In order to have an accurate record of all the rooms available to sell, all reservations made and cancelled must be charted. If it is overstated the request will be refused when space is available, and if all bookings are not recorded, then inadvertent overbooking may occur.
The booking chart has to be checked to establish whether or not it is possible to accept a reservation, or whether it has to be put on the waiting list or even refused.
All reservation charts follow the principle of showing the number of 'room nights' that are available in the hotel. This is done for each specific room on a 'conventional chart', or for groups of rooms on a 'density chart'.
Conventional Chart
The conventional chart shows each room in the hotel individually.
The room type is noted next to the room number. The chart is usually used in smaller hotels, where room types may differ substantially. It is particularly common in the older hotel with a great variety of rooms, a long average guest stay (three or more nights), a long lead time of reservations and repeat business.
The receptionist will allocate a room at the time of booking and note this in the diary. An entry is made on the chart in pencil (so that alterations can be made), with the name of the guest or a reference number by the booking.
The following should be noted when using a conventional chart:
• entries must be made in pencil so that alterations can be made
• the arrows should run form the centre of each day as this corresponds with the hotel ‘day’ of midday
• if it is a short booking then the folio number from the diary should be used rather than the guest name
• chance bookings, extension of stay, rooms off and early departure must be noted so that the chart is always accurate
Figure 5.3 Conventional reservation chart
This form of chart is ideal for the smaller hotel, but it becomes difficult to see whether or not space is available as the hotel becomes full. Often a booking may be taken by ‘juggling’ the existing bookings. This means that an entry may be changed two or three times before the guests actually arrives at the hotel and consequently, they are not informed of their room number until they actually register. A conventional chart can be very time-consuming to keep up-to-date, and errors often result in lower occupancy.
Density Chart
Larger hotels use a density chart to record their bookings. With the density chart, rooms are classified into groups of a similar type and no allocation of a specific room is made until the guest arrives at the hotel. This is ideal for modern hotels where all the rooms are similar, with only the floor level and view from the window changing. The density chart is also more useful where the guests stay is short, for entries can be made quickly and easily changed if necessary. As with the conventional chart, chance bookings, extensions, early departures, etc., all have to be noted on the chart to make sure it is a true picture of the reservation position. This is often checked by the reservation manager, who can compare the numbers of rooms left on the chart, with the actual number of guests in the hotel (and due to arrive) on a given day.
Density Reservation Chart
Figure 5.4 shows a density reservation chart in which each page represents one week and the pages are headed with months and dates, and stores in a loose-leaf binder. Entries are made in pencil.
Tours are entered quickly by ruling off the appropriate number of rooms. The name of the tour is entered on the bottom line for quick reference. Each circle represents a ‘room night’. The squares are for overbooking. There are 11 twin rooms in the hotel and allowance has been made for overbooking two twins. (The total overbooking allowance is 7 rooms.)
Fig 5.4 Density reservation chart
It can be seen a density chart is much more ‘visual’ that a conventional chart and a reservation clerk could easily check whether or not space is available. Also it is possible to see the
Stop-Go Chart
In large hotels there would be a bottleneck if every reservation clerk had to refer to the booking chart every time they handled a reservation request. This is overcome by a visual ‘stop-go’ chart which is prominently displayed in the reservation office. This chart summarises the information on the main chart. It shows at a glance whether or not to accept a booking. There is space for each day of the year.
Figure 5.5 shows a section of a stop-go chart. From this is can be seen that there are no single available on 7th January and 2nd, 3rd and 4th of February, in addition there are not twins on 7th January. It is fully booked for 2nd February. Most large hotels install charts similar to this in their reservation office and the information is updated as necessary by the reservation supervisor.
Key:
No Singles No Twins No Doubles
Figure 5.5 Part of a stop-go chart Summary
At all times reservations department should be able to know the exact number of rooms available and booked for any specific date.
Further, bookings systems should allow the hotel to keep an accurate record of reservation details and guest information. Often more than one system for recording reservations can be used simultaneously. Reservations can be recorded in the hotel diary, by charts such as conventional charts and density charts or by computer systems.