Once both parties agree, the hotel sends a letter confirming the details and essential hotel policies with a confirmation number. Both parties remain committed; the hotel reserves the accommodation, and the guest agrees to other charges, including cancellation fees.

The process seems straightforward, but the hotels have a team that handles every detail behind the scenes.

The Reservations Department is a section of the hotel’s Front Office Department consisting of the following roles:

1. Reservations Manager
2. Reservations Supervisor / Assistant Reservations Manager
3. Number of Reservations Agents

People call it a ‘four-step process,’ ‘five-step process,’ ‘seven-step process,’ and so on. However, there is no standard as it’s only a simple, logical process that may differ from hotel to hotel due to individual standards.

These steps are merely a combination of activities from initial inquiry to booking, payment information sharing, and other necessary documentation. 

1. Guaranteed Reservation

A reservation with a guarantee falls under the type of booking where the guest provides the number of the credit card or the deposit to confirm the room. With this, the hotel will reserve a room until guests arrive at an agreed time (or late at night). If the guest doesn’t arrive, the hotel will charge a no-show fee on the credit card or take it from the deposit.

2. Non-Guaranteed Reservation

This is also called a “courtesy hold.” A guest does not need to give a credit card or deposit for this kind of reservation. On the day of arrival, the hotel holds the accommodations for the visitor until a particular hour, usually 4 PM or 6 PM (but depending on hotel policy). After this time, the hotel has the right to cancel the reservation.

3. Wait-listed Reservation

A reservation is put on the waitlist when the room type or rates are unavailable per the guest’s wish. With the guest’s permission, the reservation is put on the list with a promise that the hotel will call the guest when the room is available. When another reservation is canceled, the hotel will contact the first guest on the waitlist to check if he/she is still interested and move forward accordingly.

What Does the Reservation Department Do In A Hotel?

The above section discussed a typical hotel reservation process. They also care for many things, from booking to the guest’s arrival at the hotel.

However, there are other duties and tasks a reservation department is responsible for:

• Policy and Procedure Compliance: Following the hotel’s policies and procedures regarding reservations, cancellations, no-shows, and data confidentiality and integrity.
• Despite handling direct booking calls, they are also responsible for cross-checking the inflow of reservations from various sources and channels to ensure proper details about the guest and the booking are recorded per the standards. For instance, if a booking comes down with an empty or wrong guest contact details, country or wrong segmentation of the booking, the hotel can face issues in contacting the guest, or it can falsify statistical reports.
• Managing and responding to booking-related inquiries promptly. Once the reservation is made, guests can contact the hotel for several reasons, such as altering the date, deposit-related issues, or cancellations. They must handle these through phone calls and emails.
• Trying to upsell the hotel’s products and services to direct callers by suggesting better offers available to the guests.
• Following up on tentative bookings and confirming or canceling reservations per standard procedures.
• Group and Event Bookings: Handling and placing group reservations, including meeting room rates, booking blocks of rooms, and working with sales and event planning teams.
• Keeping an eye on the hotel’s forecasting and managing availability effectively. For example, when seeing high demand, close the OTA (Online Travel Agent) channels and start selling more on the hotel website — saving on the commissions and reversing the process during low-demand times.
• Working closely with the revenue manager, assisting with required revenue metrics to help optimize pricing strategy regularly. Coordinating with the Front Office team to ensure guests have the best arrival experiences. For example, a guest might have a special request at the last minute through an email to the reservations team.
• Collaborating with the Sales and Marketing team for seasonal promotions. Sales and Marketing Support: The scheduling department may link with sales and marketing teams, which may promote special offers and packages, draw new guests, and encourage customer loyalty.
• Monitoring online channels to ensure accurate rate strategy and sell controls are reflected or working with the channel partners to correct them. Sometimes, due to technical issues, the recent rate updates or sell controls don’t get updated; it may result in wrong rates, breach of rate parity concerns without the hotel knowing it, or even overbooking situations when sell controls are not updated (not closing on specific channels). Note: Rate Parity is an agreement between the hotel and the other channel partners that room rates are consistent across all booking channels, including the hotel website.
• Working with the CRS (Central Reservations Systems) office, other channel partners, and hotel IT on daily issues.
• Inventory balancing between PMS (Property Management System) and CRS (Central Reservation System) in chain hotels. In this environment, a copy of the hotel’s PMS inventory is constantly synced with the CRS through integration, such as OXI, in an Opera PMS environment. Because of technical or operational reasons, there can be imbalances that will affect hotel bookings from CRS. If it is due to operational issues such as duplicate bookings in the PMS occupying more rooms, the reservations team is trained to handle it. If it is a technical reason, they coordinate with the hotel IT.
• Prepare and verify daily, weekly, and monthly reports for the management.
• Training and Development: Proper training and professional development of reservation personnel includes ongoing training and enhancement of their skills, knowledge of the tools and systems, and customer service abilities.