1.2. Organization Structure and Operational Management

Aktia Lounge Hotel & Spa is comprised roughly of 130 employees. The staff of the hotel is very international. While there are representatives from Greece the majority of the staff comes from other countries of the world such as Romania, Serbia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and only one person from Belarus who is the author.

Lodging manager group certain jobs in departments to ensure efficient coordination and control of activities. In general, the departments are grouped as front of the house (those departments in which employees have guest contact, such as front desk), and back of the house (where employees have little guest contact, such as accounting).

The rooms department at Aktia Lounge Hotel &Spa includes reservations, the front office, housekeeping, security and engineering. Responsibilities of the rooms department include reservations, guest reception, room assignment, tracking the status of rooms (available or occupied), prompt forwarding of mail and phone messages, security, housekeeping of guest rooms and public spaces such as lobbies, and answering guests’ questions. To perform these many duties effectively, the rooms department is divided into a number of specialized subunits. These subunits are also referred to as departments.

The front office is one of the most important departments in a hotel, as it often offers the only contact between guests and staff. A hotel’s front office is where guests are greeted when they arrive, where they are registered and assigned to a room, and where they check out. Guest relations and the bell staff or those employees responsible for delivering luggage and messages and attending to special guest requests also fall under the front office umbrella. The reservations department takes and tracks the hotel’s future bookings. The housekeeping department is responsible for cleaning guest rooms and public spaces.

A great deal of interdependence exists among the subunits of the rooms department. For example, reservations must inform the front office of the number of presold rooms each day to ensure that a current inventory of salable rooms is always available. On the other hand, the front office must let reservations know whenever walk-in guests (those who do not have reservations) register. A similar level of cooperation is required between the front office and housekeeping. When a guest checks out, the front office must inform housekeeping so that the room may be cleaned. Once a room is cleaned, housekeeping must inform the front office so that the room may be sold. Certain tasks within the rooms department must occur in a specific order. For example, engineering cannot replace a defective light switch in a guest room if housekeeping does not report the problem. Effective management of this busy department calls for standardized plans, procedures, schedules, and deadlines, as well as frequent direct communication between the executives who manage the key operating units of the rooms department.

The security function at Aktia is a task of the rooms department.

The engineering department’s responsibilities include preventive maintenance; repair; replacement; improvement and modification to furniture, fixtures, and equipment (FFE); and ensuring uninterrupted provision of utilities (gas, electricity, water). Preventive maintenance involves routine checks and inspection of the key components of all equipment. Maintenance of recreational facilities is also a part of the engineering department’s responsibilities. In particular, swimming pools require extensive maintenance to ensure proper filtration and to prevent the accumulation of algae and other conditions unsuitable for swimming.

The primary function of the food and beverage department is to provide food and drink to a hotel’s guests. Aktia features 3 restaurants, a poolside snack and lobby bar and room service. Because of the diversity of services provided, the food and beverage department is also split into subunits.

Marketing and sales department is very small at Aktia and comprises of two specialists only. Coordination of work is not a problem in this department. The primary responsibility of the sales managers is the selling of the hotel facilities and services to individuals and groups. Sales managers sell rooms, food, and beverages to potential clients through advertising, attendance at association and conference meetings, and direct contacts.

The human resources department is presented by one person only since there is an agency that recruits employees for the hotel. Aktia Lounge Hotel & Spa cooperates with Job Trust, an agency that finds appropriately skilled employees for the hotel from all over the world.

The accounting department’s traditional role is recording financial transactions, preparing and interpreting financial statements, and providing the managers of other departments with timely reports of operating results (line functions). Other responsibilities, carried out by the assistant controller for finance, include payroll preparation, accounts receivable, and accounts payable (staff functions).

In the SPA, there are approximately 7 employees (including the Spa Manager). The Spa Manager accomplishes tasks related generally to the spa only. Five of the all employees are therapists, one representative of the spa personnel is a receptionist and a spa manager who also sometimes gives spa treatments in case of excessive number of clients and lack of available therapists.

All departments communicate with each other on a regular basis with some communicating more frequently with others. The Aktia Lounge Hotel and Spa Organizational Chart (see Table 1.) illustrates the departmental organization structure and their reporting to fellow departments on both a functional and hierarchical level.

Table 1. Aktia Hotel & Spa Organizational Chart