Progress Test Flashcards
What is the main KPI in RDM?
Occupancy
Rooms Division facts
- Generate revenue through room sales
- Two departments: FO + HK
- Might include security and spa
- RD manager in charge of FO manager and executive housekeeper
Who creates the rates?
Sales
What is the revenue departments main concern?
Occupancy
General manager
- Achieving profitability (cost control, guest satisfaction and development)
- Leading and managing: mission
- Achievable budgets + strategic goals
Director of operations / Deputy GM
- Operational management
- Manage property issues with GM
- Cost control and result analysis
- Career progression and succession planning
Rooms Division Manager
- Oversee rooms and related area operations
- Build and foster division staff
- Operational and financial performance
FO Manager
- Meet and exceed guest and staff satisfaction
- Daily operations (policies)
- Recruit, train, motivate and develop
- Monitor systems, scheduling, forecasting
Guest Relations Manager / Bell Captain
- Upscale guest experiences
- Ensure knowledge of products and area
- Supervising, training and development
- Analyse customer feedback
Executive housekeeper
- People, equipment and supplies
- Keeping records
- Cleanliness and servicing
- Financial guidelines
Reservations Manager
- High levels of customer service
- Contribute to maximum occupancy
- Work with sales team
Management functions
- Planning
- Organising
- Coordinating
- Leading
- Controlling
- Evaluating
Planning steps manager
- Forecasting
- Setting objectives
- Developing strategies
- Programming
- Budgeting
- Setting procedures
- Developing policies
- Communication
SMART goals
Organising
- establishing an organisational structure
- delineating relationships
- creating position descriptions
- establishing position qualifications
- distribution of the work to be done
Coordinating
Organise individuals’ efforts
Staffing
- selecting employees
- orienting employees
- training
- developing
- scheduling
Leading
- Delegating
- Motivating
- Coordinating
- Managing differences
- Managing change
Controlling
SOPs to be objective and fair
- Establishing a report system
- Developing performance standards
- Measuring results
- Taking corrective action
- Rewarding
Evaluating
Reviewing, revising or helping to revise goals
Forecast KPIs
- occupancy
- ADR
- RevPar
- Net Promoter Score
Management Attention
- Guests’ satisfaction
- Financial sustainability
- Product quality
- Employee’s satisfaction
Roles FO
○ Organise, prioritise
○ Solve problems, make decisions, take actions
○ Budgeting, controlling, expenses, goals
○ Comply with hotel’s policies and procedures (data privacy more strict)
○ Ensure that local registration law is respected
○ Quality/Guest service
○ Training, supervise staff, lead by example
Deal effectively with guests and employees/Communication
Resources to manage
○ Employees
○ Equipment (PMS)
○ Inventory (Rooms)
○ Budget (Revenue FO / Expenses HK) –> cross-selling
Sales Opportunities
FO Management Communication
- Guests communication
- Appropriate language and body language
- Several channels to communicate with guests
- Every FO member may access to events, requirements, decision or incidents occurred in every shift
- One of the most important skills that a FOM should have
- Professional approach
- Logbook/briefing reports/transaction file
Work transactions systems and devices
FO with Housekeeping
- Changes in room status
- General guest’s requests
- Cleaning common areas
- Review upcoming hotel activities
- Special requests
FO with maintenance
- Repair work orders
- Tracking maintenance problems recorded by guests
FO with revenue centres
- Communication with guests
- Special guests’ requests
- Transactions charged to rooms
FO with HR
- Coordination in case of misconduct
- New personnel
- Event cultural
- Training hours (SOP)
- Performance evaluation results
FO with security
- Theft or law & order situation
- Health and safety related issues
- Suspicious characters
FO with Accounting
- Daily accounting reporting FO
- Cash bank controls
- Credits payments and billing control
FO with marketing and sales
- Groups and events information
- Special promos and advertising
- Special VIP treatment or events
Staffing & Employee scheduling
- Payroll costs
- productivity
- Morals
Mainly impacted by occupancy
Factors to consider during FO staffing
- The occupancy rate
- Arrivals and departures
- Average length of stay
- Patterns of activity
- Type of hotel
- Available technology
- Check in and check out
- How many workstations?
- Main peaks
- Always manager on duty
- Night shift days to be covered
- Keep a pattern in work shifts
FO staffing scheduling techniques
- Part-time scheduling
- Flextime scheduling
- Compressed schedule
- Job sharing
Revenue centre
Sells goods or services to guests and thereby generates revenue for the hotel
Support centre
Do not generate revenue directly but play a supporting role to the hotel’s revenue centre
Three service-level categories
- Economy
- Mid-market hotels
- Luxury hotels
Occupied
A guest is registered to the room
Complimentary
The room is occupied, but the guest is not charged for its use
Stayover
The guest is not checking out today
On-change
The guest has departed, but the room has not yet been cleaned
Sleep out
A guest is registered to the room, but the bed has not been used
Skipper
The guest has left the hotel without making arrangement to settle the account
Sleeper
The guest has settled the account and left the hotel, but FO has not updated the room status
Vacant and ready
Room has been cleaned and inspected
Out-of-order
The room cannot be assigned to a guest
Lock-out
The guest cannot re-enter
DNCO
The guest made arrangement to settle the account but left without information FO
Due out
The room is expected to become vacant
Types of maintenance
- Routine Maintenance
- Preventive Maintenance
- Scheduled maintenance
Operations within the hospitality industry
Lodging operations
F&B operations
Hotel
Establishment whose primary business is providing lodging facilities for the general public and that furnishes one or more of the following services: F&B, room attendant (HK), concierge, bell, door attendant, laundry or dry cleaning, use of furniture and fixtures.
Classifying hotels
- Size
- Target Market
- Level of service
- Ownership and affiliation
Classifying guests
- Business
- Leisure
- Hybrid
- Group
- International
Buying influences on travellers
- Travel management company
- Ease of making reservations
- Staff friendliness, quality of services, overall cleanliness and appearance
- Chain and brand loyalty (frequent traveller and electronic marketing programs)
- Website design, site navigation, social media
- Blogging and social networking
Control methods in FO
- FO SOPs
- Cashier’s Audit
- Credit control
- Rooms discrepancies
- Night Audit
FO Accounting functions
- Guest and non-guest accounts
- Financial transactions of guests
- Credit limit of guests
- High balance report for management
- Effective control over cash and credit transactions
- Settlement for all goods and services
FO incentive program actions
Tools used to encourage your staff promoting sales and having guests satisfied
- Establishing objectives
- Determining strategies
- Training programs (procedures)
- Budgets
A well designed incentive program should
- recognise and reward exceptional staff performance
- increase staff productivity
- demonstrate commitment to guest satisfaction
- promote staff participation in revenue and service through suggestions
Revenue manager
Responsible for forecasting demand for each target market segment the hotel seeks to attract (corporate, transient, group, leisure, and others) as well as determining the guestroom rates that will provide sufficient room revenues and occupancies.
Activities associated with the reservations process
- Formulating the reservations inquiry
- Determining room and rate availability
- Creating the reservations record
- Confirming the reservations record
- Maintaining the reservations record
- Producing reservations reports
- Researching, planning, and monitoring
reservations
Guaranteed reservations
Assures the guest that the hotel will hold a room until a specific time of the day following the guest’s scheduled arrival date
○ Prepayment
○ Credit card
○ Advance deposit
○ Voucher or miscellaneous charge
order
○ Corporate
Non-guaranteed reservations
The hotel agrees to hold a room for the guest until a stated reservations cancellation hour on the day of arrival
Overbooking
A strategy aimed at helping the hotel to achieve 100 percent occupancy by hedging against guests who do not arrive or cancel their reservations.
Based on historical data and the experience of knowledgeable managers, reservations systems may be able to forecast cancellations, early check-outs, and no-shows with a high level of accuracy.
Reservation manager duties & responsibilities
- Overseeing room bookings
- Inventory management
- Revenue and forecasting
- Guest communication
- Reporting and analysis
- Maintain relationships with travel agents and corporate clients
- Develop and implement procedures to streamline the reservations process
Length of stay
How long does each customer stay at the hotel?
§ Useful for rate controls set up
§ Segment analysis
§ Impacts every factor of the hotel
No-show
Client with a booking that finally does not show up
○ The follow-up of this is important
§ Segment analysis § Overbooking § Day of week analysis
Cancellation
Reservation cancelled before arrival
○ Reason of cancellation should be recorded
○ What is it useful for?
§ Segment analysis
§ Overbooking
§ Day of week analysis
Lead time
Time in advance when the booking is made (booking window)
○ We need to prevent losses; so we set a deadline for the cancellation (cancellation policies)
○ Lead time is connected to the rates (dependent on when you book, you have a certain rate)
○ What is it useful for?
§ Different per segment
§ Rate control
§ Mark forecast
§ Marketing decisions
Walk-in
Guest arriving to hotel without reservation but wants to stay
○ Direct check-in: different SOP
○ What is it useful for?
§ Used for overbooking
§ Increase ADR
Booking pace
Speed of reservations requests reaching the hotel
○ If the booking pace is unusually fast, then there might be something happening in town or our rate is too low
○ Look at the booking pace by market segment
○ Behavioural of a clientele
Overbooking
Sale of more rooms than available
○ Types of overbooking:
§ Room type
§ House
○ Report behaviour of guests/tour operators to predict no shows
Why would a reservation or revenue manager decide to overbook the hotel?
To maximize revenue by compensating for cancellations, no-shows, and early departures, ensuring high occupancy
What is less risky: room type overbooking or house overbooking?
Room type overbooking is less risky because guests can be shifted to other available room categories, whereas house overbooking risks displacing guests entirely.
What factors would the reservation manager need to consider before overbooking?
They must evaluate historical data on cancellations and no-shows, guest preferences, available alternatives for displaced guests, and potential reputational impact
Revenue
The total amount of sales achieved in a specified time period
○ Number of units sold x Unit price
Profit
Resulting amount after deducting expenses out of the revenue
○ Revenue - Expenses
Occupancy
Percentage of the rooms occupied in a period with reference to the total rooms available of the period
○ Total occupied rooms/Number of available rooms x 100%
Average Daily Rate
Average rate sold in a period; actual revenue of the period divided by the total number of rooms sold (how expensive or cheap we are compared to the rest of the competition or compared to yourself in the past)
○ Total rooms revenue of the day/number of rooms sold of the day
Average Room Rate
Average rate sold in a day; actual daily revenue divided by the total number of rooms sold
This is the average rate in general/over a longer period
○ Total rooms revenue of the period/number of rooms sold on the period
Revenue per Available Room
Revenue generated by the sales of rooms in a period divided by the total rooms available of the period
○ Total rooms revenue for the period/number of available rooms for the period
○ ADR * %Occupancy
Revenue per Available Customer
Revenue generated by the sales of rooms in a period divided by the total guests of the period
○ Total departmental revenue for the period/number of guests for the period
Total revenue per available room
Total amount of revenue generated by a property in all its services, per room basis
○ Total revenue (all services) for the period/number of available rooms for the period
Reservations task
Forecasting room availability
Rates
Types of reservations
Guaranteeing a reservation (to ensure the sustainability of our revenues)
Forecast
A projection based on the data available at the moment of its preparation
Availability of forecast
- Knowledge of the hotel and its surrounding areas
- Occupancy data for the past several months and for the same period of the previous year
- Reservation trends and history of reservation lead times
- Business and historical profiles of specific groups booked for the forecast dates
- Number of GTD and non GTD reservations and an estimation of the number of expected no shows
- % of rooms already reserved and the cut-off date for group room blocks held for the forecast dates
- Special events scheduled in the surrounding area
- Plans for remodelling or renovating the hotel that would change the number of available rooms
- Construction or renovating plans for competitive hotels in the area
Rack rate
Is the Standard rate or Published tariff defined by the hotel management for a particular room category/type.
This is generally printed on the tariff sheet of the hotel and these details are also submitted to the local government authorities for hotel licensing and in some countries for Gov. tax compliance. In other words, these rates are the maximum rates that can be applied. (just accommodation)
Corporate/Commercial/Negotiated Rate
These are rates offered to companies that provide frequent business for the hotel or its chain. This rate may vary according to the volume of business guaranteed by the companies.
○ Negotiated in advance in a contract
Group Rates
These are rates which are offered to groups, meetings, and conventions using the hotel for their functions.
Negotiated in advance in a contract
Promotional Rates
These rates are generally offered during low occupancy periods to any guest to promote occupancy. E.g. Stay for 3 and pay for 1, etc. These rates may also include certain add-ons to attract the customers like free Wi-Fi for 24 Hrs, free buffet dinner, etc
Package Rates
Rates that include a guest room in combination with other available events or activities. ( E.g. Best of London package which includes room rental, all meals, site seeing, airport transfers, etc.)
BAR Rates
These rate codes are the lowest discounted rate available for a day which can be
offered to the guest.
Tour Operator Rates (TTOO rate)
This type of rates are offered in a signed contract with large agency groups. These rates are net rates and not final but marked up by the intermediary. They can be applied to touristic groups and series.
FIT rate
Free independent traveller / foreign independent traveller / free individual travel rate. People who make reservations individually, not in groups through a TTOO or travel agency. When tour operator contract rates are applied to individual clients
Methods to guarantee reservations
- Pre-payment
- Credit or debit card
- Advance deposit
- Travel agent voucher (other support/guarantee: email)
- Corporate (company guaranteed)
Property Reservations Department Channel
§ Telephone
§ Mail
§ Property - to - property
§ Fax and other methods of communication account for a small proportion of total reservation transactions
§ Hotel booking engine
Central Reservations Systems (CRS)
§ It is a computerised system used by hotel companies to store and retrieve information and conduct reservation transactions
§ A CRS assists hotel managers in managing their online marketing and sales, allowing them to upload their rates and availabilities to be seen by sales channels that are using the CRS
§ Types:
□ Affiliated reservation network
□ Hotel chain reservation system (all participating properties are contractually related)
□ Non-affiliated reservation network
□ Subscription system (designed to connect independent or non-chain properties)
Cluster reservation office/centre
§ It is a single reservations office serving several hotels
§ All the direct calls or requests to each hotel are channelled to the cluster office from where the reservations are made and again redirected to the concerned hotel
Global distribution systems (GDS)
§ A worldwide computerised reservation network used, by travel agents, as a single point of access for reserving airline seats, hotel rooms, rental cars
§ It facilitates the sale of hospitality products to travel agents
Internet Distribution System (IDS)
§ Travel agencies (OTAs) which specialises in internet marketing of travel and related services directly to consumers
§ They enable travellers from many different market segments to use desktop and mobile devices to reserve hotel rooms, book flights and rental cars
Tour Operators
§ An entity that purchases blocks of hotel rooms and in turn sells them directly to the final customer
§ Always with contracts between tour operator and hotels
§ A tour operator typically combines tour and travel components to create a holiday. They prepare the itinerary
§ The most common example of a tour operator’s product would be a flight on a charter airline plus a transfer from the airport to a hotel and the services of a local representative, all for one price
Wholesalers
An entity that purchases blocks of hotel rooms and in turn sells them to travel agents
□ Step 1: A hotel sells rooms to a travel wholesaler
□ Step 2: The travel wholesaler sells rooms to a travel agent
□ Step 3: The travel agent sells rooms to an individual guest (or group)
Travel agencies
§ A corporation with travel agents that have full knowledge of tourist product - destinations, modes of travel, climate, accommodation, and other areas of the service sector
§ They act on the behalf of product providers/principles and in return gets a commission
