Pearson New International Edition International pcl tp indd 1

FRONT OFFICE PROPERTY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
R2—Rooms Management
Assume that a hotel sells all 400 of its rooms on a Tuesday night because of a large con-
ference being held at the hotel on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. On Wednesday,
however, most conference guests check out at noon during their last meeting break. As a
result, nearly 400 rooms occupied on Wednesday morning become vacant (and ready to be
cleaned) at noon on Wednesday. Not surprisingly, many Wednesday night guests arriving
at 3:00 p.m. (the hotel’s posted check-in time) learn that their rooms are not ready for
them, even though all of the hotel’s available housekeepers are busy cleaning the rooms
vacated at noon.
How can front desk agents remain updated about the availability of clean guestrooms
so that no guest is checked into a room that has not been properly cleaned and inspected?
How can agents know as soon as clean rooms are available so that they can assign them to
the growing crowd in the hotel’s lobby? (Note that some guests will not understand that the
stated check-in time is not guaranteed, nor will they care about the hotel’s problems arising
from the extensive number of noontime check-outs.)
A hotel’s front office staff interacts with every department in the hotel. Therefore, its
PMS must interface with many other data- and information-generating systems.