In My Shoes…

Ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes of the Front Office??? Agg lets you take  a walk in her shoes for a day:

07:00 AM - **Yawn** Alarm goes off. Roll over. A hearty breakfast of 2 Weetbix, honey and banana..mmm…Yum!

07:30 AM – Stroll to work at a leisurely pace, breathe in that morning freshness!

07:42 AM – Get distracted by snail that has made a silver, slimy path across the pavement.

07:55 AM – Arrive at work. Use my super duper all access electronic swipe card to access the building (that’s right people, ALL ACCESS!) at Caroline Serviced Apartments in Brighton.

08:35 AM – Farewell guests who have come down to Reception to drop off their keys. They leave us a rave review which I later put up on our Facebook, Twitter and other corresponding web pages to share the love! Getting involved in social media platforms is a really important part of our job. Websites, such as these are useful tools in the marketing and branding of the company. It also opens up more communication channels between ourselves and our guests and gives us the opportunity to gain feedback on a personal level. Current, future and previous guests also surf our web pages regularly for information on what’s going on around Melbourne, special deals and reviews, so it is important to keep these up to date in order to be able to provide accurate and useful information to our followers.

10:00 AM – An ‘in-house’ guest (notice the Front Office lingo? ‘in-house’ means someone who is currently staying with us) comes to Reception after being out for a business breakfast, which I helped her organise. Our Front Office Team work closely with the local businesses, as we believe in promoting the Brighton area. By doing this we are able to provide our guests with added value, like meal or drink vouchers, along with helping out our restaurant neighbours with a bit of extra business! Our lovely guest has an extra coffee in hand as a thankyou for me!! (Just in time too, I forgot to have mine this morning!) .

10:20 AM – We have received an internet booking from one of our websites! I pop in the booking and send through the confirmation details to the guest. The booking has come from one our third party websites (such as wotif.com or expedia.com). We constantly have to check out inventory and listings on all websites to make sure it’s up to date – especially since we receive bookings from so many different channels (phone, walk-in, email as well as on-line 3^rd party websites). Constant research is needed as we need to be aware of competitors’ rates and availabilities. We have to ensure that Caroline Serviced Apartments are the accommodation YOU would click on, rather than say, a hotel down the road.

10:45 AM – I do a little research about Melbourne. It’s important that we know what is going on around our own city so we can make suggestions to guests about where to eat and play! We accommodate a variety of guests (international, interstate and local) and we need to be able to assist them with a variety of things! The other day, I compiled a list of electrical & whitegoods retailers for an international guest who was a bit lost as to where to start setting up their new home in Melbourne. It really made me realise how many ‘little’ things we take for granted when moving to a new city… Ali has already done a blog post on this topic: ‘Relocations are Big Business’.

11:15 AM – Receive a phone call from a lovely lady enquiring about our apartments. The Brighton property is full for the dates that she requested so I must double check with the South Yarra property to see if we can accommodate her. Working closely with both properties to maximise our sales is essential to our company. South Yarra has the availability, and after confirming that the lady wouldn’t mind staying there, I forward her details onto our fabulous Assistant Manager at South Yarra, Alex.

11:25 AM – I chat to one of our clients at a Relocation Company who is looking to place an executive from a large banking group in our apartments for a minimum of 3 months. It’s such a last minute booking too – she wants to book him in from this weekend! It takes me a while to juggle some of our upcoming bookings around to make some room for this long booking, but I manage to do it (much to the Relocation Agents’ relief)! I find out that the guest will be arriving at midnight on Friday, so I offer to organise a Pantry shop (a little grocery shopping) for his family, to help them get settled after a long flight from Europe. We understand that it’s difficult traveling with children, and to have a feeling of homeliness when you arrive is so important. At least it might be nice to arrive and have some toast and a hot chocolate before putting the excited/tired kids to bed.

12:00 PM – Alison arrives, 2 juices in hand (they are squeezed fresh at the green-grocer on Church Street and very hard to resist!). We deliberate about current in-house and future guests. Communication between all the Front Of House staff is really important. It means that each staff member is on the same level, and we can therefore help each guest accordingly.

12:20 PM - Ali sends me down the road to do a bit of a shopping for office supplies (which of course include office Teddy Bear chocolate covered biscuits!)

1:00 PM – Mr. XXX arrives and would like to check in. I’m a little bit nervous, he is the CEO of a major Australian Company and I really want to impress him. Working with high profile guests isn’t as scary as I thought it would be. We have guests come to stay that are the big players within large co-operations like CEO’s and Managing Directors, and we try our best to impress them. It’s important to keep all of our guests extra happy, some of them stay here for many months while they are working on projects in Melbourne. If they have an enjoyable stay with us they are bound to come back and to forward our details onto their own employees and clients, further exposing our company name (and friendly staff!). It’s really lovely when one of these high profile guests is appreciative of the extra efforts you have gone to in order to make their stay more comfortable. It’s the little things that count, and it’s the little things that we remember!

1:40 PM – I just got a booking for a wedding day! I love it when we have wedding guests stay with us. The bridezillas that run around the apartments are so much fun! And some of them come up with unusual requests…such as forwarning us that deliveries of champagne & beer will be arriving before they check in, and could we please fill the fridge with it?

3:00 PM – Aaaah another little highlight in the day. A couple of the lights in Reception have stopped working, so our favourite electrician, Pete has arrived to change the transformers for us. A certain ‘nameless’ female Front Office staff member whispers to me that “Pete should climb up a ladder in Reception everyday”. There’s also a couple of light-switch repairs he needs to attend to in the guest rooms, so we have to make arrangements with the guests to have access to their apartments. That’s one thing I really didn’t expect when I started working here, we have so many little maintenance things that we have to attend to. Our guests or housekeepers report a problem to the Front Office and it’s up to us to figure out how to fix the problem ourselves, or call out an expert. I’ve learnt so much about TVs, air-conditioners, dishwashers and DVD players in my first few months here!!!

4.00 PM – My day comes to an end. I bid farewell to Ali, and tell her I’ll see her tonight at the Social-Media function down at ‘The Social’ on Chapel St. The monthly Tweet Up Mellers event is a great opportunity for us to have some casual drinks, and network with other Social Media savvy business people.

Between the above times, I’ve kept busy updating staff time sheets, printing out reports so the housekeepers know how busy the next day will be, answering many phone calls with bookings, setting up appointments for people to view our apartments for future bookings, I tidied the office, and even managed to find some time for lunch! Hopefully you’ve got some idea of what our day is like in the Front Office of Caroline Serviced Apartments… we don’t just sit at the desk looking pretty!