THE HOTEL FRONT DESK: A SLIPPERY WORK ENVIRONMENT?

The hotel front desk is unlike front desks of many businesses normally referred to as the reception desk. Regardless of the class or type of the hotel, the front desk is the most visible and the focal point of a hotel’s activity. It is the communication center of the hotel with a great amount of guest contact. 

The functions of the hotel front desk include the sale of hotel rooms, guest registration and room assignments; the handling of guest requests, maintenance of guest accounts, cashiering and providing information. The financial tasks usually handled by front desk personnel include receiving cash payments, handling guest folios, verifying cheques, handling foreign currency and credit cards.

During my time at the front desk, hotels in Ghana could generally be considered to be 'manual.'  The front desk had a metal file system that consisted of pockets to hold rooming and reservations slips, called the room rack. It is from this system that the term 'rack rate', the undiscounted price a hotel will charge for a room, is derived. 

Many mid-sized and small hotel operations in Ghana are still largely manual. Few are semi-automated and unsophisticated with very little controls, considering the computerization and other technological updates in the hotel world today. The consequences are leakages in hotel revenues.

When I first entered the hotel industry as a front desk clerk, my immediate supervisor said to me, ‘in this business there is plenty of money, plenty of males and plenty of food and drinks…’ 

I in turn, have over the years, amended  this warning to: ‘there is plenty of money, plenty of females and males and plenty of food and drinks.’ The temptations to ‘borrow’ money or give in to the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes are strong. 

My supervisor was cautioning a then naïve young lady to be self disciplined and to uphold good morals. I am glad he did; for it is easy to get caught up in the schemes of unsuspected guests, even coworkers or even loose guard of one's own values if those values are not deep rooted.

As a manager in the industry, I have met a few front desk personnel get themselves into trouble when they genuinely went out of their way to help or offer services requested for by guests; failure to follow procedures. Alas, there are too many stories, however, about theft and practices of fraud front desk personnel get themselves entangled in:

A potential guest walks in, requesting for a room. He claims he cannot afford the full rate of the room so the front desk personnel, whether or not empowered, agrees to slash the room rate and fails to formally register the guest. The guest comes in at a particular time of the day,and is expected to leave by a specific time least this scheme be discovered. Obviously, the money paid is not accounted for. Somehow, personnel find ways to ensure the room looks clean. Should the room be partially accounted for, be sure there will be no receipt to cover the transaction. 
Front office personnel write paid outs to guests even there has been no transaction. This may never be discovered as this process involves withdrawal of cash from the front office float staff. 
Services intended to be complimentary are charged to guests who may not be in-house without accounting for it. 

When it comes to credit card fraud, a number of our small hotels seem to be immune to it since most of them do not accept credit cards.However personnel have ways of making money off hotels which operate forex bureau.

Inaccuracies in records may also lead to fraud. This may be prevalent in manual and semi-automated front offices where personnel post wrong charges to guest folios and the same individual does the night auditing function. Sometimes non-resident guests may make cash payments on outstanding account balances by cash and these are sometimes not accounted for.

These practices are heart breaking since the front desk position is one of  many positions in hotels where personnel can easily climb up to become hotel managers.

My research seems to suggest that eliminating employee theft entirely is almost impossible. The problem of employee theft in hotels is an age-old problem, they say. Hotels, by nature, present numerous opportunities for employee theft, from guests and the house. No employer hires an employee thinking that the employee is someday going to steal.   

Perhaps an orientation addressing the above and educating personnel on developing their career goals in this industry may serve as caution signage from slipping.

UNPREPAREDNESS OF HOTEL FRONT DESK PERSONNEL

No-one works at a hotel front desk unprepared, right? Right! (and I hope you are agreeing with me).

Indeed, hotels pride themselves on the level of interaction they provide at the front desk. It is one of the few service components they lean on to differentiate themselves from their competitors.

The front desk serves as the hub of a hotel’s operation. This is the area from which guests register and depart, where the current occupancy status of the hotel is maintained, where inquiries are answered and requests for services are dispatched, and for many hotels in Ghana, it may be the only department that is staffed 24 hours each day.

A good orientation of front desk personnel involves drilling into them the invaluable worth of service they provide. Preparations towards taking a position at the front desk are therefore quite intensive in most hotels irrespective of size or standard. Personnel are given a variety of technical skills including operating telephone systems, handling operational software, printers, copy machines, fax machines and other equipment.

Personnel are also prepared to handle common challenges they are likely to encounter with guests.

For instance guests with reservations expect rooms to be ready when they walk in. Arriving guests tend to forget that departure guests check-out at 12 pm and some really ‘take it on’ the front desk personnel who cannot find them a clean room to check-in at 12 pm.  

Room status discrepancies (that is, when the cleaning status of a room for the front office is recorded differently by the housekeeping) and reservations are also common problems which serious hotel managers have developed systems to resolve. Generally, personnel have also been readied for ‘self inflicted’ incidences like overbooking (usually created by the hotel). 

Front desk personnel must have the requisite skills and qualities to maintain an efficient, well organized reception desk. They must keep track of details and procedures, keep accurate records, and maintain files that are easy to access and understand. They are also expected to keep the front desk free of clutter so their work space presents a professional appearance to guests and co-workers.

Communication is critical for front desk personnel. Strong interpersonal skills, problem solving and staying calm under pressure are a few of the soft skills expected of them.

Personnel are often trained to endure the anger of guests, ‘it’s part of the job,’ they are told.

When it comes to unexpected incidences, one wonders if management understands the challenges their front desk personnel face. Are personnel empowered to deal with the unexpected?

EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED

It was a time of intense danger. The streets were being patrolled by ECOMOG troops. One observation I had made in this West African country was the high walls which enclosed their hotels.

That particular day, about mid morning, there was continuous banging of the high iron gate. It was a small group of soldiers. They were allowed inside the hotel. With angry demeanor, they demanded the front desk personnel to ‘produce a guest’ whom they claimed was taking pictures of them from a balcony of the hotel. 

More recently as a guest in a small hotel outside of Accra  and here in Ghana, the telephone in my room rang at an odd time, about midnight. It was the manager on duty asking me to assist, knowing who I was. The issue? A team from the national security task force had arrived at the hotel insisting that a guest ‘be produced.’

  

What is disturbing is that usually such demands come with threats; ‘if you don’t, we…’, and they are not ready to be questioned.

Their threat was no different from the experience I encountered at the West African country  I narrated above; which was that they would apply force to open guestrooms to look for their culprit.

SEXUAL HARASSMENT

Some well-respected guests sometimes make remarks, suggestions and gestures which may too well be labeled as sexual harassment. Persisting guests go to the extreme of offering money which may easily entice female personnel.

Managers tell the personnel, ‘Just say no’, tell him ‘you’re not interested’, tell him ‘you don’t date guests’, tell him ‘it’s against policy’; make it clear and make it simple. But it’s not that simple, is it?

True, some men quickly back down and apologize. Others are persistent and start upping the price, ‘Well what about $50. . .No. Okay 100 . . . What do you mean no. . . . Okay I will go up to 150.’ 

‘Mr. Persistent’ stays up at the front desk sometimes for hours. 

There are no video tapes or manuals of how to deal with sexual harassment from such guests; at least none that I have ever seen or heard of. 

There are managers and employers who 'come down' on victims (female personnel in particular) for being ‘rude’ to guests. Do these managers and employers care? Indeed, in Ghana, is this an issue?

INFORMATION HUB CHALLENGES

Although it has been many years, I still clearly recall the day I said, ‘I don’t know,’ to an inquiry made at the front desk.

It was at Continental Hotel, now Golden Tulip, Accra.  After efficiently checking in two groups of airline crew, a few of the crew members came down asking questions about a film and where it was being shown. I did not know, so I said the obvious, ‘I don’t know’. The response I received made me want the ground to open up and swallow me! I did learn a lesson I was not taught in the classroom.

Thankfully today we have goggle map and various means to access information. No front office staff should have an excuse for not providing accurate information. Indeed, today’s guests have also become self-informed, but there are times when one really wants and needs some local insider's information and that is where front desk personnel miss it.

HANDLING PHYSICALLY CHALLENGED GUESTS

For some guests, the trip from the hotel front door to the front desk is sometimes a major inconvenience, and this really rests solely on operators to alleviate. 

Welcoming guests with disabilities is sometimes a huge challenge for front desk personnel particularly where front desks have not been made disability friendly. A guest may come in a wheelchair or needing some special attention. Personnel are usually not ready.

CRITICAL OTHER
What happens if a guest faints when being checked in?
I was shocked at the panic that broke out and the mishandling of a guest who blacked-out at a hotel front desk.

I asked myself how many front office personnel have any training in first aid.

As I ponder over all of the above, a basic challenge I have found out recently is the unwillingness of personnel to be trained.

HOTEL FRONT DESK: THE QUESTION OF SITTING OR STANDING

Most noticeable at hotel front desks worldwide are standing front desk agents. Inevitably, throughout my working life at hotel front desks I also experienced this –not sitting down behind the front desk. Reason..? There was no stool or chair to sit on! This never caught my attention until I found myself working at the hotel front desk. It was a workplace culture shock; however, once I plunged in, I went along with it.

The mode of operations of hotel front desks have metamorphosed over the years! Some of us never imagined the key rack would become redundant, yet today if you should see one at a front desk, it would only be serving as an antique as at La Beach Hotel, Accra! Technology has taken over what once used to be a complex manual information management system particularly in hotels with more than one hundred rooms. Despite these changes, I continue to see front desk agents still standing behind their desks and it seems it is becoming a concern for our ‘Millennials’ ( those born between the early 1980s and the early 2000s) working in the industry.

Those days, if If I recall right, standing was really never an issue in my days at the front desk. A 6am to 2pm shift went so fast that I hardly realized I had been standing for that long (there was often an hour’s break or two 30-minutes’ break). The 2pm-10 pm shift seemed a bit slower particularly in the early hours of the shift, but it was ‘no big deal’ standing behind the desk. The deep night shift (10p.m to 6a.m) which I did occasionally, included night auditing and generating reports (manually); often kept me wide awake and on my feet all night through the early hours of the morning!

A few hotels (can count them on my fingers), are beginning to place chairs/stools behind their front desks. My findings are that while some personnel do not mind, many more  have very strong views against standing at the front desk.

Management policy

The general corporate standard is a "no-chair" policy at the front desk. Personnel are expected to stand, so sitting is a NO-NO!

The public may not know but there are chairs at the back office where staff may go and sit if they need to. This provision though thoughtful of management may become a snare. Guests going to hotels which operate on lean staff often meet an empty front desk and find themselves often calling for attention and service.

Guests' opinions

Generally guests do not seem to expect front desk agents standing 100% of the time. Some guests do not actually see any problem with the front desk agents sitting down at the front desk so long as the agent is professional and courteous in handling them. Guests expect that when they approach the front desk, staff stand up.

With some other guests, what matters is that the chair or stool provided for the front desk agent is high enough for the counter so that they (guests) do not have to come announcing their presence (for sometimes, staff are so buried in administrative duties sitting on the lower chairs, they hardly notice the presence of a guest).

Front Desk Agents' opinions

A number of front desk agents do not get the whole "sitting isn't professional" idea, usually given by management. They think the policy is absurd.

Front desk agents who work the deep night shift feel no one is coming through during those hours so there is 'nothing wrong grabbing a chair and sitting behind the desk' at the dead of the night. They suggest their colleagues working the day shift sit on a stool behind the desk ‘when it's slow.’ They also suggest that when their colleagues see guests approaching, they stand to interact with the guests. According to them, they conduct themselves in the same manner, during the night shift. Yet I have seen front desk agents fast asleep on the floor behind the front desk after midnight!

Other front desk agents’ opinions are influenced by the sight of their managers sitting behind their chairs at the back office while they(the front desk agents) are standing. Many complain about their backs, knees and feet hurting and have even concluded that management does not care about the welfare of the employees. A few front desk agents play the 'cat and mouse' game (when the cat's away, the mice will play); standing when management is around and sitting when management is out of sight. That can be very tiring, I think!

Top of Form

Standing or Sitting?

First, if you were a front desk agent, how would you feel sitting down while checking in a guest who is up standing?

As personnel working in the hospitality industry we must be aware that our work environment is international irrespective of the location of the hotel.  If we were actors on a stage, our audience would be multi-cultural. Whether we are conscious of it or not, we are engaged in cross-cultural communications; different cultures are sensitive to various verbal and non-verbal exchanges, work values, view points and different practices.

Standing or sitting should really not be about us, front desk agents. Our guests' expectations matter.

A business environment where participants from different countries or regions interact, bringing different values, viewpoints and business practices. Often this setting requires substantial training and employee support.

Read more: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/cross-culture.html

different countries or regions interact, bringing different values, viewpoints and business practices. Often this setting requires substantial training and employee support.

Read more: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/cross-culture.html

different countries or regions interact, bringing different values, viewpoints and business practices. Often this setting requires substantial training and employee support.

Read more: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/cross-culture.html

My Opinion
The traditional design of the front desk is a standing desk. To sit behind it would therefore require a stool high enough that anyone sitting on it may be seen by the guest. However, should a standard chair be used, several things could go amiss.

I once went to a hotel to make a reservation. It was a Sunday afternoon. The front desk agent on duty was sitting on a standard chair behind a traditional front desk.  I did not see her until I got real close to the counter. She on her part was so engrossed eating her fufu and palm nut soup, it was not until I said ‘hello’ that she looked up, obviously very embarrassed and I, equally embarrassed.  

A hotel in Takoradi provides seats for both the front desk agent and the guest. The desk however, is not of the traditional front desk design. It makes sense to offer seats for both parties, but as indicated the traditional desk design was not in use. 

Hotels generally operate 24/7 irrespective of size; big, medium or small, compelling front desk agents to run a shift system. Standing throughout an 8-hour shift is not peculiar to front desk agents! There are several hotel personnel, bell men and porters, waiters, restaurant hostesses and bar personnel, who all stand throughout their shift. They are all front line personnel. Should they be provided with stools/chairs like the banks do at their teller counters? Mind you, while our visitors are 'guests' to us, they are 'customers' to banks, so there should be no comparison between these two distinct service worlds as some mistakenly do.

Fortunately our large hotels with adequate front desk and uniformed personnel will hopefully not have this 'headache.'

By the way, there is almost always a backroom (back office) where there are seats which can be used by front desk agents when business is slow. So what is the fuss? There must always be a presence at the front of the house unless the front desk is of a fully automated self registration operation (yet to see in Ghana)!

Guests approaching a front desk form impressions; negative impressions will obviously be formed if there is no presence at the desk.

A CCTV appropriately installed will enable a front desk agent resting at the back office to view anyone walking towards the the entrance. 

I have observed that in small hotels where just one person operates during a shift,  the front desk agent is often multi-tasked, carrying out a number of minor accounts work on a computer buried behind the high counter.

To stand or to sit depends on the time of day and perceived traffic flow.

On the part of front desk agents, resting adequately before the work shift (which many fail to do), preparing the mind and wearing comfortable shoes could all contribute to reducing the strain and stress of standing for long hours.

A win-win solution?

Redesign the front desk with multi level counter tops (as in the picture above); working heights should be comfortable to write on with both the guest and the front desk agent either sitting or both parties standing. In such work spaces, front desk agents would naturally stand when interacting with guests and when carrying out other administrative duties, they will have the choice to sit.

Another challenge likely to crop up is having an appropriate stool/chair for the guest who would rather sit- a food for thought.