DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF COMPUTERIZED FRONT OFFICE MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEM

CHAPTER ONE

1.0 INTRODUCTION

The office management information system is the control center for the property and workers at the supervisory level and above must be well trained and motivated in order to achieve business objectives of high yield, high occupancy rates and above all top quality service. in front office management general manager are required to meet the challenges of day to day operation while practicing solid future planning and controlling skills.

The technological advantages today’s managers have at their disposal and the challenges of living, training, scheduling and empowering workers to achieve to quality result.

The top quality hotel in Nigeria is owned by government, other smaller hotels owned by individual do not keep to the standard for hotel operations. This because the only reason for the setting up of a hotel is to maximize profit. They do not take into account the welfare and condition of their customer. This result in many of the customers not being satisfied after management and time wasting in the flow of information with and outside the hotel environment. Using zodiac hotel lit examing the effect of computerization of hotel front office management information system in our hotels.

Zodiac hotel ltd is one of the well know hotel in Enugu and it is a private limited company. It is located at 5/7 rangers Avenue, Enugu.

It was established in 1979 by late honorable MR.P.N. Okeke. The administration of zodiac hotel is as follows:

Executive director, board of directors, managing director, head of department/supervisors and staff.

Make up the firm are Admin. Dept., account dept., reception, cash office, business center telephone exchange, restaurant, bar house keeping laundry, gardeners, reception waiters, store dept, driver section, kitchen dept, car hire section and security dept.

1.1 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM

The present system of hotel front office management information system in Nigeria has a lot of problem which are mentioned below.

SPEED OF OPERATION: Speed of operation is a measure of the time lapse from when a process starts to workers to when it end. Since the present system is manually operated, there is tendency for the workers of checking-in a guest, issuing of receipts checking-out a guest can take the receptionist (front officer) hour to finish.

ACCURACY: In term of accuracy, the system is relatively slow and since it is dependent to human effort, so inevitable, it is also prone to human errors and omission. Example the issuing of receipts, most of the time is not accurate. The bills prepared are sometime over charged or undercharge and this can be very embarrassing to both guest and the management. The overcharging or under charging could be due to the receptionist’s carelessness or the inefficiency of the part of the account section.

DOCUMENT INTEGRITY: This is viewed in the context of the safety, invalidity of the records in the document files used in the report generation. In terms of safety, the nature of the system (manual) makes it vulnerable to left, fire or accidental destruction. This makes the system unsafe as the time needed to replace lost data or files in enormously large

COST: This is the greatest problem of the hotel. The hotel tends to loose a lot of money running the hotel manually.

TIME: Going by the present system of operation time is consumed in the handling of operation and management of information the problem and many other not listed above due limitations, form the basis of this write-up

1.2 PURPOSE OF STUDY

This study is designed to help the hotel front office to handle the flow and use of information in the hotel operation effectively. This study also tries to give an in dept looking in the easiest and most effective way for the growth and development of industry in the country.

Finally, the study will help new investors in the industry to make the right decision and steps needed to start up a management.

1.3 AIMS AND OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

The objectives of the study are as follows:

To provide better service for the various guests either permanent, temporary or causal guest that comes to stay the management.
To produce a system where information and output report will be produced much faster, more accurately and more detailed to management and guest of hotel.
To keep records that are compact, integrated and updated.
1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

This study is armed at finding out how effective the computerization of a hotel front office management information system will improve the operation of the hotel system in small hotels. However, out of the several departments that makes up the hotel. This research project is restricted to only one section reception (front office) section

1.5 LIMITATION

The following constraints were faced by the researcher and limited the effort in the developing of a comprehensive package needed in a hotel industry.

TIME: This project work has one semester time limit. It would have been desirable for a longer period of time for the development of a package for the hotel
INFORMATION: For some security reason, access to some vital information were derived by the management of the ministry of information.

1.6 ASSUMPTION

Due to insufficient information, I assumed the following:

The records of the information, about the guest has not be computerized.
The people that are going to use the software computer literate.

1.7 DEFINTION OF TERMS

GUEST: This guest are used in the contest of the work refers to individual, companies or corporate bodies who spends some time in the management either as permanent, temporary or casual guest
ARRIVAL FILE: This is master file consisting of the guest name, companies name and address, state, country, nationality, profession etc. which also include the mode of payment to be used by the guest.
MENU FILE: This is a transaction file used in the new system. It consists of the descriptions of food, the price of the good and the menu code.
REST FILE: This is also a transaction file that consist information bill, the about restaurant bill, the room price reference number, dates etc.