The Room That Was Already Occupied, at 23:40
You are the duty manager of a 140-room city hotel on a Thursday at 23:40. The PMS shows the house at 100% occupancy, three reservations still due to arrive, and three rooms vacant-clean. Housekeeping's evening sheet reports that room 412, listed vacant-clean in the PMS, still held a suitcase and a laptop at 21:00 and that the bed had clearly been slept in. Of the three clean rooms, two are on the smoking floor and one has a failed air-conditioning unit; maintenance closed the job at 18:00 with "part on order". At 23:50 a corporate guest on a confirmed reservation, with a 06:00 flight, checks in; a second reservation holder is expected at 00:30 and a third at 01:00. At 23:55 the platinum guest in room 305 calls to say the corridor outside is noisy. You have one night porter, one security officer and one receptionist on duty.
1. Set out the order of actions for room 412. Explain why re-cleaning the room and selling it is the wrong first move.
Read the worked answer
Room 412 is a room-status discrepancy, not a housekeeping slip, and it must be treated as a possible security incident until proven otherwise.
Order of actions:
- Take 412 off the market immediately in the PMS - mark it as discrepant, do not release it.
- Check the PMS and the key-card lock. Look for a checkout that was never processed, an early departure, a walk-in registered under a different room, or a last-entry record from a card that should be dead. That single check usually identifies the person.
- Send a supervisor with the security officer, not a room attendant alone, and not before knocking and announcing. At night, no one enters an occupied room alone.
- If someone is genuinely in-house without a folio, the fix is registration and a folio in the morning - not eviction at midnight. Only involve police if there is a security concern.
- Correct the PMS and release the room only when it is confirmed empty, then clean it. That will not happen tonight.
Why re-cleaning and selling is wrong: if a guest is inside, you have sold an occupied room - the arriving guest walks in on a stranger. That is a security failure, a certain complaint, and potentially a police matter. The cost of one unsold room is trivial against that. Also, a 21:00 sighting with a 23:40 PMS status means the system is wrong, so any other room status is now suspect.
2. Allocate the rooms among the three arrivals and decide who is walked. State what the hotel owes the walked guest and what you say to the 00:30 arrival.
Read the worked answer
Sellable inventory: three clean rooms, one with no air-conditioning. A room with a failed AC unit and a part on order is not sellable - do not put a guest in it and hope. That leaves two rooms for three arrivals: one walk.
Allocation:
- 23:50 corporate guest with the 06:00 flight gets the best room. He needs sleep in the next six hours; a walk at midnight damages him more than anyone else on the list.
- 00:30 arrival gets the second room, which is on the smoking floor. Disclose it at check-in - "the only room left tonight is on our smoking floor, I can move you tomorrow" - rather than let the guest discover it. A disclosed compromise is a complaint avoided.
- 01:00 arrival is walked, because he has lost the least by it and, being the last to arrive, is the one who can still be placed elsewhere before he turns up.
What the hotel owes: a room of equal or better grade at a partner hotel, paid for by us, transport there, one free phone call, no charge for the night, and a written apology or points. That is the standard walk package; anything less and the guest is paying for our overbooking.
To the 00:30 guest, say it before he arrives: phone him now, explain the situation, confirm his room is held, and warn that the room is on the smoking floor. Being told in advance is service; being told at the desk is an argument.
3. What must be recorded for the walk and for the failed AC room, and how does each show up in the hotel's numbers?
Read the worked answer
For the walk, record: date and time, guest name and tier, the reason code (overbooking / house count / room out of order), the authorising manager's name, the partner hotel and the rate we are paying, transport cost, and the fact that the night is free of charge. Put the cost on the correct cost centre, not hidden inside rooms revenue.
How it shows in the numbers: a walk is a real cost - the room we gave away plus transport plus goodwill - and it usually appears as a commission/paid-out or an allowance line. If it is not coded, the overbooking looks profitable and nothing changes. The room we could not sell still shows as zero revenue for the night, which is the second half of the cost.
For the AC room: block it as out of order (OOO), not out of service. OOO removes it from sellable inventory, so reservations stops selling it and the overbooking calculation reflects reality. Out of service leaves it sellable and guarantees a repeat of tonight. Record the maintenance job number and the expected parts date.
Also record: the 412 discrepancy in the housekeeping discrepancy report with the time found and the resolution, and a note for the morning meeting that 100% occupancy was sold against rooms that were not sellable. Without that note the same three rooms are sold again tomorrow.