ABSTRACT
Economic conditions and the fuel availability situation are producing a decline in occupancy at roadside and suburban lodging locations. The lodging operator personally handling the direct sales effort is the best approach to setting up a sales operation—provided all the other daily functions of operating a property are turned over to someone else. If the operator of a property cannot handle this personally, then he should add a salesperson to his staff who will handle sales only. Hiring, training and supervising a salesperson must be followed by putting in a procedure and system for files and records. The procedure outlined is a guide to a very simple, basic, flexible system of maintaining sales files and records for a small hotel or motel property. There should be a file for every piece of group business: only potential, already booked, in the process of being booked, or has the opportunity of being solicited for some type of business.
