Pearson New International Edition International pcl tp indd 1

FRONT OFFICE SEMANTICS
Rate resistance:
Refusal to make a reservation because the rate quoted is perceived to be too high.
The revenue manager and the DOSM need not schedule tedious meetings,
but they must be able to make decisions, coordinate their efforts, and adjust
rate strategies as conditions dictate. The DOSM should recognize that the
revenue manager can provide important input about the number of rooms to
be sold by group sales and the number to be held for transient guests.
For example, assume that a business-oriented hotel has 300 rooms. The
hotel’s sales department has a client that wants all 300 rooms on a Wednesday
two months in the future. If the sales department makes the sale, no rooms will
be available on that Wednesday night for any other guests. Assume also that
the hotel has a core of approximately 50 transient business guests who check in
every Monday and stay through Friday morning. In this case, the decision to
make the group sale would mean that some revenue generated from the 300-
room group would merely displace a significant amount of revenue that the
hotel would have received from its 50 transient business travelers. Each of these
frequent guests would now be staying at another property, and they may be suf-
ficiently upset to stay there again.