Hotel front desk management: leverage system software in operation

To prepare for the extreme revival of hospitality, getting smooth hotel front desk software solves the delay in peak season and brings more revenue.

Many people believe that the front desk hotel refers to the hotel business face, which heavily influences the visitors’ perception regarding hotel services. Accordingly, the hotel front desk department plays a crucial role, which deciding the guest experience and the retention rate for hotels.

Thanks to the advancement in mobile and location, software development solutions are commonly used in hotel front desk management to accelerate the operation and productivity of the hotel process. Besides, adopting a suitable hotel front desk software promises higher efficiency and then higher profit to hotel owners.

In this article, we will reveal the concept of an effective front desk management system as well as the influence of IT innovation in the operation.

Hotel front desk management in the context of digitalization

From the context of hotel management, the hotel front desk or front office department impose the first impression on hotel guest. The front desk staff is the first one to interact with the customers after they walk into the hotel. They are in charge of handling requests and collecting information about guests. In other words, the operation of the front desk office will decide the first impression of hotel services. During peak season, the hotel front desk would be vulnerable to delay or overload.

Hotel front office management

The hotel front desk management system means far from the receptionist solely for guest arrival. In the front desk department, the staff is responsible for taking care of a significant part of the guest cycle. Additionally, they would be divided into key tasks:

The role of hotel front desk software in hotel management

As mentioned above, the operation of the hotel front office closely depends on the guest cycle. Generally, a typical hotel guest cycle is indicated by four core stages. Each stage has noticed the contribution of the front office manager hotel to forming visitor journeys.

1. The Pre-arrival stage specifies the period before guests arriving the property. Accordingly, it is time for visitors to plan their trips with hotel accommodation research and booking. In this stage, the online performance of hotel presence such as a website, booking engines, and review sites, proves its importance for guest booking decisions. You might wonder if this stage has no appearance of a hotel front office. However, guest impressions and experiences of the previous guest with the hotel front office profoundly affect the hotel’s online presence as hotel front desk management is the face of the whole business.
2. The Arrival stage showed the significant role of the hotel front office, welcoming guests at the reception desk. For visitors, who have already booked rooms, the hotel front office staff are only asked to fill in personal information before handing over the Room key and Registration card. Besides, the hotel front office would hand over the guest details into the hotel database for storing and analyzing purposes.
3. The occupancy period implies a perfect time for the hotel front desk to offer additional services and support. They are currency exchange, telephones, guest account management, and transport support. Also, the hotel front office clerk has to handle any issue that occurred during the stay, especially the pivotal services. In other words, during occupancy, the hotel front desk plays a connecting role between guests and all hotel services.
4. The departure stage, payment, and billing would be the primary concern of the hotel front office. During the guest departure time, front desk staff would offer a check-out process and also handle luggage.

Hotel front desk software in the real world

Due to the enormous task processing by the hotel front office, it is necessary to apply the power of IT innovation to reduce human tasks. In this way, hotel front desk software was born to enhance the optimization of hospitality services.

Front desk software used in hotels

Time-saving and human error elimination refer to the initial purpose of using front-office software. The rapid development of hospitality software development empowers hotel front office management with a hand of automation and accuracy.

In the past, long-time check-in counters made guests unsatisfied in the peak season. Today, mobile check-in, self-service check-in, or another type of automated check-in feature in front desk software reduces the wait time to zero. According to a survey done in hospitality in the US, Zero-wait check-in raises 50% of customer satisfaction. Check-in refers to an influential process in the hotel industry and never be a complete replacement. It helps hotel managers control the properties and guest identities for security purposes.

Due to the responsibility of connecting guests and other parts of hotel operations, the communication issue of front desk management also challenges hotel managers. In this case, hotel front desk software is used as an efficient solution to decentralize control of multi-channel bookings, and arrival and departure reception services. With the custom software development solution, front desk staff only needs to work with a single system to synchronize all necessary forms and information. Accordingly, it enables effective communication and smooth collaboration among all departments in the hotel.

Additionally, hotel front desk software supports staff in performing multitasks to reduce errors in stressful moments. Killing long process of traditional hotel front desk task, staff only need a feal click to solve most guest requirements, when all the history have been stored automatically. Accordingly, software solutions used in the hotel front office tend to be a primary application currently. It breaks through the next level in hospitality services.

Hotel front desk software systems: key functionalities and features

In terms of system functions, hotel front desk software offers a wide range of features assisting the operation. We will divide pivotal features based on the guest cycle.

Types of front office systems

Today, hotel businesses have a high incentive to use an all-in-one front office system that covers all the functionalities. However, each hotel needs custom system types to fit its operation demand. A whole system can be divided into various single systems supporting specific tasks.

1. Hotel point of sale (POS): it applies for automatically managing guest expenses during their stay. The hotel could register a guest with a POS account, which allows them to make requirements right in the system.
2. Self-service kiosk check-in: Without Wasting a long time for human receptionists, guests could use self-service check-in for having their reservation room. Self-service kiosk check-in is commonly set up in the reception area. All guest data will be directly driven into the central system for management purposes
3. Mobile check-in: Similar to self-service kiosk check-in, mobile check-in allows guests to process check-in right on their phones.
4. Digital key and card issuing tools help front desk staff go out of the storing problem of physical keys. Instead of classifying the appropriate key for the right room, the digital tool immediately allows issuing of a new key and card at the reception desk.

How does Hotel front desk software boost hotel operation?

Obviously, hotel front desk software highlights productivity and efficiency in the operation context. In the business context, adopting a front desk software development create more profit than we can imagine. Especially in the era of data and big data, besides hotel revenue, one of the priceless assets of hotels tends to be guest data. It can be the root of feature development.

Digital guest insight ready to use

Like other service businesses, the success of the hospitality industry depends on customer satisfaction. Unfortunately, guest experience or guest satisfaction would be an ambiguous concept without tools for analyzing their instant feeling. Customers have less incentive to reveal their flavors, including cuisine favor, health notices, favorite colors, extra pillows, or other non-critical information irrelated to the check-in detail.

By the traditional method, understanding your hotel guest was seemingly impossible, and it posed a threat to the process of hotel service improvement. Hotel front desk software, on the other hand, indicates an evolution in guest insight analytics. It changes the way hotel businesses explore customer behavior. Previous record stored insight databased can become valuable evidence for predicting guest action. Accordingly, you could handily offer tailor-made services suitable for each particular customer to maximize his/her experiences.

One of the amazing applications belonging to innovative front desk software is the ability to predict issues even when it has not happened. The typical case in the real world could be predicted overload and enable overbooking. If you can foresee the booking cancellation rate more accurately, you can allow overbooking, which accepts the number of bookings over the full hotel capacity to maximize room usage.

Accelerate workflow by task prioritizing feature

hotel front desk staff might get stuck with task orders at a stressful moment. At that time, they struggle to determine what work must be done first. Especially in a hotel chain where all processes need the standardized and speed must be the key to the operation, delays in the front desk process induce enormous problems damaging the whole hotel reservation system.

Custom front desk software developed to fit with the natural operation of each hotel would be the critical solution to solve the above problem. Technology in front office management will let you know precisely what task to be done right now and what should be in the queue. Leveraging authorism, task priority suggestions could be improved steadily based on real-world cases.

Custom suggestion features for training

The hotel front desk software also gives tools for not only the customer side but also internal staff training. Since all the performance can be recorded in numbers to assess staff soft skills like time management, communication, and problem-solving, front desk software could be used as a source of training lesions.

Based on records, the front office manager hotel could optimize the procedure documentation for applications in operation. Instead of the high cost of hiring a professional trainer with the risk of a business secret leak, all training processes currently can be done with in-house staff.

Adding automation in hotel management with front desk software

With the contribution of self-service receptions within hotel front desk software, you can lower the waiting time by leveraging the power of automation. In the past, communication via SMS or email for each order needs to process manually. Today, staff do it in one click. Notify email, pre-departure booking documents, and more, would be automatically sent to guests’ email addresses right after the booking is confirmed. All the task has been done in the system without staff keeping an eye on each case.

The major application for hotel automation in front desk software performance is payment. The front desk accounting tool assured the accuracy of any transaction. That also offers a high level of payment security, protecting guest privacy. Accordingly, hotel staff has more time to do more complicated tasks, such as serving customers.

In conclusion, hotel front desk management refers to the key to proving the hotel service quality to guests, which highly influences the experiences of hotel visitors. Along with the innovation of the hotel industry, front desk software solutions are commonly used to replace human tasks, which deter errors for better guest satisfaction. To not lag behind, hotel businesses have to keep up with the trend to survive and grow.