handling
• Handling guest room keys
• Guest Paging
• Safe Deposit Locker
• Guest Room Change
• Left Luggage Handling
• Wake-up Call
• Guest Complaints

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 Handling Guest Mail
• When guests are away from their homes, they need a
contact address where they can receive any urgent mails,
calls, parcels, or faxes. During their stay in a hotel, guests
may provide their family and clients the contact details of
their hotel for any urgent communication. Thus, they may
receive letters, parcels, and packets at the hotel address.
• All mails that lands at front desk of hotel maybe grouped as
under:
• Incoming Mails
• Out going Mails

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 Incoming Mail
• Incoming mails may be of two types:
• ordinary mail
• registered mail.
• Ordinary mail :The mails whose delivery record is not
maintained by the delivering agency are known as ordinary
mails. Hotels keep a record of all mails received at the mail
receiving desk in a mail log book.
• Registered mail :The mails whose delivery record is
maintained by the delivering agency are known as registered
mails. The postman maintains the record of delivery by asking
the addressee to sign the delivery report as a token of receipt
of the mail. It is advisable not to accept tampered registered
mails.

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 Procedure of Mail Delivery
• The mails received by a hotel on behalf of its guests are delivered according to
the mail handling procedure followed by the hotel. The standard mail
delivering process is as under:
Stamp date and time of receipt on every mail received.
Sort the mails as hotel mails and guest mails.
Arrange each category of mails in alphabetical order.
Further sort hotel mails into official mails and employee mails. Send employee
mails to time office for delivering to the concerned employees.
Deliver the official mails to the concerned office.
Send guest mails to the information section.
The information section assistant will further sort the mails into the following
categories:
Resident guest (staying in the hotel)
Checked-out guest (departed from the hotel)
Future guest (guest with a confirmed reservation for future dates)
The mails of resident guests are delivered in the guest rooms by the bell boys
The mails of checked-out guests are sent to the back office, from where the
mail forwarding address is taken and mails are re-directed to that address.
The mails of future guests are sent to the reservation section, where they are
placed along with the reservation record.

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 Outgoing Mails
• If a guest wants to send any personal mails, the hotel
provides the service of collecting the mails from the guest
room and posting them.
• The charges for the service are added to the guest account
through a miscellaneous charge voucher
• The miscellaneous voucher is authenticated by a competent
authority and sent to the front desk cashier for posting into the
guest master folio.
• A record of the same is maintained in the outgoing mail
register.

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 Message Handling
• At times, there are telephone calls or visitors for a resident
guest when she is not present in the hotel. The process of
receiving and delivering messages to resident guests is known
as message handling.
• If a resident guest is expecting a call or a visitor during her
absence, she may leave a location slip (which is similar to a
message slip but is in a different colour) at the front desk. In
such a case, the front desk assistant follows the instructions of
the guest on receiving the telephone call or visitor for that
guest.

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 Message Handling Procedure
• Every hotel has its own standard operating procedure for handling guest messages.
Most hotels follow the given procedure , with some variations:
• When there is a visitor or a telephone call for a guest, the front desk assistant should look
at the information rack to see whether the guest is a resident guest, future guest, or
checked-out guest.
• In case of a resident guest, the agent must check whether she is present in the room or
not. If the guest is not present in the room, then the agent must check the key rack for the
location form (or any instructions left by the guest. If the same is found, then act
according to the instructions of the guest.
• If guest has not left any instructions or the location form at the front desk, the front desk
assistant should take down the message for the guest on a message slip.
• The message slip is prepared in duplicate—the original copy is placed in the key rack and
the duplicate copy is placed in a message slip envelop and slipped through the door of
the guest room by a bell boy. The purpose of preparing the message slip in duplicate is to
ensure the delivery of the message to the guest.
• If there is a visitor or a call for a guest who has checked out of the hotel, then the front
office agent should give the information as per the instructions left by the guest.
• If there is a call is for a future guest, then the agent should note the message on a
message slip and send the slip to the back office, where it would be placed along with the
reservation record.
• Some hotels have automated systems for delivering messages to guests. The telephone
in the guest room has a message indicator that can be switched on by the front desk
agent in case any message is waiting for a guest.

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 Guest Paging
• Paging is the process of locating guests in a specified area of
the hotel. When a guest is not in her room (though she is in
the hotel premises) and is expecting a visitor, she may fill a
location form and leave the same at the front desk. When the
visitor comes to meet the guest, the front desk agent writes
the name and room number of the guest on a page board and
sends a bell boy to the area mentioned by the guest on the
location form. The bell boy holds the page board above his
head and shakes it so that the bells attached to it ring and
attract people’s attention. The guest contacts the bell boy,
who escorts her to the front desk to meet the visitor. In some
hotels, guest paging is done through public address system.

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 Safe Deposit Locker
• A key concern for guests is the safety of their belongings,
especially cash, jewellery, and important documents. Hotels
provide safe deposit lockers for the same. At the time of
check-in, guests are advised to keep their valuables in the
safe deposit lockers available at the front desk. Some hotels
may also provide in-room safe deposit lockers, depending on
the room category. These safe deposit lockers have a single
key, so only the guest can operate the locker.
• Procedure for Using Safe Deposit Locker :Every hotel has
its own operating procedure for the allotment of safe deposit
lockers. The standard procedure has two stages:
• Issue of locker
• Surrender of locker

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 Issue of locker
• When a guest wishes to use the locker facility extended by the hotel, the
following procedure is followed:
• An empty safe deposit locker is allocated to the guest with the
locker number.
• A safe deposit box registration card is handed over to the guest and
the guest is requested to fill the necessary information.
• The locker is assigned and the locker key is handed over to the
guest.
• The guest keeps his valuables and documents in the locker, locks
the box, and carries the key.
• The guest can use the safe deposit box as and when required; he is
required to make an entry in the safe deposit locker register for
each use.

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 Surrender of locker
• When the guest surrenders the safe deposit box, the following
procedure is followed:
• The guest is requested to withdraw the articles placed in
the locker.
• The guest is requested to sign an acknowledgement that
he has received all the articles that had been placed in
the safe deposit box .
• The guest surrenders the locker key to the front office
agent.

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 Guest Room Change
• In case a room doesn’t match the guest’s expectations, the guest may want to
change the room. There are times when the hotel may wish to change the
room of a resident guest.
• If the change of room is done in the presence of the guest, it is called a live
move.
• If it is carried out in the absence of the guest, it is known as a dead move.
• A guest may want to change his room in the following circumstances:
• If the room assigned to the guest is not as per his choice.
• If one or more equipments or facilities in the room are not working
satisfactorily.
• If the number of occupants in the room changes.
• The hotel may wish to change the guest’s room for the following reasons:
• If the guest was upgraded due to the non-availability of the requested
category of rooms.
• If the guest overstays and the hotel does not have a room of the same
type to allot to the next guest.
• If the hotel has scheduled a spring cleaning for the room.
• If the room requires maintenance work.

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Procedure for Changing the Guest Room
To change the room of a resident guest, the following procedure (Fig. 9.20) is
followed:
• The front office informs the guest about the room change in
advance so that the guest packs his luggage properly.
• The front office agent fills six copies of the guest room change slip
for reception, bell captain, front desk cashier, telephone exchange,
housekeeping, and room service and takes authorization from a
competent authority.
• A bell boy is called and given the keys of the new room. He
proceeds to the guest room to shift the guest’s luggage.
• In case of dead move, the bell boy asks the room boy/floor boy to
open the guest room. If it is a live move, he goes to the room and
requests the guest to allow him to shift the luggage.
• The bell boy removes all the guest’s belongings from the room and
locks the room. He then carries all the belongings to the new room
and hands over the new room keys to the guest. He collects the
keys of the room being vacated from the guest and deposits the
same at the front desk.

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 Left Luggage Handling
• There are times when guests check out of their rooms
but would like to leave their luggage in the hotel and
collect it later.
• The same facility may be extended to a guest who would
return to the hotel after a short visit to another city.
• The left luggage facility helps guests keep their luggage
in the hotel for a short time, even though they have
settled their bills and checked out of the rooms.

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 Procedure for Left Luggage
Handling
Hotels normally follow the following procedure while accepting the luggage to be
stored in the left luggage room:
• The agent makes sure that the guest wishing to keep his luggage in the
left luggage room has cleared his bills.
• The luggage tag is filled and tied to each luggage.
• The details of the luggage are entered in the left luggage register
• The counterfoil of the luggage tag is torn and handed over to the guest.
The guest is required to present the same for the collection of his
luggage.
• The luggage is kept in the left luggage room.
While delivering the luggage to the guest, the following procedure is followed:
• The front office agent requests the guest is to show the luggage tag
counterfoil.
• The front office agent tallies the counterfoil with the tag attached to the
baggage.
• The front office agent makes an entry in the left luggage register and
requests the guest to sign for the delivery of the luggage.
• The front office agent hands over the luggage to the guest.

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 Wake-up Call
• Hotels offer wake-up call services, wherein the hotel staff makes a
telephone call at a requested time to awaken a guest.
• The guest who wishes to be given a wake-up call by the hotel
personnel may place a request with the front desk, bell desk,
information section, or telephone operator. The wake-up call
request is entered in the wake-up call register .
• The telephone operator gives the wake-up call to the guest at the
time specified by the guest.
• Hotels also give wake-up calls to groups or crews staying in the
hotel at the time registered by the group leader or by the airline
operation office. In such cases, the person registering the wake-up
call informs the hotel about the pick-up timings for the group or
crew. The front desk notes the details in the wake-up call sheet and
the operator gives the wake-up call at the specified time.

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 Guest Complaints
When guests are not satisfied with some services and express their discontent to hotel
employees, most often to the front desk staff, their grievances are recorded as guest
complaints.
Types of Guest Complaints : The guests’ complaints can be grouped into four major
categories :
• Mechanical
• Attitudinal
• service-related
• unusual complaints.
• Mechanical Complaint: Mechanical complaints are related to the malfunctioning or
non-functioning of systems and equipments installed in guest rooms, like television,
mini-bar, weather control, channeled music, geyser, and so on.
• Attitudinal Complaint : When a guest feels insulted by the rude or tactless hotel staff
and lodges a complaint, it is referred to as attitudinal complaint. A guest may also
make attitudinal complaints when the hotel staff bothers him with their problems.
• Service-related Complaint : Service-related complaints are about the problems in
services provided by the hotel, like delay in the room service of lunch, or delay in the
clearance of soiled crockery from the room after meals, etc.
• Unusual Complaint : Unusual complaints are those over which the hotel does not have
any control. For example, a guest may complain about the lack of golf course in the
hotel, or the lack of central heating facility, etc.

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 Handling Guest Complaints
• The front office should handle guests’ complaints tactfully, exercising
patience, empathy, and decision-making skills. As hospitality is a service-
oriented industry, the hotel staff should always try to resolve the customer’s
problems immediately and thus appease him. If a front office agent is unable to
handle a guest’s complaint, she should call her superior before the situation
gets out of control or becomes worse.
• The following guidelines may be followed while handling guest complaints:
• Listen silently without interruption, with empathy.
• Show concern and take complaints seriously.
• Never argue. Remember the guest is always right.
• Never try to win an argument you may win the argument but lose the
guest forever.
• If possible, isolate the guest so that other guests may not overhear.
• Offer choices and never make a false promise.
• Monitor the corrective measures.
• Follow up and inform the guest about the solution.
• If unable to resolve the guest problem, consult your superiors.

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