Front Office Operations
Front office is the hotel's nerve centre: reservations, registration, room assignment and settlement. This domain tests the guest cycle, room vocabulary, tariff plans and room-status codes, with one scenario question.
The guest cycle
Enquiry → reservation → registration (check-in) → occupancy → departure (check-out) → settlement and records (Form C for foreign guests).
Vocabulary to keep straight
- Room types: single, double, twin, triple, suite, studio, adjoining, connecting.
- Meal plans: European (room only), Continental (room + breakfast), Modified American (breakfast + one meal), American/Full (room + all meals).
- Reservation types: confirmed, guaranteed (credit card, advance, corporate, travel agent), non-guaranteed, waitlisted.
- Status codes: VR vacant ready, VD vacant dirty, OD occupied dirty, OOO out of order, OOS out of service, DND do not disturb, SO slept out, EA early arrival.
Worked example
A guest holding a credit-card guaranteed booking arrives at 23:30 and no room is free. Reasoning: a guaranteed reservation obliges the hotel to provide accommodation, so the hotel must "walk" the guest to a hotel of equal or better standard, pay for the night and transport or calls, and keep the record for billing the guarantee.
Traps that cost marks
- Treating European plan and Continental plan as the same.
- Calculating occupancy on guests instead of rooms.
- Calling overbooking a mistake - it is a deliberate revenue policy.
- Selling an OOO room; it earns nothing and is unsafe.