МДК 04.02 Виды и способы бронирования

Booking procedure

What is a Tentative Booking?

• A tentative reservation is one in which the hotel has not sent a confirmation letter to the guest and as a result has not received a confirmation from. In this case the hotel may hold the room till a particular time period also known as stipulated time period or a cut-off date, by which the hotel must receive the confirmation from the guest. Most hotels sent a confirmation letter, acknowledging the details of the guest within 8- hrs, 24-hrs or 48-hrs of receiving the reservation details. The guest in turn may be given a time period, a week or so (stipulated time or cut-off date) to confirm their reservation.

Confirmed reservation

• Guaranteed reservation
• In this guest confirms the booking by paying a conformational charge and on another hand hotel also hold the room request until specific due dates and time of arrival. It protects hotel revenue in case of no-show until cancellation is done as per hotel rules.

• Non –guaranteed reservation
• A conditional reservation or simple agreement between guest and the hotel in which hotel agrees to hold the room until 6 pm on the date of arrival. If the guest fails to attain within cancellation hours, the room will be released for resale.

Waitlisted Reservation

• A reservation is waitlisted when a requested category of room is not available for the requested dates. A waitlisted reservation will be confirmed when a hotel receives a request for cancellation in the same category. The hotel does not guarantee a room in case of a waitlisted reservation, it is understood that the room will be assigned to the guest in case of a cancellation or a no show. While processing the reservation a hotel informs the guest that their reservation request is on waitlist status and can be confirmed at a later date if some rooms are made available due to cancellation. This situation normally occurs during high occupancy time. To avoid overbooking (A situation when the total number of rooms reserved for a certain period of time exceeds the total number of rooms available for sale), the reservation department makes a list of the waitlist on the basis of the earlier records of reservation compared to actual arrivals. The hotel keeps clearing waitlists on a regular basis as per the cancellations received and the overbooking level for the day.

Sources of Reservation

• 1. Travel agent
• Travel agent acts as a middleman between guest and hotel by making a reservation for a guest. A travel agent may make a reservation for FITs (Free individual travellers) or chance guests.

• 2. Companies/corporate houses
• The companies may book rooms or other services for their visitors, executives, delegators or clients in a hotel at special rates.

• 3. Airlines
• Different airlines book hotel rooms for their regular crew members or for their clients in case of cancellation of their onward flights and also for the use of their executives.

• 4. Embassies/consulates
• They provide large business in capital cities for their visiting dignitaries, executive, officers etc
• .

• 5. NGOs/INGOs
• These group book hotel rooms directly for conducting seminars, research, training programmes etc.

• 6. Government Office and Ministries
• The can be a good source of reservation of rooms for several visiting dignitaries, executive, officers from different countries to participate conference and seminars conducted and hosted by government officials.

• 7. Personal approach
• The may directly give their reservation to the hotel. They are also termed as FITs (Free individual travellers) or chance guest. Those guest are also termed as walk-in guests.

Modes of Reservation

• The reservation may come from the guest directly through the different organization but the medium through which the reservation requests reach the hotel are also different and they are as follows:

1. Letter

• 2. Telephone
• Today’s most common system is a telephonic reservation. These are a faster way of getting confirmation and are handled directly by reservation staff. Guest can directly reserve hotel rooms through the telephone.

• 3. FAX (Far access Xerox)
• The most common and cheapest modes of reservation in which written statement and graphics are transmitted over telephone lines.

• 4. CRS (central reservation system)
• Many hotels have their own CRS network which allows direct reservation access to a travel agent, clients through their own network.

• 5. In person
• A person can directly arrive at the hotel to seek reservation which is usually low in practice
• 6. E-mail/internet
• Due to fast advancement and development of internet all over the world, today most of the hotel allows reservation online on the internet through their websites. Even reservation sent on e-mail is accepted..

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. It makes use of the works of Mateus Machado Luna.