Roles Of Accommodation Manager And Front Office Department In Hotel Industry Essay.

Importance of Accommodation Management

Select a department within the hotel and investigate it in depth. Identify the roles, tasks and functions of the department, within the context of Accommodation Management and how these are managed.

Accommodation management is important for ensuring the standard of the hotel and provides safety and security for guests and residents. Accommodation manager is assigned for that particular reason to take care of these aspects. Cleanliness, maintenance, and control over the budgets are the prime concerns of accommodation manager (Wood 2017). Accommodation primarily focuses on the private rentals, hostel and boarding houses in hotel and student accommodation properties. Hence, the budget is the big factor of this aspect. Transports, cultural and social value of that place, and shopping and entertainment facilities along with the hotel all these are important for customers to choose their desired destination.

Front office department is one of the core operation departments of the hotel. This department deals with the customers directly so a better impression is needed from the employees of front office department. Marketing, sales and technology handling team are working together in this department and the department also linked with the entire hotel for accommodation, marketing, promotion and enhancement of business (Yan and Zhao 2017). Hence, this department shows their ability in controlling, man-management, operation and execution in a hotel and these factors directly or indirectly boost their business.

The basic role of this department is to handle customers and understand their problems. If customers are not satisfying by employees’ service and make some unnecessary arguments then it will be a worse situation for the hotel, as customers have a bad perception of the hotel management.

Roles of Front office department are very important for the hotel. Customer safety and security is the prime aspect of this department. Front office management provides some training and development prospects for their employees so that they can deliver better outcomes to customers (Swenden 2016). Another role like tracking complains and works on it is the major work that has been controlled by this department. If problems are identified by the employees’ or management it became easier to reach its mitigation process.

The department has to do diverse numbers of task and functions. Customer checks in, check out, allocation and reallocation of rooms, online and offline payments methods, cash handling, cancellation of rooms, want a particular room, room servicing, edit of booking orders all these are the task and functions of any front office department. There are some rooms that are allocated for special guest as they invest more money for better affordability and satisfaction. Department needs to deliver that much of satisfaction as they are the royal customers of that hotel (Page 2014). So their room allocation is also considered as the responsibilities of that department. Hotel in-house operation is also ensured better customer relation, as employees’ used to go at customer room-step service. This is an enhancing procedure to develop the business in an ethical way.

Roles and Responsibilities of Accommodation Manager

Customers need is very important for the hotel as each section of different management tries their best to satisfy customers by delivering quality service. The first thing in this need is the effective communication which is needed from customers as this communication can deliver a direct message to customer and employees’. Hence there are no such chances of mismanagement or miscommunications. Fair price, good environment, and innovative systems are also needed by customers. Competitive price ranges are highlighted in that case and customers evaluate their best place and these procedures are influenced by good environment and innovative systems in that hotel. Innovative procedures like online payment, phone booking, sensor door lock system or fingerprint key are these kinds of innovation that customers will pay more however if these are not installed then price range is evaluated by customers (Nieves and Segarra-Ciprés 2015). Privacy is another positive aspect that customer needs and hotel authority tries to deliver their best security to protect all their customers’.

Accommodation manager is needed for both public and private sector companies. The main operation functions are organized by front office department.  

• A manager takes care of customer safety and security.
• Supervise training staff and provide them important lessons for their professional development.
• Ensure cleanliness and hygiene so that no health issues will happen.
• Ensuring financial success to customer’s and provides those rooms within their budget.
• Deliver quality service to customers so that a better customer relation maintains (Ling et al. 2015).
• Provide customer support and try to mitigate problem situations identified by customers’.
• Take care of allocation of rooms in rush hours and take in charge of facility department for that particular time.
• Develop the operation policies for introducing new innovations and also make a draft of the business financial plan for that innovation (McPhail et al. 2016).
• Dealing with clients for the grand occasions of accommodations when aclient wants for banquets, conventions,and other functions.
• Recruit some new staffs for the rescheduling of shift timing and work.

These are certain responsibilities of accommodation manager as they have to manage all those departments for enhancing business opportunities. Customer service, safety and security and delivering promotional strategy so that maximum number of people will come on that hotel is the basic motive of them and their positive participation in business provide competitive advantages to the hotel. 

Outsourcing is a kind of third-party influence in business and used this third party intervention in a positive way. There are some strategic options to improve the organization and company tried to outsource them for the development of the business. High-profile companies are also making their growth in business by the applied source of outsourcing. There are some legal contracts; business deals; marketing strategies’ need to change for their introduction in particular business (Dzhandzhugazova et al. 2015). In case of small-scalebusiness, these outsourcing scopes are considered as business promotions, as the company name, brand all these specific services are known to people just because of extension in outsourcing.  Australia has a good business market in the hotel industry so their outsourcing process is required to divide the work and responsibilities (Boella 2017). Hotel management is not available enough to meet customers’ request at all the time, franchisees and small organizations work for the big parent organizations to process that work in a systematic way and that facility enhances an effective bridge between hotels and customers’. Though there are benefits and drawbacks of this outsourcing process.

Front Office Department in Hotel Industry

There are some benefits of outsourcing. These are:

• The prime benefit of that process is concentration over core process. The hotel industry has to take care of each and every aspect of their operation. In case of aligning with outsourcing process, they can deliver their strength on the core objectives rather than supporting processes. Supporting process like booking, room availability is operated by certain franchises so this is considered as additional help.
• Risk has been shared by other companies. The parental company may lose the major amounts but other small companies also lose their some parts of share in case of debt situation so all outsourcing companies are trying their level best to enhance the market position of the company.
• Outsourcing can bring quality employees’ to the organization. In case of certain projects hotels outsource some employees’ for a particular time period so in that session customers get quality service from their employees’ so a good reputation can build by that process.

There are some drawbacks also in outsourcing. These are:

• Organization brand and ethics maintenance is the key concern as most of the outsourcing companies operating their business manner without knowing the objectivity or aim of the company. There is a chance of disgrace the brand image.
• There is some hidden cost for franchises for accommodation and all which is not legalized by the parental company (Hu et al. 2016). They are taking this money for their company. Sometimes customers are not ready to pay this extra amount and theentire blame goes to the parental company, this is a big concern for the organization.
• Sometimes data also transmitted through the process. Hence, a risk of privacy also sustained in that outsourcing occasion.

Hotel management needs to take innovative recommendation so that customer satisfaction and anumber of opportunities can be found for the development of theorganization. In case of front office department innovation like robot introduction and deliver thebill, payment and all paper works within 10 seconds is a huge opportunity for customers not to wait long (Zaitseva et al. 2016). Organize a test before outsourcing employees’ is another aspect that incorporates quality employees in the organization. Change in themachine, technology,and servicing are the other recommendations that management may introduce. If those recommended process implemented in a proper way then better opportunities can be extracted from that process. 

Conclusion

Therefore, it can be concluded that hotel industry has to deliver their level best for customer satisfaction and in that case front office department this is one of the main aspects that need to change for the accumulation of more people. Room allocation, money transaction, room servicing, and VIP block maintenance all these are important responsibilities for the department and through the innovations, they are helping hotel economy by providing more customers to the hotel.

References

Boella, M.J., 2017. Human resource management in the hotel and catering industry. Taylor & Francis.

Dzhandzhugazova, E.A., Zaitseva, N.A., Larionova, A.A., Petrovskaya, M.V. and Chaplyuk, V.Z., 2015. Methodological aspects of strategic management of financial risks during construction of hotel business objects. Asian Social Science, 11(20), p.229.

Hu, A.H., Huang, C.Y., Chen, C.F., Kuo, C.H. and Hsu, C.W., 2015. Assessing carbon footprint in the life cycle of accommodation services: the case of an international tourist hotel. International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology, 22(4), pp.313-323.

Ling, L., Dong, Y., Guo, X. and Liang, L., 2015. Availability management of hotel rooms under cooperation with online travel agencies. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 50, pp.145-152.

McPhail, R., Patiar, A., Herington, C., Creed, P. and Davidson, M., 2015. Development and initial validation of a hospitality employees’ job satisfaction index: Evidence from Australia. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 27(8), pp.1814-1838.

Nieves, J. and Segarra-Ciprés, M., 2015. Management innovation in the hotel industry. Tourism Management, 46, pp.51-58.

Page, S.J., 2014. Tourism management. Routledge.

Swenden, W., 2016. India and the management of ethnic diversity: The unfinished business of accommodation. From the Margins to the Mainstream: Institutionalising Minorities in South Asia, p.245.

Wood, R.C. ed., 2017. Hotel Accommodation Management. Routledge.

Yan, R. and Zhao, S.J., 2017. Influence of Value Co-creation on Emotional Attachment to P2P Accommodation.

Zaitseva, N.A., Larionova, A.A., Mekush, G.E., Mayorova, A.N. and Povorina, E.V., 2016. Methodological aspects of the financial justification of development strategies of hotel industry enterprises. International Electronic Journal of Mathematics Education, 11(7), p.2559