The Importance of the Reservation Department in the Hotel

In the eyes of many people, the hotel’s room reservation department is an unimportant department. The work is nothing more than answering the phone and entering reservation information in the system. Therefore, some hotel reservation departments merge with the business center; some hotel reservation departments merge with the front desk Merger; some hotel reservation departments merge with the switchboard, especially as some hotel groups have implemented a unified reservation center management mode for group reservation centers, many hotels that do not pay much attention to the management of the reservation department are more contemptuous of the reservation department, and where does the reservation department go? After a hot topic, let me talk about my point of view and dissect the “reservation department” of high-star hotels.

The focus of the revenue manager’s work is divided into three parts: 

• Revenue management analysis
• Reservation department management
• Distribution management

A big part of this is the management of the reservation department. Why should the reservation department pay attention to it? Look at the following reasons.

1. More than 85% of the room revenue comes from the reservation department

Whether you are a general manager or marketing director, you must admit the following. . . 

No matter how hard it is for the colleagues in the hotel sales department to sign the agreement company, when anyone in the company has a reservation request, they still have to call the hotel room reservation department; 

No matter how difficult it is for the hotel’s sales manager to break through to obtain the booking list of the travel agency series, the room reservation department still accepts the reservation and enters it into the system;

No matter how faithful the individual is, the first thing that comes to mind before check-in is to call the reservation department to make a reservation; 

So please keep in mind that more than 85% of room revenue comes from the reservation department. 

2. An important way to maximize revenue

The reservation department is like a faucet that controls the customer source market. 85% of the hotel’s overall customer source must be booked through the reservation department. Then the reservation department is the node that controls the room rate and capacity (saleable room). How to play the role of the faucet is worth thinking about. Problem.

The quality of the daily work of the reservation department has become the basis of high and low room income. 

A. Capacity control is the control of the hotel’s saleable properties, including reservation acceptance, cancellation, modification, washdown, and so on

As a simple example, when the hotel reservation department accepts the room reservation, it can accept the reservation according to the actual number of rooms available for sale, or it can be overbooked for a certain room type. The hotel can do free upgrades for guests. The second sales method is rental. When the rate is low, it is a revenue management strategy, but when the occupancy rate is high, the hotel room revenue will be lost, so capacity control is one of the revenue maximization strategies. How to implement it is determined by the revenue manager based on dynamic market performance, And the real implementers are employees of the room reservation department because the reservation department employees are direct sellers of hotel goods. 

The above enumeration is just a kind of income management strategy. Of course, there are many kinds of income strategies, and the implementation of each strategy is inseparable from the reservation department, so the value of the faucet is reflected by this. 

B. House price control 

Price, a reflection of the product value. 

The hotel rooms are priced, different customer groups enjoy different rates, the hotel sells different prices in different market conditions, once went to the front desk of an international five-star hotel and asked: may you ask for a standard room prepayment What is the price? The front desk staff replied: bad. 

Meaning, please contact our reservations department. This price needs to be booked in advance. 

Through this dialogue, I think everyone will understand the importance of the booking department in price control. 

C. Make a good product description, a telemarketing process

The professional staff of the reservation department will make a description of the product when selling it to guests because the hotel room is an invisible product before the guest arrives at the store. High-quality product descriptions can increase the guest’s recognition of the hotel product and let The guests felt the value for the product and concluded the transaction as soon as possible. From this point, we can see that the staff of the reservation department is not simply answering a call, but is doing telemarketing. 

D. Upsell sales and strive for more income 

The clever reservation department staff will strive for an up-sell in each telemarketing process and sell the higher-grade products to the guests at the same time as the guests accept the products, that is, two sales opportunities in the sales process, if the guests can accept high-end products Then the hotel won more room income. 

3. The first impression the hotel brings to guests

The reservation department is the first department that impresses guests. A guest’s first impression of the hotel is the hotel’s room reservation department. Although there is a switchboard staff to transfer the call when the customer calls the reservation department, The conversation of just one or two seconds will not leave any impression on the guests, the specific reasons are as follows: 

The telephone etiquette of the staff of the reservation department represents all the staff of the hotel. Through the polite telephone answering process, guests can feel the basic quality of the overall staff of the hotel and the quality of the hotel. 

The process of answering a reservation call is a process in which the hotel and the guest really have a conversation. The professionalism of the reservation department staff answering the call represents the professionalism of a hotel. Each guest has the right to choose a hotel. Can his hotel be treated as a guest? Accepted depends on the influence of the reservation department staff to the guests. 

4. Coordinator between hotels and distributors such as travel agencies

Each hotel has the following work to do 

A. Check the room status with the distributor in real-time 

Most hotels have cooperation with some big distributors, such as GDS, IDS, etc., and the room status of the hotel is changing at any time, the communication with the distributor becomes particularly important, and these tasks are completed by the staff of the reservation department. 

B. Follow up travel agency remittance 

There is a payment method for the travel agency. The payment method is for the guest to book through the travel agency and hand over the room to the travel agency. The travel agency will pay for it. This type of process involves the travel agency’s remittance to the hotel. When the reservation department employee receives the travel agency order, It is necessary to follow up on the travel agency’s remittance. What must be done is to verify the accuracy of the remittance account and other information, to ensure that the distributor remits the room payment to the hotel’s correct account name and account number, and confirm that the hotel has received the remittance before the guest arrives at the store.

The above are listed as two simple ones. There are many similar jobs, such as checking the commission at the end of the month, issuing commissions, and following up on remittances. The above list is only part of the daily work of the reservation department, and there is still a lot of work, such as member points and verification of hotel chains; various daily reports, weekly reports, monthly reports and other reports required by the group or hotel; many hotels are concerned about the reception desk. 

The speed of check-in is strengthening the training of the front desk staff. Here I would like to remind you if you have considered that if the reservation department completes all the matters that the guest needs to follow up before check-in, the time for check-in will naturally be shortened. 

It is hoped that the above simple description will allow you to re-recognize the importance of the hotel room reservation department, re-recognize the importance of the reservation department staff, no longer ignore the management of the reservation department, and increase the overall revenue of the hotel by attaching importance to the reservation department. 

On the Group’s Integrated Reservation Management Mode

All things have advantages and disadvantages, so the group’s integrated reservation management model must be from the management side, the owner’s side, and the hotel side.

1. Owner—can save hotel human resources cost

Everyone knows that the cost of the hotel is divided into two parts: fixed cost and variable cost, and the salary of employees except temporary workers and interns is an absolute fixed cost. It needs to be paid in both low and peak seasons, and the reservation center is integrated The management model can completely convert this part of the fixed cost of human resources into a variable cost, and the cost is based on output, saving fixed wages. 

Enumerate the benefits while reminding the owner in good faith that if the cooperation between the owner and the managing partner is terminated during the process of using the integrated booking model, the owner will have to face a temporary lack of customers or fewer customers. 

B. The management side — the management side’s profit model has changed

The original mode of charging high management fees from hotels has gradually evolved into collecting channel usage fees, reservation service fees, and other fees to increase management revenue.

C. Hotel —- Revenue manager always does systemic control 

The hotel’s room status and room rate are adjusted at any time when it changes. When carrying out any promotional activities, the hotel must send the event description to the group reservation center and explain it clearly to avoid problems and implement revenue management control in the central reservation system. Housing strategy, maximize revenue management by placing excess bookings. 

The disadvantage is that promotional activities that are not supported by the system cannot be implemented, because the group reservation center is responsible for the reservation of multiple hotels at the same time, so the reservation center employees are selling products to guests by viewing the product settings and descriptions in the system. It will cause the reservation center staff to not understand and explain clearly, so hotels participating in integrated reservation management need to promote simple, easy to remember, and easy to explain activities.

The above content describes the work content of the hotel room reservation department and the advantages and disadvantages of the group integrated reservation management. I hope this article can help you re-understand the reservation department and understand the reservation department again. Hope that the scientific reservation department management can help everyone Get more income