Short Paper

Proc. of Int. Conf. on Advances in Computer Engineering 2012

An Integrated Prototype of a Hotel Room

Management System towards Internal Cost Control
Solutions
Thakerng Wongsirichot, Alongkorn Jirawansakul, and Wicthsupa Janjeam
Information and Communication Technology Programme, Faculty of Science, Prince of Songkla University, Thailand Email:
{[email protected], [email protected], [email protected]}
II. HOTEL FRONT OFFICE DEPARTMENT

Abstract The hospitality industry is one of the most top

income gainers in business. Researchers in various fields
attempt to seek for the efficiency and effectiveness operations
in the hospitality industry, which means there are many hidden
secrets in the industry need to be discovered. Our proposed
prototype seeks sales strategies to meet customers requests
and also internal cost controls. We present three main sales
strategies and implement them into our prototype. Each of
the sales strategies performs efficiently in different manners.
A real case study has been chosen in order to gather
information in practice. The prototype will be employed into
a hotel for further observations and studies.

A hotel front office department is one of the vital

departments that create first contact customers, some says it
is a focal point to customers. Main duties of staffs at the
hotel front office are greeting customers, organising reservations,
allocating and accommodating customers to their guest rooms.
However, these are only limited sets of examples of the hotel
front offices duties. Some hotel managers may have other
hotel policies that assign other duties to the staffs at the
hotel front office department.
In general, the hotel front office departments staffs
perform tasks in two phases including check-in and checkout procedures. The traditional check-in process is
illustrated with a flowchart in the following figure.

Index TermsHotel Room Management System, Room Sales

Strategy, Business System

I. INTRODUCTION
In the hospitality industry, there are vast majority researches
on methods and techniques in order to achieve exceptional
service performance levels which symbolise higher customer
satisfactions. Each of the methods and techniques is seldom
able to work independently without other influences. The
influences include demographics, technology, market
segmentation, seasons, travel patterns, etc. Specifically, in the
hotel industry, these influences also cause variation in yields of
the industry. [1]
A hotel consists of a number of important departments
including front office (reservation and check-in services),
operations, housekeeping, accounting and finance, engineering,
foods and beverages. Each of the departments is operating on
its own tasks however there are a number of activities that
overlap. For example, the foods and beverages department
prepares foods and beverages for hotel customers. It requires
to report lists of foods and beverages sold to a cashier. Finally,
all of the sales must be reported back to the accounting and
finance department. It is possible to initially conclude that each
of departments does not work independently but there are some
interactions between departments. All of the departments are
monitored by a general manager who is in the middle-level
management of the organisational hierarchy. The general
manager performs duties on passing organisational objectives,
goals and strategies from top-level managers or committees to
operational managers. [2]
Figure 1. A traditional check-in process

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Proc. of Int. Conf. on Advances in Computer Engineering 2012
check-out procedures presented above are traditional procedures performed in most hotels. However, it can be varying
by the hotel policy. For example, some hotels may not allow
any credits for customers. [3]

The above scenario is a presentation of a guest for the purpose

of checking-in. A staff at the front office should greet the
customer and ask for details regarding his/her pre-reservation
information. Specifically, customers in some cases may already
call for a room reservation by phone call or the Internet. If the
pre-reservation information is presented, the staff gathers
customer information and his/her special requests such as
personal details, payment details, a single/double bed room,
non-smoking room, a sea view room, etc. Then, the staff issues
a room key for the customer and it is the end of the check-in
process. However, if the customer does not have any prereservation information, the staff should check for room
availability before asking for the customer information and
requests. [3]
Towards the traditional check-out process, the following
figure is presented.

III. THE PROPOSED PROTOTYPE OF HOTEL ROOM MANAGEMENT

SYSTEM
There are a number of questions regarding the check-in
and check-out procedures. The followings are a list of the
questions.
What is the best sales strategy that should be
applied in this season?
Which room do we need to sell?
How do we know the current status of rooms?
Which room should not be sold?
What are the properties of this particular room?
In order to answer the above questions properly, we have
selected a hotel as our case study. Our proposed prototype
has been built based on a case study of the Sakura Grand
View Hotel, Hat Yai, Songkhla, Thailand. The hotel has 291
rooms with different properties located in the CBD of Hat Yai,
Songkhla province. The information processing theory has
been used to demonstrate the proposed prototype as follows.

Figure 3. Input Process Output of the proposed system

According to the case study, the proposed prototype has

five groups of users based on their roles in the hotel.
Manager is the front manager in this case study. He/she
has an access to specify sales strategy, which will be explained
later, to be used at the beginning of the day-shift.
Reception is the staff who is responsible for check-in
process as explained in the previous section.
Cashier is the staff who is responsible for check-out process
as explained in the previous section.
Housekeeper physically does the cleaning process in guest
rooms however in this case study the housekeeper require to
enter room status including used, vacant, and damaged.
Administrator is responsible for manage data in the
proposed prototype such as username and password
generation.
Furthermore, the hotel manager required a function to
specify room sales strategies. The sales strategies include

Figure 2. A traditional check-out process

The above figure shows a traditional check-out process. The

customer, who has checked-in, is due to check-out. He/she
need to return back the key to the front office counter. The
staff receives the room key and prepares full check-out process. Firstly, the staff checks room rates for the customer.
Each customer may have different room rates due to the agreement between the hotel and each customer or his/her companies. The staff calculates extra charges such as Minibar in
the guest room, laundry, foods and beverages, etc. The staff
requires to check customer types whether he/she is an account receivable customer (debtor) or not. For the customer
who pays by cash, the staff receives cash according to the
calculated charges and prepares a receipt for the customer.
In the case of debtor, an invoice is prepared and sent to the
customer or his/her company. Finally, the account receivable
data must be recorded. Both of the traditional check-in and
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First-In-First-Out (FIFO), Last-In-First-Out (LIFO) and
Minimum Frequency Selection (MFS).

3.
if Status(Si ) = vacant
4.
if freq(Si) > freq(Ri)
5.
Si ! freq(Ri)
6.
end if
7.
i++
8.
end if
9. end for
10. return Si
The ideal checking-in style is manually selecting a room
from a floor map that will lead to inefficient cost controls. For
example, the hotel has 5 rooms occupied in the 10th floor. If there
is a guest would like to check-in, the front offices staff should
check the guest in to the 10th floor rather than other empty floor.
If it is managed properly, the hotel will only assign a housekeeper
in the 10th floor. The following figure is a pre-check-in screenshot.
It allows the front offices staff to pre-configure guests requests
(left of the screenshot) including room types, the Internet usage,
non-smoking, closed to lifts and outside views.

A. First-In-First-Out (FIFO)
Description: Select and sell the room that is most aging
checked-out, which has been cleaned.
Input
R is a set of all rooms available in the hotel.
S is a set of selected rooms
Output
Si is the best selected room with the current sales
strategy.
Methods
1. for all Ri R
2.
Out_Date(Si ) ! Current_Date
3.
if Status(Si ) = vacant
4.
if Out_Date(Si) > Out_Date(Ri)
5.
Si ! Out_Date(Ri)
6.
end if
7.
i++
8.
end if
9. end for
10. return Si
B. Last-In-First-Out (LIFO)
Description: Select and sell the room that is recently
checked-out, which has been cleaned.
Input
R is a set of all rooms available in the hotel.
S is a set of selected rooms
Output
Si is the best selected room with the current sales
strategy.
Methods
1. for all Ri R
2.
Out_Date(Si ) ! Current_Date
3.
if Status(Si ) = vacant
4.
if Out_Date(Si) < Out_Date(Ri)
5.
Si ! Out_Date(Ri)
6.
end if
7.
i++
8.
end if
9. end for
10. return Si

Figure 4. Check-in Screenshot

After the completion of entering a guests requests, the system

will generate a list of rooms based on a sales strategy, which has
been designated by the front office manager. The list of rooms is
sorted based on its relevancy to the guests requests.
Additionally, the following figure is a screenshot of the
proposed prototype. It displays the layout of the fifth floor of
the hotel. This screen is mainly for the front manager to modify
the status of the room. For example, if one of the rooms will
require to be closed due to some damages, the manager can
configure the status of the room to Lock (L) from this screen.

C. Minimum Frequency Selection (MFS)

Description: Select and sell the room that has minimum
frequency of sales, which has been cleaned.
Input
R is a set of all rooms available in the hotel.
S is a set of selected rooms
Output
Si is the best selected room with the current sales
strategy.
Methods
1. for all Ri R
2.
freq(Si ) ! 0
Figure 5. Status Configuration Screenshot

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According to our proposed prototype, a housekeeping
department also has similar screen as the above figure.
However, housekeepers are able to switch all of the room
status except locking (L) the room, which only allows for the
front office manager.

of. Future research will be conducted to overcome current

dilemmas. The following are some of the limitations and future
research.
Changing of business requirements: The prototype is
classified into the business-based system. Generally, business
requirements are changing every moment in order to compete
with business competitors.
Final prototype testing: The prototype is still under final
testing. Therefore, we should get more practical feedbacks from
real users in the near future.
Forecasting: There is a vast amount of research related to the
forecasting of sales in the hotel industry. The collected data
such as the frequency of room usages can be used for prediction
of sales in the future. [6] In other cases, these data can be utilised
for the room rates settings or accommodated the pricing strategy.
More integration: One of the comments that return from the
hotel manager is the integration. It is sufficient for the front
office and housekeeping departments but there are a number of
overlaps between other departments.
Local language: The prototype is built based on Thai language,
which limited the internationalisation. However, currently the
English version of the prototype is developing.

IV. BUSINEESS INTERPRETATION AND DISCUSSION

Most researches are targeting to find better yields or
revenue. Some researchers attempted to find better pricing
techniques for the purpose of achieving higher profits. For
example, some hotel managers lower their room rates to
stimulate sales. It is not only the hotel industry but also
other service industries such as airline industries. [4]
However, researchers also suggest not only reducing prices
but also controlling costs. [5] Therefore, the proposed
prototype is constructed with the main aims towards better
internal cost controls in many aspects.
Integration of various sub systems: Our proposed prototype
integrates the front office system, the housekeeping systems
and other related operating systems together. Ideally, this
integrated prototype will improve overall efficiency of a hotel.
Reduction of unnecessary manpower: The organisation of
manpower especially the housekeeper is fully managed. Due
to the sales strategies, the proposed prototype allocates the
best selection for all cases including reduction of unnecessary
manpower in the housekeeping department. For example, the
prototype attempts to fill in guests into floors that already
have some guests. This means a housekeeper is also allocated
to the floor.
Reduction of unnecessary power usage: The hotel, which
is the case study of this research, uses a central air
conditioning system. An engineering team installed air
conditioning circuit breaker for each floor. It will save the
whole buildings energy. With this physical installation of
the air conditioning system and its circuit breakers, the
prototype allocates guests in to the floor that already
occupied by other guests. Therefore, the floors with no guests
do not require to turn on the floors air conditioning circuit
breaker.
Efficient utilisation of facilities: Specifically, the MFS sales
strategy performs efficiently in facilities utilisations. The MFS
sales strategy seeks for the minimum frequency of room
usage. For example, room 511 has been assigned to customers
50 times from the beginning of this month. Room 515, which
has the same properties as room 511, has only been assigned
to customers 45 times. In this case without other factors, if
the MFS sales strategy has been employed, room 511 will be
chosen for the next customer. The core concept of this MFS
sales strategy is the room that has been used often will be
more deteriorated. Therefore, the prototype can present the
rooms with different usage frequency for managers to decide
whether the rooms need to be repaired or refurbished or not.

CONCLUSION
The integrated prototype of hotel room management
systems is only the starting focal point of the integration
between vital departments in a hotel. The proposed prototype
includes three main sales strategies, which are FIFO, LIFO
and MFS together with five main groups of users. The MFS
is the delightful sales strategy that assists to target the
efficient utilisation of facilities. The proposed prototype will
be employed into the hotel, which is our case study. Most of
the hotel requirements are included with some expansions in
the near future.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research is fully supported by the Information and
Communication Technology (ICT) Programme, Faculty of
Science, Prince of Songkla University, Thailand. The authors
would like to thank valuable lecturers, staffs and students at
ICT for providing helpful supports.
REFERENCES
[1] M. J. OFallon and D. G. Rutherford. Hotel Management and
Operations, 2011.
[2] K. C. Laudon and J. P. Laudon. Management Information
Sytems: Managing the Digital Firms, 2007.
[3] J. A. Bardi. Hotel Front Office Management, 2003.
[4] W. J. Relihan, The Yield-Management Approach To HotelRoom Pricing, Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration
Quarterly, vol. 1, May 1989, pp.40-45.
[5] EGENCIA [Online], Hotel Cost Control: Savings and
Opportunities, Available: http://www.egencia.co.uk
[6] M. B. Ghalia, Intelligent System to Support Judgement
Business Forecasting: The Case of Estimating Hotel Room
Demand, IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, vol. 8, no.
4, August 2000, pp.380 -397.

V. LIMITATION AND FUTURE RESEARCH

Even though the findings of our case study represent
acceptable results, some of limitations and problems are aware
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