The hotel administrator or reception manager is responsible for the reception of guest as well as internal communications of the hotel services. The post of administrator is related to the guest reception service or, as it has been recently called, front office service.
It is believed that the post of administrator does not require special training. In order to have a chance to get a job of hotel administrator, an applicant must possess a number of personal qualities. Sociability, resistance to stress, organizational skills, and internal discipline are among them. A good administrator - is a good psychologist as well, who is capable of compiling an emotional portrait of the client and knows how he could be useful to him.
Among the mandatory skills an administrator should possess – a good level of English. Many big hotel corporations among the other requirement for an employee have a special one – the knowledge of several foreign languages. Several <<giants>> of hotel industry even have their own training schools, where it is possible to acquire a specialty of hotel administrator. The Swiss hotel schools are considered to be the most prestigious ones, for example, the Ritz hotel staff school in the Swiss town of Brig.
Among the duties of the hotel administrator are: the reception and the registration of guests, monitoring of the guest requests fulfillment, informing of the other hotel services about arriving and departing guest. In small hotels administrator serves as a cashier, settling accounts with guests. He also receives calls and registers room booking by phone. Room booking via the Internet, a method which has become popular within the recent years, ads some extra work to a hotel administrator. Sometimes, customers apply to a hotel to confirm reservation or send confirmation by fax. Several embassies consider the confirmation from the hotel as a cause for visa issuance.
In the big hotels several administrators can work simultaneously at the registration desk, and each of them will have a defined set of responsibilities.
Administrator’s shift usually lasts for 8 hours. However, many big hotels have a special shift timetable, because a registration desk in them works in the round-the-clock mode. Administrators in the small hotels usually have the same working hours, and at night they are substituted by a porter or a hotel owner.
The hotel administrator can count on career growth. It is believed, that this post is some kind of a basic course for the future reception service managers. According to the established international practice, hotels do not incline to hire reception service managers from outside and invite people, who are already acquainted with the inner structure and operating principles of the front office.
