Questions

1. Who decides the rate for different agents?

2. When must a guest stay to get a 15% reduction?

3. Where does the hotel get most of its guests from?

4. Why does selling rooms through Free Sale Agents keep administration costs down?

5. What is the difference between a Free Sale Agent and an Allocation Holder?

12. Using the information in the memo, calculate the income for the hotel in each of these cases:

1. Three couples staying for two nights (Friday and Saturday) in Standard rooms.

2. One businessman staying in an Executive Plus room for three nights (not a corporate client).

3. A group of ten corporate clients each staying in a separate room (Luxury) for one night. The Sales and Marketing Department has agreed a 20% discount with this company.

Listening

13. Listen to the interview with the Reservations Manager of the Grand Hotel, recorded a year after the memo was sent. As you listen, note the changes that have been made in the policy of the Grand Hotel regarding room rates.

14. Using the new information, calculate what the income for the hotel will now be in the three cases in Ex. 13.

15. Complete the text with suitable words and expressions from the box.

corporate clients	weekly rate	basic rate
contract	a corporate rate	Free Sale Agents
commission	release	Fully Inclusive Tariff rates
rate policy	a 10% discount	Allocation Holders

Our room ¹⁾ ______ is quite complicated. We have a basic room rate for all our room types, but the way that we sell our rooms means that we often charge a different rate from this. This is because our Sales and Marketing Department has negotiated different rates with different agents, ²⁾ ______, and other clients.

We have a Standard room which contains all the basic facilities, such as private bath, TV, tea- and coffee-making facilities, and the ³⁾ ______ for the double is £85 a night. Our Luxury rooms, or Executive Plus as some of them are called, contain a little bit extra: they’re a bit more spacious, have better views and so on - they’re £115 a night. Then we also have suites, which vary a lot in price.

We also offer different discounts. We have special weekend rates: two nights, either Friday/ Saturday or Saturday/Sunday will get ⁴⁾ ______. That’s to encourage a two-night booking even though weekends can be our busiest time. And our ⁵⁾ ______ is calculated on the basis of seven nights for the price of six.

Like most hotels of our size, individual bookings paying the full room rate are a minority. Most of our guests come through some other source, either as part of a tour, through a tour operator, or a corporate guest. We get lots of repeat guests from particular companies and they obviously have a ⁶⁾ ______ with us. There’s ⁷⁾ ______, but there are also special rates negotiated and arranged with the Sales and Marketing Department, who enter them onto the computer for the Reservation and Front Office to access whenever an enquiry or reservation comes in.

In addition, a lot of our rooms are sold through agents and representatives: these are either ⁸⁾ _____ or ⁹⁾ ______. Allocation Holders are agents who have a certain number of rooms that they agree to sell in our hotel. They normally sell on FIT rates – ¹⁰⁾ ______ - which are from the leisure side of the business and are cheaper than corporate rates. The customer pays them directly, they get ¹¹⁾_______ and pass on what is left to the hotel. The rate is agreed with the Sales and Marketing Department. An Allocation Holder usually has up to twenty rooms over a weekend, on a seventy-two hour ¹²⁾ ______ - in other words, by Wednesday, the hotel can take the rooms back and re-sell them.