Hotel Front Desk Operations and Hotel Revenue Management

I operate Four Sides Hospitality Consulting, a consulting business for motels or hotels in British Columbia, Alberta, Yukon, and Northwest Territories. I offer a full range of services, including revenue management, research, revamp, and rapport to develop your reach to your guests.

Please visit the website for more information and to get in touch with me directly.

Motel Consultant British Columbia
Hotel Consultant British Columbia
Motel Consultant BC
Hotel Consultant BC

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In the hospitality industry, the customer experience is the main factor that builds the hotel's reputation. That should be self-evident for everyone involved in a customer-service oriented business, but too much thought goes into the design of the environment and not how the customer actually experiences that environment. It is not enough to create a laundry list of services available to a guest in order to build a marketing campaign and attract guests to the hotel. Having the services be available is valuable, but there is more value in having services that work, and the Front Desk agents or other staff members are 100% comfortable working with.

"The way around it, I think, is to set expectations early and often. If you're going to give me your phone number, you better answer it. If you're going to offer a warranty, you better honor it. If you position yourself as a company with real people eager to make every single person happy--you better deliver." - Seth Godin

One area that is of great importance for the guest that goes overlooked from an operational standpoint is the Guest Directory. Life in the hotel changes quickly as services change to compete with other hotels, new management teams come in with new ideas, or the season changes so the restaurant menu adjusts to cater to certain meats or vegetables in season. Because of how quickly things may change in the hotel, the last thing to get updated is the Guest Directory. Memos may get circulated to update all the staff members, but those memos will do no good unless the guest has access to the same information as the staff. Frustration will quickly set in for the guest as they check into the room and flip open the directory to find a different pass code for the wireless internet system compared to the one the Front Desk offered them.

To feel completely comfortable at the hotel, the guest should never have to deal with, "which piece of information is correct and up to date?" Confusion and assumptions will lead to many problems during the stay at the hotel. Any changes that are being made have to have a certain evolution before they are actually enforced.

- Brainstorm - develop the idea at a manager/owners level, playing out the pros and cons of the idea.
- Discuss - bring the idea to the operational staff (lower level managers and supervisors) to make sure the idea can be put in place properly, and to see if there are any conflicts with existing practices.
- Inform - tell the staff of the changes to be made; why, how, and when the idea will be implemented.
- Update - walk around the hotel and look for areas where the new idea will conflict with existing procedures, signage, and information put into the rooms. Also inspect the hotel's website, extranet sites, and other 3rd party sites to make sure all information out there is accurate and up to date. Make any changes necessary.
Implement - immediately after updating all the information available to the guest, put the idea into motion.
- Follow-up - make sure to discuss with all operational staff and the management team a few weeks/months after the idea has been put into practice to make sure everything is working smoothly. If it isn't, repeat the steps to correct the problems.

As Seth Godin says, "you better deliver." To do anything else should be considered a failure to the guests, and the hotel.

Whitehorse Hotel
Yukon Hotel
Hotel in Whitehorse, Yukon

Other resources for motel and hotel operations.

• I've compiled a list of resources available on Amazon.com that may be of interest for owners and managers. Some of the books are geared at higher-end operations, but most are general resources for operations of all sizes. If you have recommendations, please let me know.


• 
  Outright is a great bookkeeping program for small operations. It is web-based, meaning your data is automatically backed up. Even better, the simple option is completely free to use. It allows for importation of your bank accounts (including Canadian ones), Freshbooks invoices, and other services.


• 
  HostGator is my preferred service for hosting websites. Signing up includes $100 credit for Google AdWords, and $25 for Bing advertising. That alone makes it worthwhile for a basic hosting plan. Plans start at $4.00 a month when you sign up for a 3-year plan.


• MailChimp s the perfect solution if you want to run an email newsletter campaign. MailChimp is simple to setup, and free. You can customize the newsletter to be a full HTML version, or a plain text one if you wish. MailChimp also provides you with the analytic tools to tell how many people are opening the emails, which links they are clicking on, and more. Check them out.