This document provides an overview of the front office department in hotels. It begins with an introduction to the front office and explains that it is the most important department as it is the first interaction guests have. It then provides organizational charts showing the structure of the front office department and job descriptions for various roles including front desk agents, bell staff, concierge, and night auditor. It discusses the key responsibilities of the front office in areas like reservations, guest services, and revenue management. Finally, it covers front office systems and what makes for a successful front office management.

1. Welcome to a
new learning
session!
Knowledge is Money.

3. Introduction To Front
Office Department
Organization Chart, Functions,
Duties & Responsibilities
3

4. Chapter Focus Point
• Describe the significance of Front Office in
a hotel.
• Draw a Front Office organization chart in
a hotel.
• Explain staff duties & responsibilities, job
specifications, for positions in FO
department within a hotel.
• Briefly describe the activities during guest
cycle of a hotel.
4

7. • Most important department in the hotel.
• Guest makes first contact with FO
department.
• First place that can makes guest develop an
impression about the level of service,
standard, facilities and hospitality of the
hotel.
7
FRONT OFFICE DEPARTMENT

10. Overview of the Front Office
Front Office
Manager
Revenue
Management
Desk staff
Reservation Guest Services Night Audit
Concierge Bell staff

11. Front Office Responsibilities
Revenue Management
 Establishing room rates
Reservations (advance booking)
 Managing the reservation process
Front Desk Staff
 Guest registration at check-in
Concierge
 Guest information
Bell Staff
 Guest assistance, especially luggage
Night Auditor
 Managing the front office-related accounting and data
collection process

12. FRONT OFFICE DEPARTMENT
• Communication and Accounting are
the two most important functions of
the Front Desk operations.
• Accounting procedure involve
accepting advance booking of hotel
rooms, opening & maintaining an
account or bill for the guest and,
settlement of the guest bills at the
time of check-out
12

13. Front Desk

14. FRONT OFFICE DEPARTMENT
• Effective Communication with guest includes
processing the guest reservation, handling
the guest reception on arrival, answer the
guest queries during stay in the hotel for
services like, wi- fi internet facilities, safe
deposit lockers etc., processing check out of
the guest, and coordinating with other
departments of the hotel for maintaining an
accurate room status & guest history.
14

15. Front Office Working Hours
• FO department operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a
week. Always open for guest arrivals &
departures.
• Three main shifts in FO department are,
Morning or day shift
7. 00 a. m. – 3. 00 p. m.
Afternoon or evening shift
3. 00 p. m. – 11. 00 p. m.
Night (graveyard) shift
11. 00 p. m. – 7. 00 p. m.

16. Front Office Organizational Chart
• It shows the hierarchy of this department.
• Hierarchy is the diagrammatic representation
of the organizational structure.
• The controlling or commanding officer is
shown at the top, and the reporting sub-
ordinate staff is shown below.
• The size of the organization depends on the
size of the hotel & level of service.

17. Front Office Organization Chart
Front Office Manager Night Auditor
Front Desk
Agent
Reservations
Agent
Switchboard
Operator
Front Office
Cashier
Uniformed
Service
Concierge
General Manager
Assistant General Manager

18. Organizational Chart
• Organization structure of FO department will
change from hotel to hotel.
• It depends on the size, and standard or style of
operations of the hotel. (Classification of hotels)
• It can be categorized into
- Small sized hotel
- Medium sized hotel
- Large sized hotel
Standard could be expressed as luxury, mid- priced
and budget hotel. 18

19. Duties & Responsibilities of Front
Office Personnel

20. General Manager
• Overall in-charge of hotel organization.
• Front Office Manager reports directly to
General Manager.
• GM evaluates the overall performance of the
FO Manager.
• Situations that FOM can not deal with, is
handled by GM.

21. General Manager

22. Front Office Manager
• Leads and coordinates the activities of the front office
department.
• Acts as a link between the management and front office
employees.
• Responsible for hiring, training, supervising and
disciplining all front desk, reservation, and guest
services staff members, in order to maintain the desired
standard of service.
• Prepares the financial budget for the front office
department.
• Evaluates the job performance of each front office
employee. 22

23. Front Office Manager

24. Bell Boy
• Handling guest luggage at the time of arrival
• and departure.
• Escorting guests to their rooms on arrival.
• Familiarizing guests about safety features and
• in-room facilities.
• Locating a guest in a specified area of the hotel. The
process is called Paging in hotels.
• Posting guests mails.
• Providing information to guests about hotel
• facilities and services when asked.
24

25. Bell Boy

26. Bell Boy, with luggage trolley

27. Bell Captain

28. Cashier
• Opening and maintaining the guest account or
folios.
• Recording all credit charges and payments in
guest folios.
• Preparing bills at the time of check-out.
• Receiving payment from guests.
• Handling credit/debit/charge cards for the
settlement of a guest account.
• Administer the safe deposit locker system.
• Handling foreign currency exchange.
28

30. Cashier

31. Door Attendant
• Open the doors of the guest vehicles on their
• arrival in the hotel portico.
• Help bell boys in lifting luggage.
• Open the hotel’s entrance door for guests.
• Coordinate with parking attendants for
parking guest vehicles in the hotel’s parking
area.
• Stop unwanted people from entering the hotel
building. 31

32. Door Attendant

33. Night Auditor, The most responsible
position during night shift.
• Checking all guest accounts at night for errors.
• Preparing the night audit report for GM.
• Check-in and check-out guests, who arrive or
depart after 11.00 p.m.
• Processing the reservations.
• Performing the duties of security guard.
• Monitoring fire safety system.
• Act as cashier for banquet function.
• Performing the duties of manager on duty. 33

34. Night Auditor

35. Receptionist
• Welcoming & greeting guest on arrival.
• Complete registration process.
• Notify all departments about arrivals &
departures.
• Handling special requests.
• Handling check-in and check-out.
• Providing information to guest related to
services, timings and prices.
• Assigning right type of rooms and dispensing
guest room keys.
35

36. Front Desk Agent

37. Room Types, a Recapitulation.
• Single
• Double
• Triple
• Quad
• Queen
• King
• Twin
• Double-Double
• Studio
• Mini-Suite (Junior Suite)
• Suite
• Connecting rooms
• Adjoining rooms
• Adjacent rooms

38. Room Status Terms
• Occupied
• Complimentary
• Stay-over
• On-change
• DND
• Sleep-out
• Skipper
• Sleeper
• Vacant and ready
• Out-of-order
• Lock-out
• DNCO
• Due out
• Check-out
• Late check-out

39. Concierge
Making reservations for guest dining in famous
restaurants of the city.
Arranging tours, limousine, and entertainment
tickets.
Maintaining good relationship with local hospitality
industry, that provide tourism products.
Personal helper to V I P in- house.
Obtaining tickets for theatres, musicals etc.
Provide latest information about events.
39

40. Concierge

41. Reservation Agent
• Handling guaranteed and non-guaranteed
• reservation
• Up sell accommodation products
• Prepared the expected arrival list and the expected
• departure list every day
• Prepared a guest folder to keep the
• mails and messages of guest with reservation
documents.
• Providing management information to other
• departments, like group arrival, VIP, full house etc.41

42. Reservation Assistant

43. Telephone Operator
• Processing all incoming and outgoing calls.
• Log all wake-up call on the system.
• Answer questions about the hotel’s services
and product.
• Taking messages.
• Operating hotel telephone billing system.
• Direct incoming calls to the desired extension.
• Provide paging services, by Public Address
System, for guest and employee.
43

44. Telephone Operator

45. Types of Telephone Calls
• Local
• Direct-dial long-distance
• Calling card
• Credit card
• Collect
• Third-party
• Person-to-person
• Billed-to-room
• International
• Toll-free
• VoIP – voice over Internet Protocol

46. Telecommunications Equipment
• PBX system
• Call accounting system
• Guestroom phones
• Pay phones
• Pagers/cell phones
• Automatic call dispensing system
• Telephone/room status systems
• Internet access
• Call detection equipment

47. Non-Automated
Front Office Systems
• Handwritten forms
• Reservation index cards
• Density board blocked reserved rooms
• Registration cards
• Time stamp
• Room rack -housekeeping status of each room
• Vouchers received from point-of-sale areas
• Charges handwritten to folios
• Adding machine tape attached at check-out
• Night audit cross-checked folio charges to voucher and
verified settlement

48. Semi-Automated Front Office Systems
• Handwritten and machine-produced forms
• National reservation networks
• Pre-registration activities
• Density board blocked reserved rooms
• Registration cards -preprinted and multiple copies
• Room rack -housekeeping status of each room
• Vouchers received from point-of-sale areas
• Posting machines recorded charges to guest folios
• Night audit cross-checked folio charges to vouchers
and verified settlement

49. Fully Automated Systems
• Equipped with a software packages
• Online credit authorization terminals
• Electronics guest folios
• Electronically posted guest accounts
• Process continuous trial balances
• Automatically produce bills
• Create guest history records

50. Property Management Systems
• Property Management System is a specially
designed software, to handle the hotel
operations, with the help of networked
computers, installed at all departments.
• PMS has greatly improved a hotel’s ability to
quickly accept, store and retrieve guest
reservation, guest history, requests, and billing
arrangements.
• More details in coming semesters.

51. What makes a front office management
successful?
• Having a passion for the job
• Accepting the change in role
• Being a good role model
• Having a positive attitude
• Delegating, using authority
intelligently
• Communicating effectively
• Leading a diverse
workforce. Creating and
developing teams.
• Pro- active approach,
setting and monitoring
performance conditions.
• Providing ongoing
assistance to team.

52. • When guests have
unique, first-time
questions or requests,
document the question
and the answers, or
solutions found, by
noting them in front
desk log-book, or daily
report, for others to
know and learn from.

53. Compilation & Presentation
Praveen Jha
Senior Faculty
IHM Hajipur
Vaishali, Bihar