The front office department does room allocation in a hotel. There the front office supervisor or executive sets the daily room allocation. But this also happens with the receptionist of some hotels. By preparing a daily room allocation sheet, what is expected is to allocate a room for the guest room reservation scheduled for the day. This will make the work of the hotel more convenient and allow the guest to get the room they are waiting for. But while allocating rooms, there are several things to consider. This article describes how to prepare a daily room allocation sheet correctly and the important points for it.
First, before setting an allocation, you must understand your hotel’s total room size and type (Single rooms, Double Rooms, Triple rooms, Quater rooms, Sweet rooms etc.). Likewise, you should know about the hotel’s special rooms (smoking/non-smoking rooms for people with special needs). In particular, the condition and number of these rooms must be known.
What are the points to remember while preparing a daily room allocation sheet?
Among these, the main noteworthy point is the room availability for the date. This means how many rooms can be allocated per day. Due to some reasons, some of the rooms in the hotel are unusable. For example, there are times when rooms cannot be used because some repairs need to be done. To explain further, in a small hotel with 50 rooms, if two rooms cannot be used for renovation because of some maintenance defects, you can allocate only 48 rooms. Therefore, knowing about room availability becomes more important.
Knowing the number of currently occupied and stay-over rooms (long-stay rooms) is impotent. Therefore, in the currently occupied room, stay-over (long-stay rooms), the room no should be mentioned in the allocation sheet without changing. For example, it is mentioned in the reservation voucher that the guests allocated to room no. 110 will be checked out in 3 more days. Therefore, as they are staying in the hotel today, their room should be mentioned in the allocation sheet where stay-over rooms are mentioned.
Next, we need to determine how many bookings are expected to arrive today. For that, it can be known by checking the arrival date of the reservation voucher. Then pay attention to the guest’s check-out date. If some guests stay in the hotel for a few days, a more appropriate room should be provided for that.
After that, guests who have made special requests while making a reservation should consider it. For example, there are smoking rooms, rooms close to the swimming pool or elevator, quiet rooms, view preference, and connecting rooms. Next, those rooms can be allocated according to their requests.
Then the room type requested by the guest (Single rooms, Double rooms, Triple rooms, Quater rooms etc) should be considered.
Now You have to allocate the room as requested.
How to allocate rooms for group arrival?
Before allocating rooms to a group arrival, paying attention to the points mentioned above is mandatory. For those who have booked rooms in the hotel for a group, there are some essential points to consider before allocating rooms to them.
Mainly, it is common to see cases where everyone in the group is given the same amount individually to book a room. In such cases, it is more important to allocate rooms of the same type to all group members. For example, if you allocate rooms in the standard room type, allocate rooms of that type to everyone because all the facilities and structure of the rooms are always the same. However, if one person in the group gets a deluxe room instead of a standard room, it may cause problems. Because if the guests know it during the chat, they can also hang the rooms in the deluxe room category. Therefore, the general tradition is that when allocating a room to a group, even the tablecloth and the vase should be provided in the same way and the same colour.
Next, if there are people with special needs in the group, allocate them disabled rooms / special needs or requirements (e.g. wheelchair accessibility) rooms. Likewise, if there are adults in the group, allocate rooms on the ground floor. They are more suitable for such guests and provide them with easy access rooms to the restaurant, swimming pool, lobby, and elevator.
Allocate rooms to the group’s tour guide and tour leader that are easily accessible to all guests, the lobby, and other places.
What are the difficulties that can be faced in setting the room allocation?
- Although a room is allocated based on the above points while setting the room allocation, in some cases, they have to be changed. For example, an assigned room is suddenly out of order due to a technical problem. In such a case, another room of the same room type has to be reallocated. In those cases, it becomes problematic if no rooms are left of that type. When such a problem occurs, explain the situation to the front office manager or room deviation manager and set the allocation according to their instructions.
- In some cases, the guest expresses disapproval of the allocated room. In such cases, they have to be given another room. Therefore, the room allocation has to be changed.
- The allocation has to be changed because the allocated rooms are not ready (vacant). In this case, it is caused by the room attendant not finishing the cleaning of the respective room. Therefore, another room has to be allocated instead of that room.
- In case of a room change due to some problem in an occupied room, the allocation has to be changed.
- You can see cases where the booking related to the allocated rooms are cancelled. In such cases, the allocation has to be changed.
- If the room allocation is changed as above, the receptionist should also inform other departments about it.
- In addition to the above ways, if there are cases where the allocation changes, please comment below.
Please comment below if you have any other information about the above topic.