How to improve the efficiency of the hotel’s front-office service?

As the hospitality industry is growing at a fast pace, it is the responsibility of the hoteliers and hotel managers to improve the performance of the front-desk team. Since these front desk employees form the first point of contact for the guests in both online and direct bookings, it is imperative to say that these people need to be smart and need to deliver top-notch service for the guests in person or telephone or Internet. Though the Hotel Guest Management Software is effective, still there are many human elements involved in professionally dealing with the guests. This short write up discusses about some of the vital factors that can help in improving the performances of these front-end employees.

• First impression lasts long: Front-desk employees make the first impression of the hotels either through direct contacts or through telephones. To a guest, these employees are the people who represent the brand in offering details and comforts before a guest enters into his or her allotted room. In short, every employee at the front desk is considered to be an ambassador of the hotel in the eyes of the gussets. Guests perceive the brand through these critical employees who are holding a pivotal place in the hotels. With their attitudes, they make or break the business. A smart employee can make the guests to come again, wherein a rough employee can make the guest to walk silently to the next competitors.
• Guest focused attitude: Every member of the front desk team should be guest-centric in all the situations while performing the duties. In fact, the employees need to be guest experts while making their salutation to their guests who should feel the welcome in a genuine manner and not a feel of lip-service. Also, front desk team should furnish all the information pertaining to the guests. Aspects like hotel’s history, food preference; purpose of stay, medical information needs to be collected politely without any compulsion.
• Training and re-training: This is another important factor to improve the skills of the front-desk employees through proper training. Also, retraining is needed when they are meeting their expectations. Training these employees help those in offering better guest experience. Also, hoteliers need to prepare a training manual which can be used for the new recruits as well. The manual should be prepared after consulting all the department heads so that all the areas are well covered.
• The manual should reflect all the skills that are needed to handle guests in any situation. More focus to be given on handling tough or angry clients. Most of these employees need this unique skill as a single angry customer can break the reputation of the hotel. Also, these employees are to be trained properly in handling hotel information system which provides many solutions to the issues based on the past.
• Smartness and speed are essential: When it comes to the efficiency of the front-desk employees, aspects like smartness and speed are the key essential elements. Using these skills one can enhance customer satisfaction levels of all the guests. They should be allowed to wait for long hours while entering or leaving the hotel. All the transactions are to be finished as fast as possible with great accuracy.
• By working fast these employees show that they respect the valuable time of their guests. All such actions are to be done without an error so that guests need not come back for any clarification or to point out some errors. To make the job easy employees are given with some powerful tools or technologies by which the waiting time is reduced to a great extent.
• Alertness is essential: Guests arrive at the hotels in erratic hours and hence employees at the front -desk need to be at the reception area all the time and show the signs of alertness while receiving the guests in odd hours. They should also show their alertness while guests are checking out of the hotel. Both of these times are critical while conversing with the guests. Employees need to have a minimum conversation but do maximum work while transacting with the guests. By using a hotel Property Management System, these employees can able to retrieve any data about the guests including their food preferences and hobbies.
• Read the Signs: A smart front-desk employee can always pick some subtle cues from the guests. If the guests come with kids, the employee will brief about the swimming pool hours, snack bars which will be fully appreciated. It will be more impactful if the employee share some information in advance about the room-choices or extra bedding feature available for the younger children
• Knowledge about the surrounding areas: Front-office is the right option for the guests to clarify about the sight-seeing places and other historic destinations. This request will be common for the first time vacationers who are new to the area. In such a context, the employees at the front desk should have adequate knowledge about these places to guide the guests in a proper manner. Responding to such requests by the employee will not only increases the customer satisfaction levels but also enhances the reputation of the hotel to a great extent.

Having learnt about the importance of front-end employees of the hotels, hotel management should follow the practice of hiring the right people as well to invest in the right kind of front-office software. Such gestures will certainly bring good results and also make the guests to have rich positive experience. A satisfied guest will not only come again and again to your hotel but also advocates your hotel to others. So making your front-desk staff with proper skill sets will directly increase your business bottom line as well as the reputation of your hotel.

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Created on Jan 13th 2020 05:41. Viewed 366 times.

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