Are you a hotel front desk clerk with an eye towards the future? Perhaps you have dreams of becoming a Front Office Manager (FOM). If so, I have some advice that I would like to share with you. I started my hospitality career as a front desk clerk and worked my way to a Front Office Manager position within a short period of time. Here’s how I did it:
Up-Sell
One of the first things that I stared doing was practicing my up-selling techniques. I looked at it as a personal challenge. I started out by making sure that on the nights when the hotel had a lot of rooms to sell that I didn’t let a walk-in walk out without a room key in their hands. I also started trying to convince guests to upgrade to higher priced rooms and sign up for various frequent stay programs. Doing so helped me to practice my revenue management and selling skills. It also gave me a negotiating tool when it came time for reviews and raises. I was able to show how high Rev Par was on the nights that I worked. It worked like a charm and before you knew it, I was wining sales contests and getting pay raises.
Master All Shifts
The other thing that I started doing was to learn all the front desk shifts including the night audit. At the time, the night audit was the most challenging shift for me to learn because it wasn’t a computerized task. I had to calculate and post by hand 104 guest bills as well as balance out the restaurant, lounge, telephone and meeting room charges. Then I had to run all the credit cards and set-up the reservations for the next day. Let me tell you, I got very quick at using a calculator and a pencil. It also taught me more about hotel bookkeeping than any other shift. Nowadays, most hotels use a computer program to do all the calculations and all the night auditor has to do is a bit of data entry.
Learning everything there is to know about all of the hotel’s programs is another important step on the road to becoming a Front Office Manager. It is important because a Front Office Manager is responsible for training the front desk staff on those programs as well as managing the programs in a way that will generate sufficient revenue for the hotel. It isn’t enough to just learn what the program rate is and who is eligible to receive it. You’ll also want to learn black-out scheduling, how the packages are put together and how they affect Rev Par.
Display Flexibility
Flexibility and a willingness to learn are crucial skills for a Front Office Manager to have. That’s because as a manager you will need to be on call 24 hours a day and be capable of working in other departments as needed. For example, during my time as a Front Office Manager I had to do double duty and work as the Head of Housekeeping when the hotel was short staffed. That meant that I needed to know how long it should take a maid to clean a room, how many towels and toiletries are allotted per room and how long it takes the laundry staff to clean the linens. I also needed to know how to inspect the rooms after the maids were done cleaning them.
Display Leadership Skills
Leadership skills are also important for a Front Office Manager to have. One way that I displayed my leadership skills at the time was to serve as the Manager on Duty as often as possible. At the time, the General Manager or Front Office Manager would appoint a Manager on Duty (MOD) each day based on their job performance. It was considered an honor to be appointed MOD because it meant that you were trusted and respected enough to be left in charge of the entire property. Over time, continued MOD appointment would typically lead to a raise and a promotion to a permanent management position. At least it did for me.
