Pearson New International Edition International pcl tp indd 1

GUEST CHARGES, PAYMENT, AND CHECK-OUT
purchases were made because the picture quality on the first movie was unaccept-
able. He had called the front desk to request that someone adjust the television, a
maintenance employee corrected the situation, and he repurchased the same movie.
The front desk agent checks the maintenance log at the front desk, which confirms
Mr. Gitmore’s description of events. So the first movie charge is removed from Mr.
Gitmore’s bill.
FRONT OFFICE SEMANTICS
Maintenance log:
Written record of guest-initiated maintenance repair or service requests received by
the front desk and monitored to ensure their prompt completion.
In this case, the following combination of actions would be used to settle
Mr. Gitmore’s bill:
Item
Action
1. Room and tax charges
Transferred to a direct bill account to be
settled on the group’s departure
2. Movie charge 1
Adjusted by a transfer to a designated
house account
3. Movie charge 2
Billed to guest’s American Express 
payment card
Mr. Gitmore could have paid his movie charge with cash rather than with his
American Express card, or he could have paid by a combination of cash and payment
card. Regardless, the purpose of account settlement is to bring the amount due in the
guest’s folio to a zero balance even when a combination of financial transactions is
required to do so.
No-Show Billing
No-show billings are special cases of account settlement. Technically they involve
“guests” who have never checked in and cannot, therefore, be checked out. In some
hotels, FOMs actually check no-shows into rooms and then immediately or, during
the night audit, settle the guest accounts.
Regardless of how no-shows are recorded, guests with guaranteed reservations
who do not check in on their arrival date are included in a hotel’s total count of guest
reservations. Each hotel has a no-show billing policy, and the FOM must enforce it.
Usually this involves charging no-show guests a one night’s room charge if the charge
is justified. Each potential no-show charge should be evaluated to determine if the
charge should be assessed. Sometimes the decision is not clear-cut. Consider the fol-
lowing no-shows with guaranteed reservations researched by the Altoona Hotel’s
FOM after a busy night:
•
Jerry Marshall arrived one day early. As he was already in the hotel, he did not
cancel his original reservation. The PMS listed Mr. Marshall as a no-show the
following night.
•
Thomas Ryan arrived at the hotel claiming he had a reservation, but he had no
confirmation number. No reservation was found under his name. The front
desk agent checked him in as a walk-in. That evening, the PMS identified the
reservation of “Ryan Thomas” as a no-show.
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