Hey there, front desk clerk at the hotel I won't be mentioning the name of for legal reasons. If you stumbled upon this and aren't an aforementioned front desk clerk at the yada yada, you might be confused. I made this site so that my coworkers could have a place to access practical, easily digestible advice for their job. Are you cowering in the corner, wondering what to say to a guest whose luggage has been misplaced? Are you put off by those binders that go on and on about "market segments" instead of showing you anything useful? Well, this site is for you. If not, have a look around anyway! I'm taking on this project during my very limited downtime, primarily to help my coworkers feel more informed on the job, and secondarily to have a little fun with web design. E-mail me at deskclerkhelp@email.com for advice or just to say hi. Enjoy!
If you feel like an idiot behind the front desk, you're not alone. Even as I am editing this website, I feel like a total moron when tasked with certain things; that's okay! Training here consists mainly of asking your supervisor to do things for you and watching it over and over until you get it. Hopefully, though, this website can speed things up a bit for you. Remember, your supervisor won't expect you to know everything, and all of us are glad to help, even if we aren't so glad to be here.
The first thing you'll notice about our computer software when you go to a computer is that all of it is laughably outdated. The second thing you'll notice is that none of the software communicates with each other. That's why, each morning, everything we put into Executech is downloaded, converted into a readable format, and plugged into Tourstar. You don't have to know the ins and outs of that ordeal, but just remember not to open Executech ANYWHERE at any point during the download. Yeah, I know. It's pretty inconvenient, especially when a guest need something ASAP. You basically have to tell them that our computer system is down at the moment.
Executech is the program we use to check guests in and out, search a guests room by name or name by room, display room availability, and print nerd reports for nerds who ask for reports.
Most of our guests come and go in groups, so individual checks-in are not common. Ususally, your supervisor will check groups in before they arrive, so don't worry about that. Here's what you can worry about instead:
You won't be using Tourstar as much since we have a Tour Desk, so if a guest has any question containing the word "tour", politely tell them to turn around and keep walking until their nose bumps the wall, then turn their head right a bit, and someone will take it from there.
There is one thing Tourstar is handy for, and that's the "Inquiry" tab, which you can find on the dropdown menu on the right, inside the "Guest Services" tab. There, you can look up a guest's name and find cool things such as their tour itenerary, assigned room number (more convenient than Executech but not always up to date on changes), and some nerd info not always visible on Executech. Tourstar is not as much of a headache as Executech, so you should navigate it with little effort.
Yeah, I forgot what it was called. It's not important. It's the one that prompts you to enter the PIN, and it is almost always open on the front desk computers. The PIN is... written on a sticky note on each monitor. Obviously I'm not sharing the PIN here. This one is pretty straightforward, too, but just remember to set the time correctly and to program two cards at a time since all cards for the room you are keying will deactivate. That's about it, have fun re-keying literally hundreds of keys per shift.
There are two types of phone calls you will be receiving, in-house calls and outside calls. If it's in-house, the room number will be displayed, though the guest will ususally always start the conversation with their room number. With these calls, I usually answer with, "Front Desk, My Name speaking." Outside calls are made for a plethora of reasons. A future guest may want to confirm or change something on their reservation (this is where Tourstar can help), or a nerd from a sister location may want some juicy nerd info that we have. With outside calls, I typically answer with, "Thank you for calling The Hotel We Work At, My Name speaking. What can I do for you?"
For any phone call, grab a pen and a scrap of paper and write things down. It can be easy to forget what a phone call was about during a rush or near the end of a shift, so do yourself a favor, even if you didn't end up needing it after all. If someone mentions their name, write it down and use it when completing the call. Everyone creams over hearing their own name spoken. Everyone.
Another element to this, the control center of our whole operation, is the walkie-talkies. There are different channels, such as "Desk (that's us!)", "House(-keeping, that is)", "Maint. (good luck talking to them, they're way too busy)", "Baggage (I don't think they know how to use a radio)", and others that you can ignore. There's really no standard way to communicate over the radio, but remember to say "Front desk to Whomever, are you there/do you copy/something like that," before you say whatever you need to. Get a verbal confirmation that someone is going to entertain whatever problem you want them to solve. lmao.