Hotel Operations and Front Office
What this domain tests
The front office is the hotel's control tower: it sells rooms, registers guests, coordinates room status, settles accounts and reconciles the day's revenue. Questions often ask you to apply the guest cycle, calculate occupancy, ADR or RevPAR, or choose the correct action for overbooking, no-shows and room moves.
Core rules
- The guest cycle runs pre-arrival (reservation), arrival (registration, rooming), occupancy (concierge, folio postings), departure (check-out, settlement) and post-departure (history, follow-up).
- A guaranteed reservation is backed by a payment method or company guarantee; a non-guaranteed booking can be released after the cancellation deadline.
- Overbooking is controlled by forecasting no-shows and cancellations. If a guest must be walked, the hotel arranges comparable accommodation, transport and communication, and the reservation record is documented.
- Room status must match between the PMS and housekeeping: vacant clean, vacant dirty, occupied clean, occupied dirty, out of order.
- Occupancy = rooms sold ÷ rooms available; ADR = room revenue ÷ rooms sold; RevPAR = room revenue ÷ rooms available (or occupancy × ADR).
- Night audit posts charges, balances departments, verifies no-shows and rolls the business date.
Worked example
A 200-room hotel has 12 rooms out of order, sells 150 rooms and earns €18,000 room revenue. Rooms available = 200 − 12 = 188. Occupancy = 150 ÷ 188 = 79.8%. ADR = €18,000 ÷ 150 = €120. RevPAR = €18,000 ÷ 188 = €95.74, which also equals 79.8% × €120. If the manager wants RevPAR of €100 at the same occupancy, required ADR = €100 ÷ 0.798 = €125.31.
Traps that cost marks
Using total rooms instead of available rooms in occupancy; mixing ADR with RevPAR; treating out-of-order rooms as sellable; releasing a guaranteed booking without following walk procedure; posting to the wrong folio; and forgetting that a room move requires both PMS and housekeeping updates.