Front office policies and procedures: the list every desk should have in writing

Front office policies and procedures are the written rules and step-by-step routines a hotel desk follows for reservations, arrival, the stay, departure, money, night work and safety. This list runs to a few dozen lines in five groups: reservations, arrival, in-stay, departure and money, night and safety. Each line names an owner, the steps, and the record it leaves.

The desk takes a walk-in, reissues a lost key card and answers a refund request in the same hour, and each one is handled slightly differently depending on who is on shift. The manual that should settle those differences usually exists as a folder nobody opens. After reading this, you will have the full contents list for a desk manual, a three-part test for each line, and a shortlist of the ten procedures to write first.

How do you use this list, and what makes a procedure usable?#

Use it as an audit, not a template. For each line, mark whether the procedure is written, whether it is followed, and whether it leaves a record; a line that fails any of the three is a gap.

Sit with the front office manager and the last month of records for one hour. Three columns per line: written, followed, missing. The gaps are the output, not a document. This is the companion to a piece on writing hotel SOPs that staff actually follow; that one covers how to write, this one covers what to write.

Separate policy from procedure. A policy states the rule and who may decide, for example who may waive a late check-out fee. A procedure states the steps in order and the record those steps leave. Every procedure needs five parts: the trigger that starts it, the steps in order, the person who owns it, the record it leaves, and the point where it escalates to a manager.

Test "followed" against evidence. Pick three recent arrivals and three recent refunds and follow the trail from the system to the paper to the guest's bill. Keep each procedure to one page, put a version and a date on every page, and keep one place where the current version lives. Write in the language the desk actually speaks; a procedure nobody can read is a procedure nobody follows.

Reservations and pre-arrival: which procedures does the desk need?#

Six to eight procedures cover the period between a booking and the guest reaching the desk. The ones hotels most often leave unwritten are overbooking, group rooming lists and rate overrides.

Overbooking and walking a guest need a written order of decisions: who decides, in what order guests are chosen, what the hotel offers, who calls the guest, and where the decision is recorded. Write it as hotel practice; no rule found in the tourism regulation sets the compensation, so confirm your own position with a legal adviser.

The rest of the group: deposit, cancellation and no-show, including what the desk may promise on the phone and what must go to a manager. Group blocks, with the rooming list deadline, who tracks the rooms already taken from the block, and who releases the unused rooms. Rate overrides and discounts, with who may approve, up to what level, and where the approval is recorded so the night shift can see it. Special requests and accessibility needs, captured at booking so they reach housekeeping and the arrival desk, not just the reservation note. Pre-arrival contact, including what happens when a guest replies with a change. And changes after booking: extensions, early departure, name changes and the record each one leaves.

Arrival: which procedures does every front desk need?#

Arrival needs the most procedures, because identity, money and the room key meet in the same five minutes. Each of them must leave a record that a manager can read the next morning. The full sequence is covered in the hotel check-in procedure at the front desk; here the question is which pages belong in the manual.

Standard check-in covers which documents are checked, how the guest identity notification (KBS, misafir kimlik bildirimi) is prepared from the check-in flow, how payment is authorized, how the key is issued, and what is recorded. Walk-ins need their own page: the availability check, the rate quoted, payment, identity, and the record, plus a decision made in advance about who may refuse a walk-in and on what grounds.

Group arrival needs a named contact for the group leader and clear ownership of the rooming list, key packets and luggage. Identity and personal data need a page on what is collected, where copies are stored, who may see them, and how long they are kept; personal data rules (KVKK, kişisel verilerin korunması kanunu) apply to those copies, so ask your adviser before storing ID images. Keys need issue, reissue, lost key, deactivation at departure, and the key log; a key handed out without a log line is an open question later. Finally, early check-in, late check-out, upgrades, room moves and the check-in that cannot be completed each need a line on who approves and where the approval is written.

In-stay: which procedures prevent the common failures?#

In-stay procedures exist so that a request, a complaint or a room move does not depend on who happens to be on shift. Each one needs a time limit and a place where the promise is written.

Room moves need a named authorizer, a check before the move, a notification to housekeeping, and a way for the bill and the key to follow the guest. Guest requests and messages need a log, a time limit for a first answer, and wording for when the request cannot be met. Visitors and non-resident guests need a rule on registration and access control, and a record that shows what happened.

Complaints and service recovery need a limit on who may offer what, and a place where the offer is recorded so the next shift honors it instead of renegotiating it. Do-not-disturb and refused service need a defined point at which a manager is called. The small routines still need a line each: wake-up calls, parcels and deliveries, in-stay lost and found, and safe deposit access. Shift handover, covered in detail in a front desk shift handover checklist, must state what the outgoing shift passes on in writing before it leaves; cash, expected arrivals and open promises are the three that cause trouble.

Departure and money: what must be written down?#

Money procedures are the ones an accountant, an auditor or an officer will ask for first, so each must leave a record that can still be read months later.

Checkout covers reviewing the bill with the guest, minibar and restaurant charges, express checkout, and the record that the guest left. Folio routing and split bills cover who may move a charge from one account to another and how the move is traced. Cash handling, in float, drops and shift counts, is its own discipline; the details are in front desk cash handling: float, drops and shortages. The principle for refunds, voids and corrections is fixed: financial records are never deleted; corrections are voided and reversed so the original stays visible.

Foreign currency needs a written rule on which rate the desk uses and who may accept foreign cash; rate and tax questions belong to your accountant, not to the manual. Invoices and e-documents need a page on what the desk collects from the guest, who issues the document, and the human review that happens before an e-invoice is sent; confirm scope, dates and penalties with your accountant or legal adviser. Credit and city ledger need a rule on who may extend credit to a company or an agency, and who chases the balance afterwards.

Night and safety: which procedures keep the hotel running?#

The night procedures are the ones nobody rehearses until they are needed, which is exactly why they have to be written before the night they are.

Gün sonu (night audit) needs a written time, an owner, what is checked before the business day closes, and what the desk does if it fails and the date does not roll. Internet or power loss needs a first-response page and a paper trail; the full sequence is in when the internet goes down: a front desk checklist. Incidents and accidents need a call order, a record, a place where it is kept, and a rule on who may speak to the guest's family.

Evacuation roles need floor-by-floor sweep assignments, an assembly point, a named carrier for the current guest list, and a roll-call check. Key control needs sign-out and sign-back-in for master keys and a defined response when one is missing. An authority list states who may speak to the police, the press or a tour operator's representative, and who may not. Overnight lost and found needs a handover to the morning shift, so nothing found at 03:00 disappears by 09:00.

Which ten procedures should a small hotel write first?#

Start with the ten that touch money, identity and safety, because those are the ones that cannot be reconstructed after the fact. The rest can follow in the order the desk complains about them. Each one leaves a record that someone outside the hotel may later ask for, and each one fails badly when it is improvised.

Write one page each, in a week, with the person who does the job rather than about them; the desk will correct details a manager would never guess. Test each page by running one real case through it and marking every point where the written step and the actual step differed. Then add the remaining groups in the order they cause trouble: usually arrival extras, then in-stay requests, then reservations policy. Review the set once a year and after any incident, system change or new hire who had to ask how something is done.

What to do next#

Take the five groups to the desk this week and spend one hour marking each line as written, followed or missing, using last month's records as evidence. Then write the ten procedures that touch money, identity and safety first, one page each, with the person who does the job. The list is not the deliverable; the gaps it exposes are.