HOTEL RESERVATION AND BOOKING SYSTEM A COMPUTERISED APPROACH (A Case Study Of Shangerila Hotel Naze Owerri)

In Nigeria today and other countries, hotel business has become more sophisticated than it was years ago. Hotel business was developed to solve problems of accommodation of visitors and for recreation purpose.
Thousands of people travel from their countries to other countries in search of jobs and business transaction. They always become anxious of where to lodge or sleep for specific time. Hence man’s quest for solving this problem has result in development of hotel in order to eradicate the problem of accommodation.
Therefore hotels is a building where people stay usually for short period of time paying for their rooms and meals. There are different categories of hotel they include:
Two star, Three star, Four star, Five star,
Restaurant, Restore, Motel.
Five star hotel business include single room, suite, double room etc.
In restaurant refreshment services are rendered to visitor. On the other hands. Reservation and booking system has for long been done manually. Such that one may wander how to cope with recent development and increase in tourism. Hence there is need for hotel prospectus to change from manual system which is time consulting and labour intensive to computerized methods.
Thus this project aim at finding system approach to computerize the hotel reservation and booking system so that data can be processed at high speed.
The following data can be input into computer, they are customer name, Room number, Occupation, Date of arrival,
Date of departure.
These input data can be save into the system, thus one’s time is save from going through numerous files. When information are needed the file used to save the information can be called if there is a need for file maintenance or updating1.1 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE CASE STUDY
Shangri-La hotel was built by Mr. Prince Joel Udenkwo. It started its Operation on 13th April 2001. Shangri-La hotel is situated at KM 7 Owerri Aba Road, Naze, Owerri in Imo State. It is rated as four star hotels. It provides a befitting atmosphere for tourism.
Shangri-La hotel rendered the following service
a. Laundry and dry cleaning
b. Exotic bar
c. Communication within and outside country
d. Exciting weekend live music
e. Entertainment and lot more
The hotel is made up of 26 rooms. The types of rooms and suite include: standard room, executive room, double room, studio rooms, single room and deluxe single room. The in room facilities include direct dial telephone, multi satellite TV, Air condition and fridge. The hotel has the following facilities: Summing pool, table tennis and many other to mention but a few. Shangri-La hotel has function hall (large hall) available to hosts seminars, workshop, receptions, annual general meeting and many more.
Other facilities include automatic ignition control generator and pipe born water. The hotel has effective communication system such as telephone and fax system.
The current reservation system used at Shangri-La hotel is manual. In Shangri-La hotel, they give attention to numerous customers and allocate them to their desires accommodation through the used of reservation form.
The organizational chart of Shangri-La hotel shows the hierarchy of staff in the organization. For instance, the managing director is the highest in rank. Followed by the board of directors and general manager.
The task perform by the general manager of the hotel include.
Planning: the general manager plans the objective as well as means of achieving it.
Staffing: the general manager also ensure that skilled works are employed and also that they possess personal qualities.
Controlling: also the general manger ensure that the actual result of the system is compare with the desire result and the error is corrected if occur.
The departments in Shangri-La hotel. Include accountancy department, security department, personnel department, food and beverage department, and maintenance department.
This department consists of staffs that are under the general manager in the organizational chart. The staff include: accountant, account Clark, cashier, store keeper, receptionist, kitchen staff, electrician and carpenter etc.1.2 STATEMENT OF PROBLEMS
The use of manual methods in hotel is tiresome burden some and time consuming. The manual methods of reservation is prone to errors, therefore a computerized version should be adopted in hotels because involves less human effort, it is efficient, reliable and data are process at a very high speed.
In Shangri-La hotel, customers are allocated to their desired accommodation by the use of reservation form. This reservation form create a lot problem, it need more human effort and it also prone to error. Therefore the personal department is face with more task of file maintenance.
File maintenance is an act of amending deleting and adding of standing data on a reference or master file some of the information contained in the reservation form include: room number, account number, daily rate, lodgers name, number in party, Nationality, Occupation, Identification: passport no, address in full(office or residence), Nature of visit business/pleasure,
Date of arrival ………………time……………….,
Date of departure…………….to ………………address.
The receptionist always keep the record of number of unoccupied or uncooked rooms on a source document so as to know where to allocate a quest to. Thus the information gathered from the guest consume time they are inaccurate and untimely. Therefore to avoid this method a better method can be adopted which involves computerizing the reservation and booking system. The computerized version is consume less time it is easier to operate more efficient and more reliable.1.3 AIM AND OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
The main objective of this research is to provide an automatic system which will help to speed up services rendered to guest. In this research we shall aim at designing and implementing a computerized hotel reservation and booking system. Therefore, the presence of these computerized systems will help to update file accurately, hence reservation terminal can be linked to other office in the hotel
AUDIBILITY
After the data or information of a guest or customer has been collected (this data include room number lodgers name, date arrived, departure time) they are process by the computer, the output file will be produce which consist of lodger’s name room number, departure time and date arrived etc. is updated and it is then used fro report making or accounting. These report obtain from the updated file can be used fro auditing by their board of director.1.4 SCOPE AND LIMITATION
The extend to be covered in these project is the designing and implementation of computerized hotel reservation and booking system.
The limitations are time and cost of transportation other constraint include lack of fund in carrying out of the project and insufficient materials such as text books.1.5 IMPORTANCE OF THE STUDY
Computerizing of hotel increases the speed which access is made to data. Hence data can be retrieved or processed when necessary.
Furthermore in computerize hotel reservation and booking system data is:
a. Collected in full with accuracy
b. Generated at appropriate time
c. Kept up-to date and accurate in file
d. Process properly accurately to provide good information.1.6 THE PRESENT SOURCE OF INFROMATION IN SHANGRI-LA HOTEL
During my interview with the reservation Clark in Shangri-La hotel. It was noted that information can be obtained from the quest through the following means:
Telephone conservation medium, Correspondences (informal and formal) and Faxing