West Munster Hotel

West Munster Hotel was built in 1867 by the great great grandfather of the current owner. It has 30 rooms of three types: Bridal Suite, Double with Bathroom and Double with Shower.

A system analyst has done some analysis for the development of a billing system for West Munster Hotel. In what follows the analysis results are summarised.

Room prices vary according to season. Currently two seasons are recognised: 'Low', from the 20th of September to the 20th of May and 'High', from the 21st of May to the 19th of September. Prices for each room type per season are updated every year.

Customers, some of whom belong to companies, book rooms throughout the year. Each booking is for one room. A name of a customer is always required when a booking is made. Bookings are either confirmed at the time of booking or are provisional. A provisional booking has to be confirmed within three weeks. If it is not confirmed in three weeks, the booking lapses, and is deleted from the system.

Upon arrival, customers who propose to pay their bill by credit card have to inform the hotel by providing the relevant credit card number. West Munster accepts three methods of payment: cash, cheque with supporting cheque card, and credit card. Cheque and credit cards are credit checked while customers are shown to their room. If the credit check shows the card to be unacceptable West Munster staff inform the customer and request another card or another method of payment. Until the new method of payment is acceptable, the customer cannot use the hotel's services without paying in cash.

During their stay, guests can use the hotel's services, which are: Bar, Restaurant, Coffee Shop, Room Service and Beauty Parlour. These services are either paid for directly or charged to the room number of the guest. The total of each service used is recorded in the system.

When a booking is taken, whether provisional or confirmed, a booking number is allocated, a room number is earmarked, a customer number and/or a company code no are attached to the booking, and the expected start and end dates are recorded.

West Munster has 50 companies and 300 customers on record. Each room has an average of 30 bookings per year. When at West Munster, guests use the hotel's services 10 times on average.

A typical West Munster Hotel bill is available from your tutor.

Some assumptions/notes for RDA

There is only one room per booking.

Although a room can have more than one guest, for billing purposes there is only one person per room.

Total Room Cost, Bill Total and Amount Outstanding could be derived i.e. calculated at the time of producing the bill, or they could be stored in the database. We assume that they are derived not stored