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Hotel Desk Clerks: Job Description, Education, Skills and Abilities, Earnings and Outlook

Submitted by: paula

Job Overview Whenever we check in to different classes of hotels, we oftentimes are being welcomed by a front desk officer. These officers are called hotel desk clerks. Hotel desks clerks work for hotels in the front desks and are responsible for rendering varieties of services. These services include facilitation of registration of the guests, assigning rooms to them, as well as giving them an orientation with regards to the basic information of the hotel, including the facilities that they can utilize during their stay. Presently, there are approximately 195,000 desk clerks that are employed in the United States. Most of the employment are concentrated in states that are considered good tourist destinations such as the Las Vegas, Nevada.

Education, Knowledge and Trainings Required

If you wish to establish a career in becoming a hotel desk clerk, take as many subjects in Business,  English, Computer and Speech as early as high school. This will provide you with a very good background on how business institutions work and how to deal with clients and manage records.  The minimum requirement to be accepted in this kind of work is simply a possession of a high school diploma.

Skills and Abilities

The skills that are needed to fulfill the responsibilities involved in the job include communication skills, helping/teaching skills, organizational skills and interpersonal skills. The key to become a good hotel desk clerk is to be able to communicate well with the guest and establish a good interpersonal skills as a relations officer. They should be able to help them with their concerns and requests and be very organized in filing paperwork or updating guests data on the computer. 

Duties

There are four top duties a hotel desk clerk must fulfill depending on their role in the desk.

These are the following: doing process reservations, facilitating guest registration, acting as a primary guest liaison, and processing guest departure. Desk clerks or reservation clerks handle reservations via phone or via personal meet ups. They assess the availability of the rooms, quote the rates and record deposits and payments as well as confirm room reservations. They also register the guest upon their arrival and verify the required information and guarantees such as a credit card deposit. As a primary guest liaison officer, they quickly address requests and complaints and redirect guests to the proper department as needed. By the time the guests are prepared for departure, they are the ones who facilitate the checking out procedures such as the payment settings and helping them out with their luggage.

Earnings and Job Outlook

Th salary of a hotel desk clerk starts off from 13,000 U.S. dollars to around 17,000 U.S. dollars per annum. The rate is dependent on factors such as the location of employment, the type and caliber of the hotel, the position and the range of responsibilities of the employee. There are hotel desk clerks who earn around or over 26,100 U.S. dollars per year. The job outlook for this kind of profession is expected mo move as fast as the average for the other types of careers.

Paula Hiz is a researcher and a human resource specialist who helps newly graduates, job applicants and post graduate professionals be aware of their job opportunities and available trainings for skills and practice upgrading.

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