About Imperial Hotel London
The following report is about the Imperial Hotel situated in London, United Kingdom. Located in the heart of London’s West End, this hotel was managed and owned by an internationally acclaimed chain of hotels called the Star Hotels. Star Hotels already have the responsibility of managing over 25 hotels all over United Kingdom. However, recently there have been reports of customer dissatisfaction lately in the Imperial Hotels. Therefore, as per the instructions of the newly appointed General Manager, Peter Fansworth, all the problems have been scrutinized to be categorized under six groups according to the type of the problem. Following report would consist of the analysis of these six categorized problems to materialize the reasons behind the sudden decline in the customer satisfaction and the overall ratings of the hotel. The General Manager had implemented the strategy to make the problems be identified in the first place and categorized. Then it would be resolved with the suggestions offered. The analysis of these problems would be justified in the following report by commenting on the suggestions that has been made by the General Manager Peter Fansworth. The different problems will be investigated individually and the proposals to resolve the problems would be prioritized based on the analysis.
Analysis of the individual problem
1. This problem has been based on the issues that the customers have been facing during the service consumption of the Imperial Hotel in United Kingdom. The problem had been analyzed by the strategy of implementing customer surveys based on the guest cards completed by the customers themselves. In these surveys, the customers are provided with a guest card that is to be filled by them according to the experiences they have had in the hotel regarding the facilities of the hotel and the services they have received by the staff of the hotels. Few business clients and elite customers were sent online survey links to be filled based on the same matters so that they could also post the survey results as per their customer experiences.
In most of these surveys, it was found that the grading that has been done by the customer based on their own experiences have mostly been rendered negatively against the hotel staff and facilities. Based on their reviews about the poor quality of rooms and the poor services of the staff as well as the hotel management, the General Manager had implemented the following strategies to manage the problems. The analyses of these strategies are to be done as following:
- Analyzing customer’s perspective to the problems: This strategy can be acceptable as this would enable the hotel management to look at the other side of the issues, rather than having a look at the problems from the hotel’s point of view. This would enable the hotel management to make changes according to the customer needs in their services and provisions.
- Making the staff aware of the customer expectations: This would enable the staff to identify their mistakes and know the fact their previous services were not satisfactory enough.
- Training the staff according to client requirements: This strategy would enable the staff to improve their skills, in compliance with the requirements of the customers.
- Feedback from the customers on improvement: This would enable the management and staff to take notes on whether their improvements are being justified to meet the needs of the customers.
Facilities at Imperial Hotel London
2. The next problem that has been categorized in this group has been the staff turnover that has been a matter that would bother the hotel industry altogether. The staff turnover has been reported to be about 80 percent in the past one year. Even for the front line staff, the Imperial Hotels have reported to have the staff turnover to be particularly high. The reasons for this have been various, such as, the nature of the employment to be specific. This has been identified to be one of the major issues, as the nature of the students have identified to be students, ; foreign nationals from the European Union wanting to work for short periods in London; and generally low pay. This has been a major problem with the funding of the staffing budget with staff costs currently running out around 35 percent of sales for the hotel which is a considerable high amount of budget, given the category in which the hotel falls. It has also been found that a number of young and talented supervisory staff have also left the hotel to work at competitor hotel companies who offer better pay, working conditions and benefits.
The initial suggestions that the General Manager had implemented the following strategies to manage the problems can be discussed as below. The analyses of these strategies are to be done as following:
- Attracting and retaining staff to the key supervisory position: This strategy would help the supervisory staff to be attracted to their position and stick to it.
- Offer pay packages and bonuses that encourage staying with the company through a robust reward strategy: Rewards and Recognitions always boosts the morale of any employee to help them be focused on their job and influences to improve their skill set to perform even better.
- Benchmark pay scales against the competitor hotels: This would make sure that the staff would not find the pay packages of the other hotels to be lucrative and would not leave looking for better prospective.
- Offer regular training and performance appraisals and encourage the promotion of talented staff: Appraisals and rewards along with training again boost the morale of an employee and influence them to work harder and perform better.
- Manage the staff more effectively and supportively through ‘hard and soft’ HR practices: Soft and Hard HR practices helps in understanding of staff morale by analyzing the problems or issues they are facing while working for the organization. Helping them to eradicate the problems makes a staff get closer to his or her organization, making them feel their importance in the business structure.
3. Like any other hotel industry, Imperial Hotels along with the managerial organization Star hotels, have the organizational culture that is performance driven. Since, the work culture is performance driven, the entire workforce and especially the managerial staff relies mostly on the increase of sales month by month by increasing the monthly occupancy of the hotels as well as pushing up the average room rate. The hotel is assessed on a monthly basis and managers’ bonus schemes are directly linked to the financial performance of increasing sales and reducing and controlling costs. The espoused values of Star Hotels are about excellence in customer service and hence performance is also linked to the results of the Guest Satisfaction Surveys or GSS.
It had been found that the previous General Manager had made the overall staff atmosphere has been too much toxic for the people to work over there. It has also been found that there have been female staff and part-time staff as well who might need to have family commitments, and in many cases have other part-time jobs to fit round those family commitments and these were somewhat not entertained. The previous management was found to be somewhat dictatorial and this was the reason of agitation of most of the staff members.
Challenges faced by Imperial Hotel London
After being appointed as the new General Manager, Peter Fansworth implemented strategies to fix this issue. Analysis of the strategies would be as follows:
- Improve the standard and levels of supervision within all departments: This would help in scrutinizing the staff better.
- Get staff regularly involved in planning and problem-solving operational challenges: This would make the staff be clear to their roles and make the staff be ready to face any challenges further.
- Reward good customer service and good attendance: Appraisals and rewards along with training again boost the morale of an employee and influence them to work harder and perform better.
- Better training of staff of company-wide standards and values: This strategy would help in improving the quality of staff performance, enabling the staff to provide improved customer services.
Problem 4: Ineffective leadership and management by previous Heads of Department and supervisory staff including poor monitoring and control procedures
The poor leadership and management by the previous General Manager has left the hotel in a precarious position. The high levels of staff turnover, the disappointing sales performance and the poor results on the Guest Satisfaction Surveys has identified a number of issues about the quality of leadership and management within the hotel in all departments.
The Heads of Departments, whose bonuses are linked to their own department’s performance, are often hostile in terms of defending their own department’s position in HOD meetings. Several of the HODs have been in their post at the hotel for over 10 years and many have left the hotel as a result of the previous General Manager retiring. In reviewing the monitoring and control procedures through the hotel, Pater Farnsworth has identified many instances of supervisors and managers failing to monitor the standard of work undertaken daily in housekeeping, in the kitchens and the hotel’s reception. There are weak reporting practices and when considering the specific complaints by guests there seems to be disconnect between what is reported and what happens in reality.
Peter Fansworth had implemented ideas to strategize the solving of these problems with the following. The detailed analyses of the strategies are done as below:
- Lead by example
- Review monitoring procedures and IT support
- Incentivize supportive management
- Devise cross-department collaboration
5. The front house staffs, that is, the reception has the pivotal role in the interaction with the guests offering services and providing supporting to the guests. It was found that there has been extreme discontinuity in providing services to the guests because the reception was not available at all times of the day, which is ideally important to implement. Then again all the staff members of the hotel need to be updated about the information of the guests, which was also not explained enough. This resulted in discontinuity in the customer services as well. The results of this miscommunication and mismanagement in services have resulted in the faulty billing of the customer’s stay in the hotel. Some of the primary staff of the Reception has been in constant conflict with the members of the other departments after there has been reporting of various false complaints being lodged on the formers by the guests. Housekeeping staff have been provided with an incorrect or outdated data on room availability. Even there was wrong information on the staying of any hotel guest. Reception could not inform correctly the Housekeeping about early and late arrivals and as a result rooms have not been cleaned in time with guests. Subsequently, the guests had to wait for long periods to get their room keys. It was also known to the HOD of Front office and reception about the conflict issue of this department as well as the conflict of the other departments. The operations and management with regards to the reservation and property management have also been proved to be of a low grade, therefore, the ratings of the hotel can be justifiable to be drooping down. The problem would further double into causing further problems in the hotel and identifies with the problems in the other categorized problems as well. The problem had been analyzed by the strategy of implementing customer surveys based on the guest cards completed by the customers themselves. In these surveys, the customers are provided with a guest card that is to be filled by them according to the experiences they have had in the hotel regarding the facilities of the hotel and the services they have received by the staff of the hotels. The next problem that has been categorized in this group has been the staff turnover that has been a matter that would bother the hotel industry altogether. The staff turnover has been reported to be about 80 percent in the past one year. Even for the front line staff, the Imperial Hotels have reported to have the staff turnover to be particularly high. The reasons for this have been various, such as, the nature of the employment to be specific. This has been identified to be one of the major issues, as the nature of the students have identified to be students; the European Union foreign nationals who wanted to work for short periods in London with a considerable low payment. Like any other hotel industry, Imperial Hotels along with the managerial organization Star hotels, have the organizational culture that is performance driven. Since, the work culture is performance driven, the entire workforce and especially the managerial staff relies mostly on the increase of sales per month by increasing the monthly tenure of the hotels as well as pushing high levels of performances. It had been found that the previous General Manager had made the overall staff atmosphere has been too much toxic for the people to work over there. Due to the poor management and leadership control of the previous General Manager, the hotel had suffered heavy damages. There have been tremendous amounts of staff turnover, poor levels of sales performances and increasingly bad levels of Guest Satisfaction Surveys or GSS. This has invoked a lot of questions about the leadership qualities and the quality of management in all of the departments of the hotel. There have been numerous complaints from the hotel guests about general cleanliness, with special focuses to bathrooms. Housekeeping room assistants have also not reported as usual being abrupt in their responses and being rude most of the time. Staff motivation had been found out to be very poor in levels.
Customer satisfaction at Imperial Hotel London
The new changes in the management included the inclusion of a new General Manager and a new Head of the Department for the Front Office and Reception. Since both of them have been working in complete convergence with each other, both are aware of the term. Both of them have been in constant discussion with each other about the reception team’s dynamics. There have also been reported issues of clashes amongst influential people and strong personalities within the department.
The new General Manager has suggested some strategies to solve the issues. The analyses of these issues are discussed in details as below:
- Training into IT systems: This would implement the organization to be accessible to the customers at all hours and not only the general physical timings. The implementation of IT systems would make the individual performances much more better evaluated.
- Cross-team building exercises: This would boost the morale of the staff working under the organization. The strategy would decrease the differences between all the levels of employees who have been in the hotel staff. This would definitely decrease the conflicts that arise between the influential staff and other staff.
- Reviewing the team bonus schemes: Any bonus scheme influences a staff member to work harder in order to achieve the bonus as a form of recognition. This would make the staff focus on their individual performances more than the conflicts that arise between them. Personal problems would not let the performances hamper more and would make them provide services better to the guests in the hotel.
6. The quality of the Spanish staffs’ work is good overall, and the cost of employing the staff through the agency is only marginally more expensive that employing home staff. The Spanish staff tends to stay with the hotel for up to a year. The Spanish staff prefers to work together in their shifts with other Spanish staff, and are supervised and provided on-the-job training as to the brand standards for the hotel by the in-house Assistant Head Housekeeper, herself a fluent Spanish speaker.
In addition to this, there have been numerous complaints from the hotel guests about general cleanliness, with special focuses to bathrooms. Housekeeping room assistants have also not reported as usual being abrupt in their responses and being rude most of the time. Staff motivation had been found out to be very poor in levels.
The new General Manager has suggested strategies to fight these problems. The analyses of these strategies are being followed up as below:
- Consider using other contacted staff through specialist agencies: This strategy would help in cutting the previous allocator based on the negative reviews offered.
- Employ students on zero hour contracts only: Zero hour contracts would help in implementing casual workers as the minimum working hours are not defined in zero hour contracts.
- Offer a range of incentive and bonus schemes to encourage staff to perform to a higher standard: This would encourage the standard staff to perform better to achieve the recognition in terms of the bonus schemes.
Conclusion
In conclusion it can be said that the problems that had been faced by the Imperial Hotels along with the managerial organization of Star Hotels were resulting in the declination of the standard of the hotel according to the levels of hotel industry functioning in United Kingdom. Therefore, as per the instructions of the newly appointed General Manager, Peter Fansworth, all the problems have been scrutinized to be categorized under six groups according to the type of the problem. Following report had the analysis of the fifth amongst the six categorized problems to materialize the reasons behind the sudden decline in the customer satisfaction and the overall ratings of the hotel. The General Manager had implemented the strategy to make the problems be identified in the first place and categorized. The resolution suggestions were scrutinized as a result in accordance to this report. The analyses of these problems are thus justified in the following report by commenting on the suggestions that has been made by the General Manager Peter Fansworth.
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