Front Office Operations
Front office is the hotel's control room: it sells rooms, registers guests, keeps accounts and coordinates departments. The exam tests the guest cycle, room status and the three performance ratios.
Core concepts
- Guest cycle: pre-arrival (reservation), arrival (registration, rooming), occupancy (in-house services, folio postings), departure (check-out, settlement), post-departure (history, follow-up).
- Room status: vacant ready (VR), vacant dirty (VD), occupied (OD), out of order (OOO), due out, sleep-out. Housekeeping and front office must reconcile status.
- Folio: guest account; night audit checks postings and balances.
- Occupancy % = rooms sold ÷ rooms available × 100.
- ADR = room revenue ÷ rooms sold.
- RevPAR = room revenue ÷ rooms available, or occupancy × ADR.
Worked example
A 100-room hotel sells 70 rooms and earns ₹84,000 room revenue. Occupancy = 70 ÷ 100 = 70%. ADR = 84,000 ÷ 70 = ₹1,200. RevPAR = 84,000 ÷ 100 = ₹840, which also equals 70% × 1,200. Reasoning: ADR measures the average rate actually achieved on sold rooms; RevPAR measures revenue per available room, so it captures both rate and occupancy. If 10 rooms are out of order, use 90 available rooms for a more accurate operating ratio and state your base.
Traps
Using rooms sold as the denominator for occupancy; mixing revenue with rooms; calling RevPAR the same as ADR; ignoring out-of-order rooms; posting charges without a folio check.