Originally Posted by daniellam
What would happen if another guest who has the same first and last name also stays at the hotel?
There is no problem having several guests with the same name, you differentiate them by the city they come from.
If you make a reservation they will most likely ask where you're calling from to see if they can match your name and your hometown with an existing profile in the database.
As far as I remember it was never an issue...
Originally Posted by daniellam
BTW, if you move and used a different address to make reservations, would that mean they would treat you as a new guest who never stayed there?
Very good point! The system will not automatically understand it's the same person (as the city is different) so something has to be done manually about it.
If a new profile is created it will obviously say 0 nights, 0 stays, $0 revenue with no hints of previous stays.
Unless the staff at the front desk recognise you and make appropriate adjustments (linking the reservation to the old profile) the best thing to do is to tell them you moved and kindly ask them to update your address in the computer.
That will make them look for the old profile with your previous guest records and they can very easily correct your address and you will get credit for that stay as well.
Originally Posted by Doppy
Interesting info, jacob_m.
Got any other info or stories for us?
Well I only worked for three months (a summer) some time ago but I learnt everything there was to know so in that sense it was interesting. It's pretty fun to stay in hotels now as I know exactly what's going on and what the front desk staff knows about me etc
Also when working there I got to see how it works when a famous actor/pop star (one of the major ones from Hollywood in my case) stays in a hotel for a few days. The person was booked under a fake name and everytime you had to talk about or refer to the person you had to use the fake name.
And everytime an agent or a manager called to speak to the person they would ask to speak to Mr/Mrs Fake Name.
By doing that you knew exactly who to help and who to tell "I don't know anything" or "no that person is definitely not staying here". Clever!!
I don't know if there is anything special to know.
It's mostly that the staff often knows more about you than you might think and that the reservation program is really advanced and there are loads of functions that the hotel can make use of if they want.
You can rank guests for example, giving them status by assigning them a number. There is one number for "mistreated guest", one for "not welcome anymore", "frequent guest", "gold card holder" or whatever is appropriate.
You can also keep track on the guests.
As an example, if one guests argues a lot at check-in and makes a lot of trouble, you can add a message that will come up everytime you open the reservation, for example "this guest should NOT get an upgrade" or "this guest keeps arguing about a reduction he/she is not entitled to" and then you normally write "see profile" where you write the full story/incident.
So if the guest comes back a few hours later and approaches a new employee and has all of a sudden a great complaint, the message will come up just by entering the room number.
Unfortunately these things are sometimes necessary and it freaked me out when it happened, there are people who make up advanced lies and use really nasty methods to try to get things they are not even entitled to.
The same functions can of course be used for positive purposes as well.