Is your front desk team sales oriented?
The vacancy ad read as follows
“We are looking for a Hotel Front Desk Agent to serve as our guests’ first point of contact and manage all aspects of their accommodation. Hotel Front Desk Agent responsibilities include registering and checking out guests, handling guest requests and complaints, providing information about the hotel, the available facilities and amenities. If you have a knack for customer service and work experience in the hotel industry, we’d like to meet you. Ultimately, you will help create a pleasant and memorable stay for our guests”.
The above is a fine example of a job brief that hardly differs from many other vacancy ads posted by hotels for a similar position. The terminology may slightly vary but they all spell out what a front desk agent or receptionist is required to do on the job.
Now, if one were to ask all front desk agents “In a nutshell what exactly do you do?” What would their answer be? Many of those who I have questioned, tell me in some way or another “I check in people, provide information, get them to settle their bills and check them out”. Indeed, a short apt and accurate job description. Rather unkindly, this comes across as “I am the hotel’s order taker cum debt collector”.
Which hotel team comes most ‘face to face’ or ‘voice to voice’ with guests daily? In the majority of hotels it is the front-desk staff. Why then do hotels fail to recognise that front desk agents can play a strong role in sales generation? What if one was to approach the front desk in a different perspective, where agents, instead of merely doing a repetitive job are also involved in creating sales and revenue opportunities? It may initially be difficult to convert front desk agents from order takers to sales generators, but it can be done. All it needs is a ‘shifting of the mindset’ and making that leap of faith.
Two of the simplest strategies employed by some hotels are in the age-old technique of Upselling and Cross-selling. This can occur during the booking process (converting the enquiry into a booking), the arrival (up-selling a room type), the stay (cross-selling) and the post stay (re-booking at check out). Before considering what area in a room can be monitised, it requires an understanding of what guests’ value and how much they are willing to pay for it.
Guests hate traditional check-in and check-out times. A large proportion of guests either arrive on early morning flights or leave on late afternoon flights, causing huge frustrations with the conventional check-in / check-out rule. This presents another area to focus on revenue success.
Tomorrow’s successful hotel brands will have to understand that data holds the key to building personalised relationships and delivering irresistible guest experiences. Every hotel has its slow days and nights thus giving front desk agents idle time when there aren’t many guests. So why not train them to take on additional tasks, such as: to flag reservations that were booked via an OTA, review OTA clients to see what companies they are with – all aimed at encouraging such guests to book direct, or sign up for a loyalty programme.
Hotels need to build a picture of their customer, extract actionable knowledge from it and share it so they can target services at guests and offer greater value. Given the opportunity to gather data on customer preferences while they’re staying at a hotel, the amount of data that simply slips away is beyond belief.
Ilzaf Keefahs - writes on hospitality related matters that he is passionate about, and likes to share his views with hoteliers and customers alike.
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