Accommodation Services
The rooms division
Accommodation services covers front office (reservations, check-in and check-out, concierge, guest accounts), housekeeping (room cleaning sequences, linen and amenity management, turndown, laundry), and property presentation (public areas, maintenance reporting). You need to understand the guest cycle: enquiry, reservation, arrival, occupancy, departure and post-stay follow-up.
Room status and terminology
Learn the room status codes that questions love: vacant ready, occupied, on change, dirty, out of order (maintenance, unsellable) and out of service (temporarily unavailable but sellable). Also know reservation types (guaranteed, non-guaranteed, group, walk-in), overbooking as a yield strategy, and key metrics: occupancy rate, average daily rate (ADR) and revPAR.
Traps to watch
- Treating out of order and out of service as the same; only out of order removes a room from inventory.
- Confusing ADR (room revenue ÷ rooms sold) with revPAR (room revenue ÷ rooms available).
- Skipping the cleaning sequence: rooms are cleaned top to bottom, dry to wet, clean to dirty, and bathrooms are cleaned last in most sequences.
- Forgetting guest privacy and security duties: never confirm a guest's room number to a caller.
Worked example
A 100-room property sells 80 rooms and earns $12,000 in room revenue. Occupancy = 80 ÷ 100 = 80%. ADR = $12,000 ÷ 80 = $150. RevPAR = $12,000 ÷ 100 = $120, which also equals ADR × occupancy = $150 × 0.80. If a question gives you two of the three figures, derive the third rather than guessing.