The Front Office Manager is responsible for supervising all front office staff, including the AFOM, Duty Manager, FO Supervisor, Receptionist, Reservations Agent, Guest Relations Officer, Driver, and Porter. The Manager reports to the General Manager and is responsible for directing and coordinating the activities of the front desk, reservations, guest services, and telephone areas, ensuring proper completion of all front office duties. The Manager prepares monthly reports and budgets for the front office department.
The Front Office Manager has various accountabilities, including training, cross-training, and retraining front office personnel, scheduling front office staff, supervising workload during shifts, and evaluating the job performance of each employee. The Manager maintains working relationships with all departments, maintains master key control, and verifies that accurate room status information is maintained and communicated. The Manager resolves guest problems quickly, efficiently, and courteously and updates group information, maintains, monitors, and prepares group requirements, and relays information to appropriate personnel.
The Manager works within the allocated budget for the front office, receives information from the previous shift manager and passes on pertinent details to the oncoming manager, and enforces all cash-handling, check-cashing, and credit policies. The Manager conducts regularly scheduled meetings of front office personnel, prepares performance reports related to the front office, maximizes room revenue and occupancy by reviewing status daily, and analyzes rate variance, monitors credit reports, and maintains close observation of daily house counts.
The Front Office Manager monitors high balance guests and takes appropriate action, ensures implementation of all hotel policies and house rules, operates all aspects of the Front Office computer system, including software maintenance, report generation and analysis, and simple configuration changes, prepares revenue and occupancy forecasting, and ensures logging and delivery of all messages, packages, and mail in a timely and professional manner.
The Manager ensures that employees are, at all times, attentive, friendly, helpful, and courteous to all guests, managers, and other employees, maintains required pars of all front office and stationary supplies, reviews daily Front Office work, and reviews reports generated by Night Audit touching on the department. The Manager reviews the Front Office log book and Guest feedback forms on a daily basis, maintains an organized and comprehensive filing system with documentation of billing, vouchering, schedules, forecasts, reports, and tracking logs, and supervises the activities and service levels of the Front Desk, Concierge/Porters.
The Manager monitors the Front Office employees to make sure all guests receive prompt and personal recognition, promotes the basic habits of smiling, greeting guests by name, and thanking guests. The Manager ensures that check-in procedures are strictly adhered to and that the correct guest details and charge-out details are obtained from each guest, oversees the VIP guest process, including, but not limited to, reviewing VIP reservations, inspecting cleanliness/amenities in VIP rooms, and ensuring smooth check-in/check-out.
The Front Office Manager assists in monitoring front office financial operations and ensures front office compliance with accounting controls and procedures, ensures that luggage is delivered to and collected from rooms speedily, and ensures that enquiries, messages, and bookings are dealt with courteously and efficiently. The Manager conducts daily pre-shifts to communicate activities and/or special information/resolve issues/train staff, communicates through pre-shift logs, emails, and departmental meetings all pertinent information for the respective shift and areas of operation.
The Manager ensures that all records and documents are maintained as per standards laid down by the management, controls group and individual reservations to ensure maximum occupancy, assists in the daily maintenance of room inventory status to achieve optimal levels of revenues while maintaining high levels of guest expectations, and co-ordinates the preparation of duty rosters and ensures all shifts are manned in relation to the amount of work. The Manager ensures that all staff in the department are correctly and smartly dressed
