Front Office & Guest Relations

Covered

• The guest journey from enquiry to departure
• Front office and its relationships
• Presentation and desk discipline
• Telephone technique
• Confidentiality and data protection
• The property management system

Practical: Shadow a full desk shift and map every guest interaction.

Covered

• Booking channels and where they come from
• Room types and rate plans
• Availability, overbooking and why it happens
• Guarantees, deposits and cancellation policy
• Group bookings
• Entering a booking correctly

Practical: Take fifteen bookings including two groups and one amendment.

Covered

• The check-in sequence
• Identification and registration
• Room allocation: preferences and constraints
• Explaining the hotel to a new guest
• Issuing keys
• Early arrivals and rooms not ready

Practical: Check in twelve guests including an early arrival and a walk-in.

Covered

• The check-out sequence
• Posting charges from other departments
• Explaining a bill line by line
• Disputed charges
• Late check-out and charging for it
• Express check-out

Practical: Check out ten guests including two with disputed charges.

Covered

• Cash handling discipline
• Card, transfer and online payment
• Deposits and pre-authorisations
• Refunds and who authorises them
• Foreign currency
• Counting down and declaring

Practical: Run a desk float through a full shift and reconcile.

Covered

• Key issue, custody and return
• Never confirming a guest's presence or room number
• Lost keys and re-keying
• Visitors to guest rooms
• Emergencies and evacuation lists
• Suspicious behaviour

Practical: Role-plays: a caller asking to be put through to a guest by name, and a stranger asking for a room key.

Covered

• Listen, acknowledge, act, follow up
• What a receptionist may authorise
• When to involve a manager
• Compensation and when it is appropriate
• Following up after resolution
• Online reviews and responding

Practical: Four assessed complaint role-plays of increasing difficulty.

Covered

• Selling on the phone
• Upselling at check-in
• Selling services: restaurant, spa, cabs, events
• Handling price objections
• Loyalty and repeat guests
• Turning a walk-in into a booking

Practical: Handle twenty enquiry calls; conversion tracked.

Covered

• Room status and who sets it
• Chasing rooms for arrivals
• Raising maintenance jobs
• Out-of-service rooms
• Room moves and how to do them well
• Working the daily arrivals list

Practical: Manage a full arrivals day against real room readiness.

Covered

• What the night audit is and why it exists
• Rolling the business date
• Reconciling the day's revenue
• Overnight security and patrol coordination
• Late arrivals and no-shows
• Preparing the morning reports

Practical: Complete a full night audit under supervision.

Covered

• Arrivals, departures and in-house reports
• Occupancy, ADR and RevPAR in plain terms
• Writing a desk handover
• Logging incidents
• Lost property from the desk
• The shift handover module

Practical: Produce a full day's reports and submit a handover.

Covered

• Running a shift
• Briefing and allocating
• Training on the desk
• Handling a full house and an overbooking
• Your record
• Interviews and the hire-ready register

Practical: Run a full desk shift as the senior on duty.