Chapter Summary - Front Office Operations

Chapter 7 –Front Office Equipments

Front office equipments
The front office uses number of equipments for effective functioning and
provision of services to the guest. The important equipments and their
uses are as follows-
1. Room rack – used for registration records are inserted to serve
as room rack slips. Front desk agents use this equipment and
information to match available rooms with guest needs during
the registration process.
2. Key rack – the key rack is an array of numbered compartments
used to store guestroom keys
3. Reservation racks – a special board or series of pigeonholes
where cards are put to show which rooms have been locked
4. Information rack – An information rack is an index of in-house
guests by both last name and room number
5. Folio trays – a bucket where the guest folios are stored and
arranged by guestroom numbers
6. Account positing machine – An electro-mechanical machine is
used to post, monitor and balance charges and credits to guest
accounts
7. Voucher rack – it is a container for storing vouchers for future
reference and verification during the night audit
8. Cash register – used to record to cash transactions and
maintain cash balances
9. Telephone equipment – telephone equipments consists of call
accounting systems, automatic call dispensing, telephone / room
status system, fax machine and call detection
10. Credit card imprinter – Imprinter presses a credit card voucher
against a guest’s credit card
11. Magnetic strip reader – a magnetic strip reader, reads data
magnetically encoded and stored on the magnetic tape strip on
credit card
12. Time stamp – Time stamp recording is important for
establishment of chronology of events
13. Security Monitor – CCTV cameras for security personnel to
monitor certain areas of hotel
14. Wake-up devices – used by telephone operators to place wake-
up calls
Chapter Summary - Front Office Operations

15. Multi-zone clock – indicators of the time at different time zones

across world
16. Wi-fi ticket – provides user id and password to guest to access
the internet facility of the hotel
17. Card imprinting machine – PVC cards enabling the customers
to make it easy to book for them
Safety equipments used in hotel – the basic safety equipments
include
a. Smoke detectors – to detect smoke in case of fire as a
preventive measure
b. Fire extinguishers – meant to involve various classes fires
c. Carbon monoxide detectors – important to detect as the
gas is invisible and dangerous
d. Sprinkler systems – equipments to sprinkler water in case
of fire
Hotel also uses various signs to prevent accidents-
 Danger signs – which indicate the immediate dangers ahead
 Caution signs – used to warn against potential hazards
 Safety instruction signs – use where need for general
instructions relative to safety measures