One of the useful features of the Hotel PM program is its ability to identify Equipment Locations and Service Areas . While in many instances these two descriptions may appear or even be the same, it is important to understand the distinction between the two. Both are descriptive of physical areas in your hotel but they are used for different purposes.
Equipment Locations are used to identify where a piece of equipment is physically located in the hotel. For instance an air conditioning compressor my be located on the roof or at the back of a particular building. The Service Area is used to describe which part of the hotel the particular compressor services. Does it service the lobby, the kitchen or perhaps a ballroom? Each type of information is important when an engineer or contractor plans to service a particular piece of equipment. They need to know where the unit is located, and they also need to know what portion of the hotel could be effected by the unit.
The Hotel PM program provides a list of standardized names for both Equipment Locations and for Service Areas. These lists are used when the equipment for your hotel is defined and should be built before you begin the process of entering equipment into the hotel database.
Care should be taken when constructing these lists to insure that they are detailed enough to be useful. While at the same time not becoming so cumbersome that they are no longer useful.