What are the most important functions of a hotel’s front office and how can a reservation employee increase the revenue?

A front office employee has lots of different tasks, that they have to accomplish during every working day. For usual guests the front office is the face of the hotel. Guests know that there is always someone in the reception, who is at their disposal. This is the place, where they can ask for help or in worse situations this is where they can complain. The receptionist is the person who greets the guests and helps them during their stay. One of the most important tasks of the front desk is to check-in and out the guests and during those processes to register all the informations into the hotel’s PMS system. The front office employee receives payments and he is the one who answer the calls. So, the front office is the center of a hotel’s daily operations.

In the front office department there are several different positions, for example front office manager, reservation assistant, receptionist, night auditor, telephone operator etc. They are all important in getting more revenue.

A simple reservation employee is able to influence the level of the gained revenue. As for me the 2 most important techniques are: upselling and LOS upselling. The first one is how to upsell. Upselling is about to suggest (and sell) higher rated rooms and services than the guest previously wanted. This technoque works when you have built up a relationship with the returning guests, so they trust you. Upselling only works properly, if the management allowes to the front desk employee to adjust the room rates of the empty premium rooms. Of course it is also important to estabilish the limit of the discount. If there is no limit, it can mean, that the hotel won’t profit from selling because the staff gave too much discount. Furthermore other customers may be disappointed because they paid a lot more for the same service and disappointed guests rarely return. However upselling is not only about to sell higher rated rooms. Reservations employee can also sell other services, that the guest previously didn’t want to have. For instance packages, spa and restaurant offers.

Another technique is to make the lenght of stay longer, which is also called LOS upselling. The first thing that a hotel need to do, if they want to upsell their LOS is to implement minimum lenght of stay controls for the periods where they expect lower demand. The other important method is to say yes to the guests who want to make a reservation with longer LOS and say no to the guests with shorter LOS wants. Furthermore, you should try to persuade the guests to stay longer than they wanted.

When is it a good idea to use upselling, and when is it bad?

Sometimes to use upselling is an excellent idea. However, if it’s done in a wrong situation, than it can ruin a good previous customer experience. To do upselling you should be a great salesman/saleswoman.

One of the articles mentions, that upselling is good when it seems that you are trying to help the customer. It means, you as an employee concentrate on to adding more value to the customer’s stay. However, if you are using this technique to impose a more expensive room to the guest, and it is written to the guest’s face that he/she is satisfied with his/her first decision, than you must stop. So, first you need to analyse the situation of the guest’s angle to get a clear sight. There are signs when it’s not the best idea to upsell. For example if there is a long waiting line, or the customer looks tired and annoyed, or if you can see that the guest just wants to get throught the process as fast as possible, it’s better not to use upsell. Another example is, when you must give them a good reason, why to spend more, than they wanted previously. You must say to the guests, that this is a daily offer, or you only need to pay a little bit more and you can get much more value.

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