Hotel’s Room Reservation
A reservation in context to the front office of a hotel means the booking or reserving of a bedroom (accommodation) by a guest, and involves a particular type of guest-room being reserved for a particular person or persons, for a certain period of time.
When reservation or room booking is made at a hotel, it is expected that the hotel will honors its commitment in accepting that reservation and guarantee that a room will be available when a guest arrives.
Basic Function of Reservation Department –
1. Projecting Room Revenue & Profitability Analysis.
2. Making room request with room availability.
3. Confirmation, Amendment, and Cancellations of any reservation.
4. Ensuring future sale of the hotel’s rooms.
5. Promoting packages and special rates.
6. Determining room rates based on the selling tactics of the hotel.
7. Coordination with Central Reservation Office
8. Maintaining records of Black List, Travel Agent Commissions, Rates- Corporate,
Airlines, etc.
9. Proper recordkeeping of all the correspondence relating to any reservations.
10. Generating Reports.
The Reservation Section –
The reservation section of front office comprise of few desk with facilities of communication equipments like- Telephone, Fax, Computer with internet connection, Xerox machine, printer etc. Racks are located on the walls adjacent to the desk. These racks and filing cabinet are designed in the way so that the slots were maintained in alphabetical as well as in chronological order. The hierarchy of reservation section is given below –
Reservation Manager
Reservation Supervisor
Reservation Clerk / Executives
Modes of Reservations –
In hotel the reservation request comes in two modes:-
1.Verbal, which includes telephone calls and any reservation made in person by the guest.
2. Written/Non-Verbal, which includes fax, letter, telex, telegram, e-mail, travel agent vouchers, company letter etc.
Source & Channels of Reservation –
Source includes the place from where hotel gets request for room reservation. While Channels means the geographical location of the source.
Some of the Sources from where hotel’s get Reservation are –
1. Tour Operator – These acts as one of the major source of reservation as they provide group reservation to the hotels.
2. Travel Agents – Travel agents provide a good number of individual reservation to the hotels. They are also providing some of the group reservations.
3. Airlines – Airline companies provide reservation for their Crew Members, Passengers and Layovers through a formal tie-up with Hotels.
4. Central Reservation Office (CRO) – CRO acts as head office for a group of hotels comes in a chain. All the chain units’ reservations section are networked with CRO through Central Reservation Network. There are two types of Central Reservation Network –
(a) Affiliate Reservation Network
&
(b) Non-affiliate Reservation Network
Affiliate Reservation Network – It is a hotels reservation chain system in which all participating properties are contractually related e.g. Taj Reservation Network (TRN),
Holidex of Holiday Inn, Image of Hyatt Hotels Worldwide.
Non-affiliate Reservation Network – A non-affiliate reservation network is a subscription system designed to connect independent and non-chained properties. Non-affiliate reservation enables independent hotel operators to enjoy some befits as the chain affiliated operations gets because of there Affiliate Reservation System. Few examples of Non-affiliate reservation network are - LHW (Leading Hotels of the World), LSHW (Leading Small Hotels of the World).
5. Hotel Reservation Office (HRO) – Any reservation request comes to hotel directly considered as hotel own source of reservation. Hotel handle many of their reservations directly. Depending on the volume of direct customer contact a hotel may have a reservation department aside from the Front Desk. This arrangement is common in hotels of 250 rooms or more. A reservation department handles all direct request for accommodations, monitors any communication links with Central Reservation Systems and intersell agencies, and maintain updated room availability status information. Property Direct (i.e. HRO) can reach to a hotel in several ways, like –
(a) Telephone, mails, e-mails, fax etc.
(b) Property-to-property – Chain hotel property typically encourage guest to plan their next hotel stay while in an affiliated property by offering direct communication between properties. This approach can significantly increase the overall number of reservation handled among affiliated properties.
6. Global Distribution Company (GDS) – Initiated by airlines companies, now the 4 GDS companies – Sabre, Amedius, Galileo, and Worldspan, acts as one of the major source of Hotel Rservation. In some hotels mediators company like- Utell, Anasazi and Rezsolution facilitate the GDS operations for Hotel Room Reservation.
7. Corporate – Hotels having corporate tie-up with several companies for sake of getting a good business from through Room Reservations, Conference booking, etc.
8. Intersell Agencies – These are special type of central reservation office contracting to handle reservation for more than one product line. e.g. Holding at same time airlines ticket, car rental, hotel reservation etc.
9. Reservation through Internet – Now days many hotel start on-line reservation service through their websites. The room tariff and features were mentioned along with the photographs or in the form of downloadable multimedia presentation. Moreover room availability column is also given in the website in order to check availability prior to reservation request.
Types of Reservation –
There are two types of reservations –
1. Definite Reservation or Guaranteed Reservation, &
2. Tentative Reservation or Non-Guaranteed Reservation
1. Definite Reservation
This type of reservation depends, whether our guest agrees to guarantee the booking by a certain method of payment or by contractual agreement. Such reservation where we have received advanced deposit or written guarantee that ensures that the booking will be actually materialized are called Definite Reservation. The guest guarantee to pay for a room even if it is not used, unless he has followed the hotel cancellation procedure. In return the hotel assure the guest to hold the room till the check-out time of the day following the date of arrival.
Guarantee reservation provide some protection for the hotels revenue even in case of no-show. Various examples of guarantee reservation are –
(a). Pre-payment – i.e. payment in full to be received prior to guest arrival.
(b). Credit Card Number – i.e. the hotel can charge the guest from his credit card number in case of no-show.
(c) Advance Deposit – i.e. partial pre-payment.
(d) Travel Agent’s Voucher (TAV) – issued by the approved and impaneled travel agents are only considered.
(e) Company Letter – a contractual agreement between company and hotel that ensures payment by the company for providing accommodation for there employees coming with Company letter. The company also guarantee to pay at the time of no-show of there employees. Equally commitment by the hotel for holding room for them.
(f) Crew – It is the contractual agreement between the airlines and hotels in-order to ensure accommodation of crew member in the hotels.
(g) Finalized Group Block – i.e. when the hotel receive the Rooming List prior to the
Cut-off-date the tentative block which was maintained were finalized. So, once the Group Block is finalized is almost considered as guaranteed reservation.
2. Tentative Reservation –
These are reservation where rooms are hold are blocked but the hotel is not confident whether the booking would be materialized or not. Such reservation ensures that the hotels agree to hold a room for guest until hotel’s reservation cancellation hours (usually 6PM) on the day of arrival. This concept is known as Release Time Clause. Example – 6PM Release i.e. if guest with non-guaranteed reservation does not arrive by the cancellation hours, the hotel is free to release the rooms for general sale.
Room Reservation for Conventions
A Blanket Reservation is negotiated between the hotel and the group. As the date approaches, perhaps five to eight months before the convention arrives, the total room commitment is reviewed and the number and type of rooms are identified. These are estimates based on the group’s historical experience with its convention.
About the two months before the event, the association distributes the hotel reservation form through its mailing list, which could number anywhere from dozens of person to thousands. These self-addressed postal cards piggyback (attached) the general convention mailing that details the program, the activities, and the cost.
The Blanket Reservation – As individual request arrive at the hotel, they are charged against the blanket reservation. The hotel and the association reexamine the room commitment 45, 30, and 20 days before the convention begins.
Reservation received after Closed-out Date 20 to 30 days before the convention starts, are accepted only if space remains – on availability basis only. Reservation are confirmed individually, with an additional copy sometimes going to the association for count control.
Overflow Hotels – (in reference to Room Reservation during Conventions)
Conventions are often too large to be housed in just one hotels, Therefore, the association finds additional properties to supplement the rooms available at the main hotel (headquarter hotel). These additional or supplement properties are commonly referred to as Overflow Hotels.
