Q1) Functions of 6 Departments in a Hotel - Front Desk, Reservation, Cashier, Concierge, Housekeeping, and Laundry

Under room division, there are two main departments, front office department and housekeeping department. Under these two main departments, there are various departments and we will talk about 6 different departments in this blog. They are front desk, reservation, cashier, concierge, housekeeping and laundry. Hence, these 6 departments can be categorized into two centers, revenue center and cost center. To make you have a better understanding on what is revenue center and cost center, here is how we define these two. If the department consists only cost or cost outweighs revenue, it belongs to cost center. If the department consists more revenues, which means revenue outweighs cost, it belongs to revenue center.

In the following, I will talk about functions of these 6 departments. To make you more clear about the categorization, please see one the mind map to understand more.




Front Office Department
According the business dictionary, front office department can be defined as marketing, sales and service departments that come in direct contact with the customers, and liaise with the back-office (administrative) departments to maintain a two-way flow of information. 


Front Desk: (Revenue Center)
This department belongs to revenue center as guests pay most of the fee or even full when they are checking-in. As we just said before, if a department involves any revenues, it can be counted as revenue center.

Staff in the front desk act like receptionist, handling with guests. You may say they are the first one to have a deep touch with guests. They usually responsible to arrange rooms to guests, check-in and check-out, dealing with guests’ requests like room change and complaints, provide foreign currency exchange service to guests and so. But the main functions of front desk is to sell and up-sell rooms, to maintain balanced guest accounts, and to offer services such as handling mail and faxes for guests. In case you want to learn more and have a clear understanding about the functions of the front desk the followings are other functions of the front desk.

Functions of front desk
Ø   Dealing with group arrivals
Ø   Provide information and promote hotel facilities and services to guests
Ø   Prepare for guest arrival like check for arrivals with special requests
Ø   Check guests’ method of paying
Ø   Issue room key to guests
Ø   Bring guests to the room and introduce room facilities to guests  (Different from hotel to hotel)
Ø   Maintain guest account
Ø   Determine the room rate

Reservation: (Cost Center)
This department belongs to cost center because they only handle reservations, usually the non-guaranteed one. So, it will only involve cost at present and have revenue in the future, which the revenue will be received in front desk. But there’s exceptional case, when they are dealing with guaranteed reservations, there will be revenue. It only happens during peak season, it’s not often to happen. So, this department can be also counted as cost center.

The main function of this department is to handle all the room reservations. And the manager is responsible to decide when to allow overbooking of rooms or when to stop accepting reservations.

There are various ways to make reservations. For example, through telephone, fax, letter, e-mail, internet like tripadvisor.com and agoda.com, travel agents, tour operators, meeting planners, reservation network systems like Leading Hotels of the World (LHW) and even walk-in. Reservation Department needs to deal with all these reservations all year round to ensure there is enough occupancy for guests and maximize the profits for the hotel, especially during peak season.

After they accept the reservation request, staff in this department will prepare a reservation confirmation slips, keep the record in the computer every day, give the details to the front desk, and update guest history records annually. During peak season, in order to have full occupancy, hotel may request guests to guarantee their bookings first. Then they will have more things to do, including receiving part of the payment first, prepare the confirmation slips for guests, and to give the detailed information to the front desk such as guest names, staying period, room type and rate, method of payment, special requests and guest contact information. You may say Reservation Department is playing an important role in the hotel to make sure there are rooms for guests.

Cashier: (Revenue Center)
This department belongs to revenue center as the main function of this department is to receive guests’ payments, which is the revenue to the hotel. Job needs to be done in this department seems little and easy, but it’s important and no mistakes should be make.

Staff in this department usually handle other fees other than the room fee. This fee may incur during their staying period, the consumption of the mini bar, use of hotel facilities that needs to pay like spa, room service, parking, and telephone or computer use fees. Besides, they are responsible to answer guests’ inquiries regarding fees and services provided by the hotel. Thus, they need to notify the front desk’s staff to serve guests. However, they are usually required to maintain related records and files regarding to the financial transactions that taken place at the front desk. In some hotels, some of the staff may be assigned and took care of safe-deposit boxes where guests might store jewelry and other valuable things.

Concierge: (Cost Center)
This department belongs to cost center as most of the services they provided mostly free of charge, it only involves costs. There are various job position in this department, such as chief concierge, airport representative, driver, baggage porter, and door attendant. The main function of this department is to provide extra services to guests. The followings are part of the functions of this concierge, you will understand it easier in this way.

Functions of Concierge
Ø   Provide information on hotel services or products
Ø   Provide information or advice on entertainment, attractions, sightseeing tours and local restaurants
Ø   Reserve tables at restaurants and tickets to shows
Ø   Handle guest requests and inquiries such as shopping request and direction to a local bank
Ø   Answer inquiries from guests about means of transportation available from hotel to other places like airport
Ø   Act as personal driver for guest according to their requests like go for sightseeing tour
Ø   Calling taxis and provide the hotel address card for guests
Handle guest requests for postal services

Housekeeping Department
According to business department, housekeeping department can be defined as general care, cleanliness, orderliness, and maintenance of business or property.

Housekeeping: (Cost Center)
This is the largest department in terms of people, and it belongs to the cost center because it only involve cost. Most of the services this department provides to guests are usually free of charge. The reason why it is free of charge because the payment for the room already includes the fee of enjoying these services. So, there’s only cost involved in this department.

The main function of this department is to maintain the tidiness and cleanness of the room, to tidy and refill some supplies in the room regularly. This is the basic, but sometimes housekeeping also acts as a security check to make sure that guests did not fall down and did not wake up in the room without any notice. In my opinion, this department is another important department to the hotel, to maintain the image of the hotel and to make sure no accidents happened to guests in the room.

However, staff in this department need to handle special requests from guests such as giving the baby cot or extra blanket to guests, provide actual room status regularly to the front desk for arranging the room to new guests. To make you have a better understand the how this department clean the room step by step, down below is the flow of cleaning the room.

Steps of cleaning a hotel’s room
Prepare the Cart à Stripping the Room à Taking the Garbage à Making the Beds à Cleaning the Bathroom à Dusting the Room à Finishing Touches

Laundry: (Cost Center)
This department belongs to cost center as it involves more costs than revenues. Although guests’ laundry may need to be paid, some hotels do it free of charge and this department also needs to deal with the materials in the hotel such as towels, bedspreads and pillow cases. Therefore, as cost outweighs revenue, it belongs to cost center.

The reason why we said it only consist cost in this department as the hotel may outsource the laundry part to outsider to do in order to save the cost. Thus, hotels may not charge guests if they want laundry. So, cost outweighs revenue, and this department belongs to cost center.

As the name of this department, the main function of it is to do laundry, for the hotel and even for the guests. They need to wash and fold towels, bathmats, pillow cases and so on, ensure all materials are well labeled and stored in order to prevent the garments gets lost or misplaced, and to repair the minor damages on garments to ensure all the materials are well maintained.

 Evaluation:
I found that what departments in a hotel need to do are much more complicated than I thought and learnt. They are all correlated and all duties are important to a hotel business. In my opinion, we need to go and experience the work there in order to fully understand how tough their jobs are.

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