Full Project – Design and implementation of a computerized hotel business billing system

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CHAPTER ONE

1.1 INTRODUCTION

Hotel is defined by British law as a place where a traveler can receive food and shelter, provided he is in a position to pay and is in a fit condition to be received. Hence, a hotel provides food and beverages, and lodging to travelers on payment.

In turn, it has the right to refuse a traveler who is drunk, disorderly, untidy or is not in a position to pay for the services.

The hotel industry is perhaps, one of the oldest commercial endeavors in the world. The earliest hotels were managed by husband and wife teams, who provided large halls for travelers to make their own bed and sleep on the floor. The entire cooking service and recreation were provided by the husband and wife team and his family. It was in Europe that the birth of well-managed hotel industry took place in the shape of chalets and small hotels which provided a variety of services. They were mainly patronized by the aristocracy of the day.

The real growth of the modern hotel industry took place in the United States of American in 1794. The real boom in hotel building came in the early twentieth century. This period also saw the beginning of chain operation under the guidance of E.M Stalker. It involved big investment big profit and trained professional to manage the business.

The management billing of a hotel system was virtually left in the hands of the front officers. The front office in a hotel is the department responsible for the scale of hotel rooms through a systematic method of reservation, followed by registration and assigning of rooms to customers, it was usually done manually. This was boring and cumbersome in hotels that still operate manually today. This development in hotel business billing system continued gradually until recently when the computer was invented as an electronic method of processing data. Computer can be defined as an electronic device that accepts, input, manipulated data and produce information which is the output, as required.

Computerization of hotel business billing system is a focus on the lodging system of a hotel and the application of computer in the lodging system of a hotel. A hotel which operates a computerized system will ensure that the program carries provision for different tariffs, locations, and individual guest preferences. Details of each room are stored in the memory and as a guest register, the guest list it immediately updates while that particular room is removed from the list of those which are available for letting. Because the system is so accurate, there is little chance of two people being given same room.

1.2 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

The lodging system of Modotel Hotel Limited Enugu started when this hotel was established in 1999, it is located at Enugu. It has 80 rooms (single, standard and suites) with an Olympic swimming pool, game village and a game house room stewards, hot and cold water tub, air conditioner, television, refrigerator and an inter-com. The Cable News Network (CNN) is received in the hotel through its satellite dish. The body managing the hotel now at the apex of the management includes:

The chief executive
The board of directors
The management
The operational managers
The supervisors
The staffs.

Since the early days of communication diplomats and military commanders understood that it was necessary to provide some mechanism to protect the confidentiality of correspondence and to have some means of detecting tampering. Julius Caesar is credited with the invention of the Caesar Cipher C. 50 B.C, which was credited in order to prevent his secret messages from been read should message fall into the wrong hands but for the most part, protection was achieved through the application of procedural handling controls. Sensitive information was marked up to indicate that it should be protected and transported by trusted persons, guarded and stored in a secure environment or strong box. As postal services expanded, the government created official organizations to intercept, decipher, read and reseal letters.

In the mid 19th century more complex classification systems were developed to allow governments to manage their information according to their degree of sensitivity

The British government codified this, to some extent, with the publication of the official secrets act in 1889. By the time of the First World War, multiplier classification systems were used to communicate information to and from various fronts, which encourage greater use of code making and breaking sections.

In diplomatic and military headquarters. In the United Kingdom, this led to the creation of the government code and cipher school in 1919.

Encoding became more sophisticated between the wars as machines were employed to scramble and unscramble information. The end of the 20th century and early years of the 21st century saw rapid advancements in telecommunications, computing hardware and software and data encryption. The availability of smaller, more powerful and less expensive computing equipment made electronic data processing within the reach of small business and the home user. These computers quickly become interconnected through the internet.

1.3 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The introduction of the computer in the hotel is to reduce problems encountered on arrival and event at check out time by guest, customers, and visitors to the hotel. The reception staff on their efforts tries to manually attend to each guest’s request, going through the reception routine in the front office by the guest is normally frustrating and time wasting.

As guest can be kept on their feet for several minutes waiting to be attended to. The cashier section is similar to that of the front office. The staff at the cashier section are also limited by their human capabilities.

1.4 OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

The objective of the study is stated below:

To design a computerized reservation entry and guest billing system for timely services, in hotel services time is of the essence.
Another objective of the study is to design a computerized system which will ensure that the program carries provisions for different tariffs, locations, and individual guest preferences.
The computer will select the best available rooms for a particular reservation or offer an alternative if the preferred room is already taken or is not yet ready.
The program will be flexible enough to ensure that any special request by a guest can be catered for.

1.5 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The scope of this project, Hotel Billing System a case study of Modotel hotel limited Enugu is to create a dynamic computerized application that will assist the receptionist and the cashier in attending to guest reducing the stress the reception goes through in knowing the available, and the checking in and out of guest in the hotel.

1.6 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

There is a high hope that this project will solve those problems the reception personnel encounter on the sale of rooms in the hotel.

A hotel which is computerized can dispatch, answer inquiries and write confirmation letters for reservation, keep messages for guest, advice the hotel management about regular guest, improve the level of services the hotel offers to guest, and monitor room services to guest. It will greatly help the reception personnel to know the number of room available and how many rooms that have been booked.

This helps in updating of reservations. In a situation of efficient services, the hotel will be attractive to guest and visitors and thereby make a profit.

1.7 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY

The computerization of the hotel business billing system is centered on the front office (i.e the reception and cashier section) of the hotel. A lot of limitations were encountered during this study. Such limitations are:

Finance: This hindered my movement in the process of gathering of facts.
Time: This is another constraint to my undertaking a more comprehensive fact-finding, since the period for this study was very small compared to the actual work.
Lack of textbooks: This is also another major constraint in the course of carrying out this work. One had to move from one library to another.
Protocols: We encountered series of protocols, often called red-tapism before we were granted interviews.

1.8 DEFINITION OF TERMS

Arrival: Time that a guest registers into the hotels.

Accommodation: The term simply refers to rooms

Booking: Reservation of rooms

Cancellation: When a room reservation is withdrawn by the guest.

Check-in: Arrival of a guest who has registered at the reception.

Check-out: Department that takes care of a guest who has settled his bills

Departure: Time when a guest leaves the hotel.

Double Room: Room with one large size bed

Data: Bit and pieces of fact and figures representing an idea or event needed for processing to give out information

Field: A unit of information containing a group of related data

Guest: Person who uses the services of a hotel.

Information: when data undergoes certain manipulations like calculation, sorting, amending etc. They eventually become usual meaningful. In order words, they become information

Online processing: Also called transaction, processing is the collecting and processing of data as the transaction occurs.

Real-time processing: Technique by which data are entered for immediate processing.

Reception: Counter in a hotel that registers guests.

Reservation: Counter that receives documents on reservation request.

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