The vocabulary used on a room status sheet can dictate the information front desk personnel share with guests. Just because a room appears in the computer system does not guarantee the room is ready. For someone just starting in the hotel industry, the terms used to describe room status can easily seem like minutia until someone approaches the front desk with a set of suitcases asking, “Is my room available yet?” The distinction between vacant, clean, inspected, occupied, and out of service takes on immediate importance during that interaction.
Vacant does not mean clean or ready for check in. It simply means that a room is not occupied, but the room might still be undergoing housekeeping, be in inspection or under maintenance, or simply require a final review. Usually, when housekeeping completes cleaning the room, it receives a clean status. In some properties, the front desk cannot make a room available for guests until the room has an inspected status. That status indicates that housekeeping has finished cleaning the room and the housekeeper or supervisor has verified that the room is ready to be given to a guest.
Occupied is the easiest status to interpret. It means that someone is living in the room and the front desk is expected to make that known to any arriving guests. Issues arise when a guest is scheduled to check out, the room status still shows as occupied, and the guest at the front desk asks whether his room is available. At this point, a hotel employee should be cautious of the status of a room, even though the expected departure is imminent. Do not tell a guest his room is ready unless the room status is current.
A guest may ask a front desk employee for assistance, and the employee might see that the number on the computer screen matches a vacant room number. In some instances, employees assume they can move a guest into a vacant number as a substitute for a room change. Employees should think twice before offering a room that carries an out of service status. Even though the room may currently have no guests, an out of service status might mean that a hotel room must be deep cleaned, has a maintenance issue, or has been blocked from sale in the system. When employees encounter a vacancy for sale, they should still verify that room status to avoid making promises they cannot keep.
Hotel employees can practice using these room status terms with a sample room status sheet. For each status in the system, the employee should identify one appropriate response from a front desk employee. For vacant rooms that are not clean or inspected, the employee could say to the guest, “Let me find out exactly what status this room is in at this time.” When the rooms is clean but not inspected, the response might be, “We just need to verify the room is ready to give you your key.” If the status for the room is occupied, the employee might say, “That room is unavailable today.” For out of service rooms, the employee could say, “I will check for another room since I cannot assign you that one at this moment.” Hotel staff will become more effective at providing customer service when they can translate room status terms into guest-appropriate sentences.
The challenge is not necessarily memorizing all of these terms; it is being able to understand what they mean when used in conjunction with guests in real time. An early check-in, late checkout, room swap and even customer complaint about room condition all depend upon effective room status communication at the front desk. Employees might be eager to respond to every guest’s request as soon as possible just to keep the line moving. To ensure accuracy and avoid giving guests a room that is not yet ready, employees should pause, check the room status, determine what the next appropriate step is, and avoid promising a guest a room until it has been confirmed as ready.
For hotel staff, a good way to monitor whether they know the status of each room is to look at any room in the system and mentally ask what the safe, truthful answer to a customer would be at that moment. In many cases, the response will depend on whether the housekeeping or maintenance team have already completed a certain task. As hotel employees continue to practice using room status terms, they will start to see these terms as tools to guide their customer service decisions.