Glossary
Hotel Front Desk Agent Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential hotel front desk agent terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key hotel front desk agent vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in hotel front desk agent training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Folio
- A guest’s bill.
- Incidentals
- Extra charges such as room service.
- Late checkout
- Leaving after standard checkout time.
- Loyalty program
- Rewards for frequent guests.
- Night audit
- Balancing daily transactions overnight.
- No-show
- A guest who doesn’t arrive.
- Occupancy
- Percentage of rooms filled.
- Overbooking
- Booking more rooms than available.
- PMS
- Property management system.
- Rate code
- A code for a room rate type.
- Turndown
- Evening room service.
- Upsell
- Offering a better room for more money.
- VIP
- A guest needing special attention.
- Walk-in
- A guest without a reservation.
- Walking a guest
- Relocating a guest to another hotel.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Hotel Front Desk Agent practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Hotel Front Desk Agent training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.