Reservation and room inventory management in boutique hotels

On a Saturday afternoon the phone rings at reception, a new reservation drops in from a sales channel, housekeeping says a room is ready, and the room chart in Excel still shows yesterday’s state. Room inventory means keeping, in a single record, every room type the hotel can sell, its availability by date and the rate plan under which it is sold; in a boutique hotel, when this record is wrong even the smallest error becomes a problem the guest meets at the door.

In this article, within the framework of YazSis Reservation & Hotel Management, we explain how reservations, room inventory and front office flow can be brought into one system in a boutique hotel and what to pay attention to.

Why is inventory sensitive in a boutique hotel?

In a small hotel each room carries a significant share of the sales value. Rooms are usually different from one another: one has a sea view, one is on the garden floor, one is set up as a family room. So a single wrongly assigned room is a big loss for both revenue and guest satisfaction. In a setup run through Excel, the phone and separate sales channels, this risk shows up as follows:

• The same room is sold through two different channels; the clash is noticed only when the guest arrives.
• A room’s cleaning status is asked about by phone; message traffic builds up between the front office and housekeeping.
• A guest’s special request stays in the note of the person who took the booking and nobody knows on the day of arrival.
• At the end of the day, revenue, occupancy and channel mix are compiled by hand; the figures do not come out the same for everyone.

Six steps from reservation to check-out

A hotel management system follows a guest’s contact with the hotel from start to finish on the same record. Each step prepares the next:

1. Search and price. Date, number of guests, room type, rate plan and availability are compared in a single query; reception does not have to tell anyone “I’ll look and get back to you”.
2. Confirm the reservation. The reservation, deposit and special requests are recorded with the guest, company or agency details.
3. Prepare the arrival. Room assignment, housekeeping status, special requests and pending arrivals are carried to the front office; nobody hunts for information during check-in.
4. Manage the stay. Room, package, extra service, notes and folio movements are kept current in the guest’s account; a room change is made from the same record.
5. Close the check-out. The folio is checked, payment is taken, documents are produced and the room is passed to the cleaning flow.
6. Monitor performance. Occupancy, average rate, revenue, channel and operations indicators are compared by management.

Housekeeping: when is the room ready?

The question the front office asks most often is whether the room is ready. If this information is updated through a mobile screen used by the housekeeping team, there is no need to ask by phone; the moment the room is cleaned the front office sees it on its own screen. That way nobody has to phone the floor at check-in time to find out whether the room is ready. Room statuses are usually tracked in the following steps:

• Dirty: The guest has checked out, the room is waiting to be cleaned.
• Clean: Cleaning is complete, waiting for inspection.
• Inspected: The room is ready for sale and check-in.
• Out of service: Closed to sale due to maintenance or a fault.
• Priority: Priority has been given for an early-arriving guest or a room to be sold right after check-out.

In a hotel where reception does not have to phone to ask about a room’s status, guests wait less.

Guest profile and folio

What sets a boutique hotel apart is often personal attention. This attention becomes sustainable when it rests on records, not on a person’s memory. The guest profile gathers preferences, past stays, the company or agency the guest is tied to, notes and communication permissions in one place. The folio collects stay and extra service movements in one account; payment, balance and documents are produced from it at check-out. Revenue and occupancy indicators are read from the same movements. When a guest comes a second time, reception sees from the record which room they preferred last time and which special request they had; this frees the boutique hotel’s personal service from depending on one person.

Sales channels and other systems

Room inventory, rate plan, restriction and availability information is set up to be synchronized with connected sales channels. For the website, sales channel, payment, accounting and door lock systems, an integration map is drawn up first; which data flows in which direction with which system is written down in this map.

Define your property before you start

• Room types and the features of each type: how many types are there, and which are alternatives to one another?
• Rate plans: which rates apply by season, package and channel?
• User roles: what should reception, reservations, housekeeping and management see and what should they be able to change? Not everyone needs the authority to change prices or correct a folio.
• Working rules: how are deposits, cancellations, early check-in and late check-out handled? Once these rules are written down, the system works with the same rules.

To bring your hotel’s reservation and room operations into a single measurable system, you can look at the Reservation & Hotel Management page.