Front Office Operations
What the domain covers
Front Office Operations tests reservations, registration, check-in and check-out, room-status coordination, guest accounting and the key performance ratios that managers use. Expect definitions, a room-status scenario, and simple occupancy, ADR and RevPAR calculations.
Core rules
- The front office is the hotel's information and sales hub: it handles reservations, arrival, departure, concierge, communication and night audit.
- Room status must be current: vacant and ready (VR), vacant dirty (VD), occupied (OD), out of order (OOO), and do-not-disturb (DND). Housekeeping and front office must reconcile status regularly.
- Occupancy = rooms sold ÷ rooms available. ADR = room revenue ÷ rooms sold. RevPAR = room revenue ÷ rooms available, or occupancy × ADR.
- A folio is the guest's bill; the night audit verifies charges, balances accounts and rolls the business date.
- Overbooking is deliberate selling above capacity to offset no-shows; walk-in guests arrive without a reservation.
Worked example. A 100-room hotel sells 70 rooms and earns ₹4,20,000 room revenue. Ten rooms are out of order. Occupancy based on available rooms = 70 ÷ (100 − 10) = 70 ÷ 90 = 77.8%, not 70%. ADR = ₹4,20,000 ÷ 70 = ₹6,000. RevPAR = ₹4,20,000 ÷ 90 = ₹4,666.67, or 77.8% × ₹6,000 ≈ ₹4,667. Reasoning: out-of-order rooms cannot be sold, so they are removed from the denominator for operational occupancy and RevPAR.
Traps. Do not use total rooms when rooms are out of order. Do not mix ADR with RevPAR: ADR uses rooms sold; RevPAR uses rooms available. Do not treat a no-show as an occupied room. Do not release a departure room as vacant and ready before housekeeping confirms it.