1.1 Introduction
Hotel Management System is a hotel reservation site script where site users will be able to search room’s availability with an online booking reservations system. Site users can also browse hotels, view room inventory, check availability, and book reservations in real-time. Site users enter check-in date and check out date then search for availability and rates. After choosing the right room in the wanted hotel – all booking and reservation process is done on the site and an SMS is sent to confirm the booking.
As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.
1.2 Background of Study
Hotel Management System operates a global online hotel reservation system for business and leisure travelers. To compete with the international e-marketplace, a great deal of attention should pay towards the optimization of user requirements to generate recommended hotel alternatives (Koolmanojwong, 2000). In general sense, hotel management is the way of maintaining different activities of a hotel where a number of staffs are engaged to perform a number of these activities. At first let us take a glance to an ordinary hotel. For hiring a room in this type of hotel, the client needs to meet with the receptionist to collect the information of hotel facilities (O'Fallon et al., 2011). After that he is to fill up the pro forma provided by the hotel authority, then he has to pay the defined amount of money and is offered room key for his/her rented room. He/she is then finishes the formalities a reception zone through these undergoing customs. But client always wants greater privacy and reliable security. Koolmanojwong et al. developed an intelligent e-marketplace for the tourism based on fuzzy to serve the customers who wants to travel but has no idea about the accommodation (Ngai et al., 2003). This system is global in the sense that anyone can use this to find the appropriate hotel according to his/her affordable means (Jingzhi et al., 2006). The details of the hotel management systems including the franchising, casinos, health Spas, payroll, credit, accounting control etc. are well described in (Gray et al., 20002.
There are many inherent problems with using the old method of recording hotel check-in information. Such problems can occur as check papers and information sent to the wrong place. Some cannot even handle the massive volume of guest and their records. There is difficulty in locating guest files due to the large number of guests. Because of the large amount of files, receipt generation is extremely difficult for the hotel employees. Human computational errors are also a major issue due to improper calculation. Large storage space is required to store all of the files. Overall these problems end up costing loss of profit.
1.3 Statement of Problems
The problems faced by the existing system and hope to be solved by the Computerized Hotel Management System are entailed below:
- Records are manually written and stored in various registers.
- Lots of human errors are encountered when records are hand-written.
- The use of numerous registers for hostel allocation can be very cumbersome, hence tracing records become tedious.
- Difficulty in maintaining or updating the records, hence, retrieval of a certain dataset from a bunch of registers is almost impossible.
- Loss or damage of any of the registers leads to damage of lots of important files at a time.
- Lack of data security.
1.4 Aim and Objective of Study
The aim of the study is to develop a Computerized Hotel Management System that will ease the stress associated with the existing manual system as earlier stated. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows to design and develop an application that will:
- Manage fast access to the guest files and provide better data management facilities
- Enable fast and easy retrieval of guest records and data for fast reference activities
- Provide security measures to access the hotel’s information lowering data security threats
- Reduce paper usage at the hotel, data entry and processing errors
- Create a database management system (DBMS) which allocates storage to customer’s data and also provides security for the stored data.
1.5 Significance of Study
This project will be of benefit to: Enterprises and Hospitality Industry such as; Hotels. The proposed system will also be beneficial to Hotel Managers which applies the appropriate strategy in achieving the set goals. This study will be of immense benefit to other researchers who intend to know more on this study and can also be used by non-researchers to build more on their research work. This study contributes to knowledge and could serve as a guide for other study.
1.6 Scope of Study
The study focuses on the Design and Implementation of a Computerized Hotel Management System using Grand Pela Hotel in F.C.T. Abuja as a case study.
1.7 Limitations of the Study
During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:
- Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
- Establishment Policies: Establishment policies posed a serious limitation as most staffs are not ready to release information needed for this project work. There were lots of information needed from the staffs of this institution to enhance the study which took them time to release or they did not release at all for security purposes, hence the scope was reduced.
- Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
- Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
- Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet).
1.8 Definition of Terms
Billing: This is the process of preparing or sending invoices.
E-billing: This is the process of paying and receiving bills online.
E-data: It is data stored and transmitted as binary code.
E-payment: E-payment can be simply defined as paying for goods or services on the internet. It includes all financial operations using electronic devices, such as computers, smartphones or tablets. It comes with various methods, like credit or debit card payments or bank transfers.
E-cheque: It is an electronic version or representation of a paper cheque. The account holder writes an e-check (or e-cheque) using a computer or other type of electronic device and transmits the e-cheque to the payee electronically.
Invoice: An invoice is a document that lists the products and services a business provides to a client and establishes an obligation on the part of the client to pay the business for those products and services.
Customer: A customer is a person or company that receives, consumes or buys a product or service and can choose between different goods and suppliers.
Receipt: It is a document acknowledging that a person has received money or property in payment following a sale or other transfer of goods or provision of a service.
Client: A client of a professional person or organization is a person or company that receives a service from them in return for payment. A client is someone who gets services or advice from a professional person, company, or organization.
Records: These are information created, received, and maintained as evidence and information by an organization or person, in pursuance of legal obligations or in the transaction of business.
Budget: A budget is a financial document used to project future income and expenses. A budget is described as a precise statement, representing a financial estimate of income and expenditure of the government for a certain period.
