Recording reservations.

Today I'm going to talk about some of the traditional ways of recording reservations. Of course some hotels use computers nowadays, but one thing is the same for almost all hotels, and that is that when the guest makes a reservation, the details of the reservation are written down on a piece of paper — that's before we enter the information into any other record, and before we key into a computer, or anything else. The reservation is noted down.

How do we do this? Well, in most hotels, you would find a standard reservation form. Now, you can see a reservation form is useful in several ways. First of all it acts as a check-list. It helps you to make sure that you get all the necessary information from the person.

Secondly, it standardizes the information. It gives the information in the same place and the same order for every guest, and that means we can find the information very quickly when we want it. And thirdly, it reminds us to tell the guest certain things — things he should know, like the rate for the room.

OK, so we've filled in the reservation form. Next, we can enter all the reservations into a reservation diary under the date when the guests are due to arrive under the date of arrival. Of course, this is a loose-leaf diary, you can take pages out and put them in as you want. So you have a new page for each day of arrival. Each new page goes at the back of the diary, and each old page is removed from the front, after the guests for that day have arrived. Of course each page may have the names of several arriving guests. Remember that these names aren't in alphabetical order. They are written down in the order in which they make their reservation.

OK, the diary is fine for checking for arrivals, but it doesn't tell at a glance which of your rooms are going to be occupied and for how long. It's useful to know the advance occupation of each room, especially in hotels with many different types of room.

So we record the advance reservations on a reservation chart. It's useful when there are many different types of room because you can see immediately which type of room is available and match each room with the guest's requirements. And of course it's also useful in hotels where guests stay quite a long time, I mean three nights or more. Without a chart you may not easily see when the room will become available. So it is often used in the older, resort type of hotel, where guests often stay for several days and book a long time in advance.

Small Hotels Rise Above the Trade Clamour.

I actually like business hotels. I also enjoy small, eccentric, proprietor-run hotels in out-of-the-way places, particularly if they are as good as those in big international chains.

The two categories are not mutually exclusive, merely different. To advocate the charms and advantages of the one, you do not have to bad-mouth the other.

But that is what happens, with the result that business hotels are often portrayed as havens of gloom: monotonous, charmless, standardised, bland, money-grabbing.

In the UK, for example, the Good Hotel Guide, which is published by the Consumers' Association, has long waged on heroic campaign on behalf of "small hotels of character".

Puzzlingly, however, the Good Hotel Guide is rather fond of making its case on behalf of small hotels of character by slapping — very hard — what it calls large business-oriented city hotels. What it says is that there are no good hotels in big industrial centres.

The guide takes a powerful swipe at business hotels. "There are plenty of hotels to choose from in any industrial centre. But most large business-oriented city hotels are relatively indistinguishable one from another. They may differ in their architecture and facilities: some will have air-conditioning, four-posters and mini-bars, more spacious public areas, more boutiques.

"And of course their management and service may be smart and spick and span or, alternatively, slack, snooty or sullen. That can make a difference. But however good a big corporation-owned city hotel may be of its kind, it will rain the hotel equivalent of convenience food. And some of us want something else when we travel abroad’’

The guide continues to say that the bad — or at least the mediocre — drives out the good.

"Trust house Forte," it says, "has made a huge contribution to raising the standards of hotel catering in Britain, but it is no accident that the guide lists no more than one THF hotel.

"When it acquires an old hotel, THF will certainly improve its facilities, put in baths en-suite and colour televisions, and yet, again and again, its presence is a kind of half-life kiss. And the same is true about the acquisitions of all the other large chains... who are in the business of catering more for customers en masse rather than the individual." This is almost entirely unfair.

It is ridiculous to claim that however good a big.corporation-owned city hotel may be, it will remain the equivalent of "convenience food."

A good example is the Ritz Hotel, Madrid, a THI property, which is bang in the middle of a large city bears as much resemblance to convenience food as caviar to cat food.

It is an excellent establishment in anyone's language: distinctive, distinguished and managed with great flail sensitivity.

Big is not synonymous with second rate. There probably more good big hotels than there are good little hotels. A really good big hotel is probably a better hotel| for the business traveler to stay in.

Business travelers stay in big hotels — so called business hotels, though the description has more to do with marketing than with anything else — because at the end of the business day what they need, most of them, is something functional, familiar and efficient. If all business travelers were fed up with big hotels they would stay in little ones. But they do not. As a matter of fact, it has often occurred to me that good big business hotels are often a better place in which to spend a holiday than good big holiday hotels, because they are not overrun by tourists. And they are certainly miles better than poor small holiday hotels.

At least in my opinion.

(Adapted from the "Financial Times")

BEYOND ROOM SERVICE.

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