All hotel companies need strong hotel audits to check compliance with company’s standards, policies and procedures. Any risks to the business can be evaluated and checks against fraud and malpractice can be carried out.
All hotel audits will involve discussions with the client to agree the detail before any actual audit visit. Each and every hotel audit will be conducted on site. The work will consist of discussions with the management team, together with detailed testing of a sample of processes and transactions. Hotel audits offer both risk and compliance checks. A report will be issued at the end of the audit and will detail any findings, together with recommended actions. Individual audit programs will be tailored to suit the requirements of your business.
An audit in a hotel will usually consist of reviewing the following areas;
- Cash Handling including floats and safes
- Revenue control
- Credit control
- Employees and payroll
- Security
- Purchasing
Running a hotel property of any size is never easy. To ensure the smooth running of a hotel it is vital to keep track of revenue, reservations, and inventory. But, reporting is a necessary evil and makes your life as a hotelier easier in the long run, especially when auditors arrive to do an audit.
1. Room and Tax Report
This report is fairly simple, a tax report lists all your room revenue and associated taxes for the day. You want to conduct this report every day in order to know exactly how much money is coming into your property each day. Then, use this report to identify potential issues.
2. Departures Report
A departure report shows who was scheduled to leave the hotel on what day. Every night, your night manager or auditor should create two departure reports, one for the present day and one for the next day. This will help to identify any guests who checked out and identify other potential issues.
The next day departure report helps your staff prepare for the next day’s departures. Your front desk needs to know which rooms will be vacant and available for incoming reservations and the cleaning staff will be able to prepare the room for the new guests.
3. Arrivals Report
The night manager or auditor should also produce the arrivals report for the morning staff. This report includes the list of arrivals for the upcoming day and includes basic information, for example;
- Reservation number
- Guest name
- Arrival date
- Number of nights
The arrivals report also helps you keep track of no-shows. If a guest doesn’t check in or cancels their reservation, your arrivals report will highlight this.
4. Housekeeping Report
The housekeeping report shows the property’s room number, housekeeping status and departure date. This enables the front desk and the housekeeping staff to know which rooms must be cleaned when. Housekeepers need to know which rooms are being checked out of so they can replace the sheets, towels, toiletries, etc.
If all these reports are carried out on a daily basis, it will make life much easier for the hotel when audits are carried out, hoteliers will have all the necessary information to produce when the auditor asks for it.
Jamie Sexton