Food Service Business - Case Study Example

Business Analysis on Food Service Business Executive Summary This paper vividly analyses the hotel management business with specific emphasis to the Claridge’s Hotel. The paper gives a general background of the hotel, the type of food services offered at the Hotel and the services provided. Such analysis tools as SERVQUAL and Gap Models are used to analysis the type of services offered. PESTEL is also applied to highlight the environment in which the business operates then a recommendation is given to area of improvement. Introduction Hotel management and catering services are widely used globally to provide different and variety of services such as organizing conferences, weddings and honeymoons, recreation facilities and so on. Good customer services in the hotels usually attract more customers because they will be excited by the type of services they received (Sheela, 2007, p. 230). Claridge is one such unique luxurious hotel that provides a variety of hotel services in the world. Claridge Hotel is located at the heartbeat of London and is ranked among the best hotels in the world and also the most aristocratic (Pizam, 2010, p.612). The hotel provides variety services that meet the world class tastes, and these vary from organizing weddings and honeymoons, providing conference rooms, providing catering services and many others. Their guests are considered to be superbly comfortable and unique and the hotel is fitted with theater desks for entertainment (Auger & Devinney, 2007, p. 370). Findings Food Services at Claridge The Claridge Hotel provides a variety of food services ranging from the breakfast, afternoon tea, lunch and dinner, and the foods are served with themed drinks at the famous prohibition style bar. When serving breakfast, it is accompanied by Atlantic City eggs, Lunch involve Mammoth Angus burgers on brioche rolls and dinner time the variety of selections include chops, fresh seafood, pasta dishes, steaks and crab cakes. Claridge’s Bar serves a variety of drinks such as champagnes, sought –after spirits and wines (Creswell, 2007, p. 56). The foods are either served in in-door dining where the food is served in the customer’s room as requested or they provide outdoor dining where the customer is served his meal in the open restaurant. The in-door dining breakfast menu contains juices, tea, coffee, hot chocolate, smoothies, cereals yoghurts and porridge. Other meals on the menu include salads, Desserts, Sandwiches, Canapés, Soups and Starters, Grills, Meat and Sauces (Rutherford & O’Fallon, 2011, p.400). The Executive chef at the hotel is Martyn Nail and there is numerous other staff in all the hotel’s departments ranging from guides in the swimming pool, drivers, guides at the parking, guides at the casino and many others. Some of the catering events offered at the hotel after forming a partnership with Philadelphia’s Acclaimed Brulee Catering include offering Ballrooms, event and wedding planning and the hotel offers exquisite and inventive cuisine (Sen & Bhattacharya, 2001, p.230). It is noted from the hotel management that the employees’ welfare is highly guarded and their rights are respected. This is aimed at encouraging them to provide the best services to the customers so as to increase and expand the hotel’s customer service base thereby increasing the sales (Shaw et al., 2007, p. 35). Some of the services provided to the workers include giving them a free day to attend to family matters, providing free medical and treatment, training workers on their duties and they also provide free licenses for training the workers (Sherlock & Reuvid, 2011, p.33). SERVQUAL and the Organizational Gap Models for Hotel Management In any business setup, service quality is the best method of business management and to ensure that its products and services meet customer’s tastes and preferences. It is vital in ensuring that quality services are provided that will make the customer desire more. It fills in as a predecessor of consumer loyalty (Deng, 2012, p. 87). If in the process of executing business operations, the customers’ expectations are higher than the actual performance of the business, then the perceived quality is less than that which is satisfactory and eventually customer dissatisfaction occurs (Cui, 2003, p.364, Andreas et al., 2012, p. 499). SERVQUAL is a service quality framework, developed in the year 1980s by Zeithaml, Parasuraman & Berry, and its main purpose is to measure the scale of Quality in the service sectors (Carrigam, 2006, p. 101). The SERVQUAL model depends on three major basis which are the 5 Gaps that causes the void between the customers’ expectations and the actual business performance, Causes and solutions to the Gaps and the Key Service Dimensions in service delivery (Blais, 2011, p. 243). In Claridge’s hotel, the services provided to higher standard meet the customer expectation and demands. This is noted by the comments made by the visitors who had visited the hotel and appreciated the type of services offered. In the SERVQUAL model, the first gap may exist due to the management problem in understanding the market demand, thereby providing services that the customers do not desire (Brewer, 2007, p.129). At the Claridge’s hotel however, the case the gap is avoided because the hotel management has vibrant market networking that ensures that information is disseminated properly through all the hotel departments thus ensuring that the services provided meets the international market and customer demands (Brooks, 2015, p. 74). Proper management and coordination of the hotel departments has also prevented the existence of SERVQUAL gap two which may occur due to the differences in management perception of expectations and the detailing of customers’ expectations and desires. The hotel provides an opportunity for prior booking where the customer details his expectations and these are what the hotel management provides thereby avoiding customer dissatisfaction and provision of low-quality services alongside other related risks (Gaisford & Alexander 2007, p.143). Service quality can be used in deciding how a business creates and conveys its items and services; management of its workers and in the building the product’s brand personality and notoriety. Through the Gap-Model, the hotel management can define an appropriate strategy that will ensure the business thrive in the competitive global hotel business (Guiso et al. 2005, p. 134). Despite the quality of food services offered at the Claridge’s hotel, the Gap-Model reveals that there is slight customer dissatisfaction in the variety of the dishes provided. It is noted that the hotel mostly offers the international English dishes and less of the indigenous and local dishes. This, therefore, indicates that despite several customers appreciating the quality of food services at the hotel, not all customer preferences are satisfied (Pizam 2010, p.618). PESTEL Analysis of the Hotel Management PESTEL model is a management tool used by most of the companies and businesses to monitor and evaluate the environment in which they are operating it so as to formulate proper strategies of managing the stiff competition in the market. The acronym stands for Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal Environments (Carkenord, 2009, p.300). Political; the current political situation in the country is very favorable, and the government provides subsidies to most industries and businesses. This reduces their cost of production hence providing cheaper services making the hotel businesses to thrive well in the competitive global business (Harzing, 2004, p. 100). Economic, the country’s interest rates, however, is a note to be rising currently at 4.25%, and this poses a significant challenge to businesses as it will to fall in the demand for the services. It may lead to growth in inflation, and this will make it desirable for customers to save than spend. The hotel management will be affected as most of the customers will not be visiting the sales drops thereby making it less competitive internationally (Herman & Petter, 2009, p. 97). Social; the Claridge’s hotel operates under diverse cultural and religious backgrounds as it serves customers from every part of the world that comes from different social classes, education levels, age, buying habits and styles. The variety of foods offered that meets most of the diverse customer base helps the hotel to remain among the top competitive in the world (Hick, 2003, p. 34). Technological; the business have adopted the use of modern technology in all its departments, and this have enhanced efficiency in service delivery and provision of products that have high quality. This has ensured that the business manages its time properly and hence serves many customers within a short time. All the hotel rooms are fitted with modern communication equipment that provides easy coordination thereby very adaptive to the current global standards (Hill, 2007, p. 66). Environment: the business operates under ethical standards of hygiene regulations. It ensures proper disposal of wastes and recycling of most of the wastes so as to conserve the environment. Legal: The government has also imposed appropriate and favorable laws that guide the operations of the hotel that ensures they operate within the stipulated standards to remain competitive in the global market (Leung et al., 2005, p. 360). Health and Safety Standards According to the Gap-Model discussed above, it was noted that in some instances there existed a gap between the management and the customers which led to some dissatisfaction among the clients (Nancy & Gundersen, 2008, p. 70). One evident incidence of health measures by the management was wen one of the women was ordered to cover her baby when she was breastfeeding with the waiters claiming that it is a health and safety measure. From the comments received from the departments, it was noted that this incidence created a gap between the customers and the management as most women had the perception of being neglected and rejected when they have babies (Reeve, 2002, p. 155). Conclusion From the above discussions, it is clearly evident that Claridge’s hotel provides one of the best food services that meet a variety of the diverse global consumer demands. The business fully understands the SERVQUAL and the Gap-Models that helps it management its operations that meets customer demands and preferences and also within the ethical business standards. This has ensured its success in the international market. Recommendation Despite the numerous appraisals by the customers globally, the Hotel needs to improve on the safety standards to ensure that customers’ preferences and freedom are not thwarted as this may make the customers avoid the hotel especially women. List of References Andreas, C. Pauline M & Alan B 2012, Heterotopian Space and the Utopics of Ethical and Green Consumption, Journal of Marketing Management, Vol. 28, Pp. 494-515 Auger, P., & Devinney, T. M. 2007, Do what consumers say matter? The misalignment of preferences with un-constrained ethical intentions. Journal of Business Ethics, Vol.76, pp. 361–383. Blais, S 2011, Business Analysis: Best Practices in Success, John Wiley, New York Brewer, P 2007, 'Is there a cultural divide in Australian international trade?' Australian Journal of Management, Vol.32 (1), pp.113-134. 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