Pearson New International Edition International pcl tp indd 1

FRONT OFFICE SEMANTICS
Walk-in:
Guest wanting to rent a room who arrives at the hotel without an advance reservation.
Assume also that the PMS’s walk-in report indicates that the average number of
walk-ins each Saturday was 25. Using this past (historical) information, the FOM
can better estimate (forecast) the number of walk-ins the hotel is likely to receive this
coming Saturday. Based on this estimate, the FOM can establish an appropriate sell-
ing price for the hotel’s remaining available rooms.
Understanding Past Performance
In the hotel business, the best prediction of what will happen in the future often relates
to what has happened in the past. Therefore, maintenance and use of historical data are
critical parts of a FOM’s job, and the PMS is used for these purposes. Nearly all FOMs
can discover what has happened in the past. Better FOMs know what is happening now.
The best FOMs can predict, with great accuracy, what will happen in the future. Because
of the tremendous amount of information available through the PMS, the challenge is
to decide precisely what historical data should be collected and analyzed.
In some cases, the hotel’s general manager or one of several department heads will
want specific historical data. Consider Jodi Guild, the director of sales at a 400-room,
full-service property. She controls the advertising budget for the hotel and wants to
know where her hotel’s guests come from. The PMS report in Figure 6 indicates the
states whose residents generate the most business for the hotel. Information for this
report is found in the guest history portion of the PMS data files.
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